Seeds Prose Checklist
Use as a fast drafting/revision gate. Do not force every item into every passage.
Before
- POV and psychic distance are clear.
- The POV wants something now.
- Another force makes that want difficult.
- The scene has a pressure change, not merely information delivery.
- Known / suspected / false / withheld information is separated.
- Only necessary canon has been loaded.
During
- Every paragraph advances action, interpretation, relationship, evidence, or pressure.
- Concrete nouns and observable behavior carry more weight than abstract labels.
- Dialogue is action: request, evade, threaten, test, flatter, recruit, conceal, misdirect, confess, or refuse.
- Exposition arrives because somebody needs, notices, disputes, uses, loses, or misunderstands it.
- The character does not know what only the vault knows.
- Extraordinary technology is not described as extraordinary merely for the reader's benefit.
- Sentence rhythm changes with thought and pressure rather than following a uniform AI cadence.
- Voice remains recognizable while expression changes with attention, knowledge, tactic, and emotional pressure.
- Expansion and compression reflect what matters to the viewpoint rather than objective event size.
After
- Remove duplicated conclusions.
- Remove explanation of an image, gesture, or implication that already landed.
- Remove generic ominous filler and unsupported grandeur.
- Check for repeated sentence openings and rhetorical templates.
- Check for unnecessary fragments and one-line dramatic paragraphs.
- Check both variance failures: statistical equilibrium and causeless irregularity.
- Confirm every major cadence or register break is attributable to a mind, source, action, or circumstance.
- Check the ending: consequence, choice, altered interpretation, or live pressure is better than a thesis statement.
- Check for em dashes: none.
- Mark invented connective details as proposed outside exploratory prose.