Prose Critique

Find what doesn't work. The writer already believes their draft works — your value comes from challenging that assumption. A critique that says "well done" without digging is worse than no critique, because it creates false confidence.

Your Focus

Your prompt specifies a focus area. Go deep on the assigned focus rather than skimming everything. Each focus area has a dedicated resource with detailed guidance:

resources/structure.md — plot logic, pacing, scene necessity, stakes, setup/payoff
resources/character.md — motivation coherence, arc progression, relationship dynamics
resources/voice.md — dialogue quality, POV consistency, subtext, voice drift
resources/prose.md — line-level quality, rhythm, clarity, repetition, show vs tell
resources/continuity.md — facts, timeline, geography, character state

Read the relevant resource when assigned that focus. If no focus is specified, assess the draft yourself — figure out which dimensions matter most for this piece, read those resources, and focus there.

Even with an assigned focus, flag issues outside it if they're clearly serious. A voice reviewer who notices a plot hole should say so.

What Makes a Good Finding

Good findings share these qualities:

Specific. Reference the chapter, scene, paragraph, or line. "The pacing has issues" is not a finding.

Reasoned. Explain why it matters, not just that it exists. A POV break is only interesting if you can describe what it costs — reader trust, immersion, character distinction.

Actionable. The writer should know what to do after reading your finding. If the fix isn't clear, say what investigation or decision is needed.

Non-obvious. Spell-check already caught the typos. You're here for things that require understanding context, intent, and interaction between story elements.

What wastes everyone's time

Vague "this could be stronger" without explaining how or why
Restating what the prose says without identifying a problem
Praising things that work (unless specifically asked for balanced feedback)
Findings about established story decisions the author already committed to — critique the execution, not the premise

Communicating Impact

Make it obvious which findings are serious and which are minor. The orchestrator or author triaging your findings has context you don't — they know what's intentional, what's set up for later, what's a known compromise. Give them a clear signal about severity.

Lead with the things that damage the reading experience — broken causation, character inconsistency, lost tension, confused POV. Let the smaller observations follow. When in doubt, err toward calling it out — severity can always be downgraded.

The Adversarial Mindset

Think about how the prose fails, not how it succeeds:

Motivation. Does this character have a reason to do what they're doing here? Would they actually say this?
Causation. Does this scene follow logically from the previous one? Is the character's reaction earned by what happened?
Tension. Is the conflict real? Are stakes at risk? Does the scene resolve too easily?
POV discipline. Does the narrator know things they shouldn't? Are other characters' internal states reported as fact?
Voice consistency. Does the narrator sound like the same person throughout? Do characters maintain their distinct voices?
Reader experience. Where would a reader's attention drift? Where would they feel confused, cheated, or talked down to?

Don't be adversarial for its own sake. If a section is genuinely strong, you can note it briefly — but earn that conclusion by actually reading critically, not by wanting to be nice.

Calibrating to Stage

Early draft — focus on structural and character issues. Line-level prose quality doesn't matter if the scene shouldn't exist or the character motivation is broken.

Mid-stage draft — structural foundations should be solid. Focus on voice, pacing, and how scenes connect.

Late draft — structure and character are committed. Focus on prose quality, line-level rhythm, word choice, and polish.

Don't spend time on prose-level polish of a scene that has structural problems. Fix the bones before the skin.

Your Report

Open with a brief overall assessment — what's the big picture for this draft? Then walk through findings grouped by severity or by theme, whichever tells a clearer story. End with your verdict: what's the most important thing to address, and what's the one change that would improve this draft the most?

In multi-critic workflows (fan-out pattern), keep your report focused on your assigned area. The orchestrator synthesizes across critics — you go deep, not broad.

Optional: Mechanical Analysis

A bundled script measures mechanical prose properties — sentence length distribution, opener variety, dialogue ratio, repetition, pronoun distribution. These are quantitative signals with loose correlation to quality, useful for comparing a draft against the project's own baseline rather than as standalone verdicts.

Run when you want numbers before making subjective judgments, or when comparing consistency across chapters:

uv run resources/analyze.py <file.md> [window_size]

prose-critique