Seeds of the Throne

Revision Method

Principle

Revision should solve a named problem without erasing the choices that already make the passage specific. Diagnose before rewriting.

Revision order

Work from largest to smallest:

1. scene purpose and pressure;
2. causality and character motive;
3. POV and information control;
4. scene order / paragraph order;
5. dialogue and exposition;
6. physical specificity;
7. sentence rhythm and diction;
8. mechanical cleanup.

Do not line-polish a scene whose dramatic engine is wrong.

Choose the visible pass

• Development edit: purpose, pressure, causality, motive, knowledge, order, stakes, and information control. Use this when changing what the passage does.
• Line edit: diction, syntax, rhythm, paragraph shape, clarity, and mechanical cleanup. Use this when the passage already does the right work.

Name the selected pass in the response. If a development problem remains, stop before a full line edit unless the author explicitly requests a limited sentence repair.

Passes

Structural pass

Ask what changes because this passage exists. Cut or redesign beats that merely repeat setup, lore, emotion, or conclusion.

Pressure-turn placement

Identify the most important change in pressure, knowledge, choice, or interpretation. Ask whether it appears where the reader can use it and whether setup, lore, or throat-clearing buries it.

This is a placement diagnosis, not a command to reveal the answer early. Suspense may require delay. If the turn is deliberately withheld, verify that the preceding material creates useful expectation or pressure rather than confusion.

Agency pass

Trace each important action to a want, belief, fear, loyalty, or tactical response. Remove actions performed only because the plot needs them.

Knowledge pass

Mark what the POV can know, infer, misread, and not know. Check that narration does not quietly inherit vault omniscience.

Exposition pass

For each explanatory sentence, identify why the reader needs it now and why this is the best delivery channel. Compress, delay, dramatize, or cut when necessary.

Dialogue pass

Identify what each speaker is trying to make happen. Remove lines that only paraphrase narration or teach lore.

Specificity pass

Replace vague abstractions with a small number of consequential physical, procedural, or institutional details. Do not add decorative detail everywhere.

Rhythm pass

Identify the passage's local cadence before changing it. Mark where attention, pressure, knowledge, or tactic changes. Let sentence and paragraph shape respond at those points, and remove accidental rhetorical templates or overused one-line emphasis.

Controlled-variance pass

Check both failure directions:

• equilibrium: similar middle-length sentences, matching paragraph shapes, evenly distributed emphasis, or one register despite changing pressure;
• synthetic variance: scheduled fragments, arbitrary rare words, random breaks, or constant long-short oscillation.

Correct the cause before the surface. Expand what the viewpoint cannot leave alone, compress what it avoids or already knows, and break cadence only where cognition or circumstance changes. Do not revise toward a numerical sentence-length target.

Anti-AI pass

Use anti-ai-prose.md and scripts/prose_lint.py if available.

Tracks pass

When the passage has passed through outlines, prototypes, critique, or AI-assisted revision, use tracks-pass.md to remove finished development scaffolding. Preserve intentional documentary framing, public status labels, and visible uncertainty.

Preservation rule

Before changing a strong or unusual sentence, state what problem the change solves. If there is no concrete answer, leave it alone.

Revision intensity

• Surgical: localized wording, clarity, rhythm, or continuity repair.
• Paragraph: reorganize or rewrite one affected unit.
• Scene: rebuild beats while preserving intended event and character outcome.
• Structural: change scene purpose/order; normally coordinate with story development first if events would change.

Match the intensity to the author's request. Do not escalate a surgical request into a stylistic rewrite.

Comparison

When presenting alternatives, vary a consequential craft choice: distance, information timing, tactic, exposition channel, or ending type. Do not offer three synonym swaps as three versions.

Stop rule

Stop revising when the named problem is solved and further edits become lateral preference changes. Polish is not automatically progress.