You used AI to get the draft done.

Free sample restoration

A restoration sample takes two things: a few pages of the draft, and a few minutes of you.

Send five to seven pages from anywhere in the manuscript, along with a voice memo — you telling one of the book's stories out loud works well — or something you've truly written yourself, like emails or an old essay. If you'd rather, we can meet for a short call instead. Within two business days of having both, I'll send back a restored sample. Restoration is creative work, and like any creative work, when you lean into the process, the result can come out better than the original.

Email

Your sample pages

Something you wrote yourself (skip this if you're sending a voice memo)

Anything I should know

Send your sample

Free, and it puts you under no obligation. Or email stephen@slwebber.com with "Restoration" in the subject line. Prefer to talk first? Book a call.

The tool leaves marks

In 1897 Henry James's wrist gave out and he started dictating his novels to a typist. Yes, scholars can tell which books came after the switch. Tools leave their mark on the prose. (It's why I personally love using a typewriter and writing with a fountain pen.)

Thirty years earlier, Dostoevsky dictated The Gambler to a stenographer in twenty-six days to beat a contract deadline. Its style is different. But the book's voice is still unmistakably Dostoevsky.

How a draft gets made doesn't decide whose book it is. Restoration is the work of getting your voice back into the prose.

Why the draft doesn't sound like you

AI is phenomenal at patterning. Dump your ideas into it and it will shape them using the most probable phrasing and a correct-ish rhythm.

There's a difference between using a tool to get material out and letting the tool decide what the book is. Revision can be where the manuscript becomes fully yours. It asks for a writer's ear along with a stranger's distance.

You'll know when you read the restored page and say: that's what I meant.

Is this for you?

You read the draft back and it isn't you. The knowledge is similar to yours, the structure is probably great, but the sentences feel dead.

Someone told you. Maybe an editor or a beta reader said it reads like a machine wrote it.

Who it's not for: if the goal is to slip past detection, this is the wrong place. I work with clients who want help bringing themselves back into their writing. Rough drafts have always presented their own kind of challenge. An artificially cleaned-up rough draft presents another.

What the work involves

I get to know your real voice. That can mean meeting, listening to your voice recordings, or reading drafts you wrote yourself.

Then I work through the manuscript. Rhythm and diction get rebuilt where necessary, filler gets cut, and disembodied stories get brought into scene.

I also point out what the model might have fabricated. I spent years as a software engineer, and catching machine mistakes is part of the service.

You get a substantive memo assessing the draft, along with the restored manuscript in tracked changes, so every decision is yours to make.

Common questions

Will the restored book pass AI detectors? If that's the question, you're at the wrong door. I have no interest in trusting a machine to judge whether writing is real — I'll trust my gut. The aim is a book that's yours.

Will I be able to take this to publishers? That's for them to decide. Every publisher has its own rules about writing that touched AI, and those rules are their business. My intent is not to pull the wool over anyone's eyes. The work is what it's always been: helping writers find their true voice and bring it, well shaped, into a manuscript.

Wouldn't it be easier to start over? Some drafts want restoration, and some want a fresh start or a ghostwriter. Send me your sample and I'll give you my honest recommendation.

Is this confidential? Client engagements are private by default, and under NDA if you'd like one.