11. Revision Checklist

Run each significant exchange against this list before deciding it stays as written. Each item derives from a test in §7 or a pattern in §8.

The engine

• I can state, in one sentence each, what both speakers want from the other in this exchange.
• Both wants are directed at the other person, and both are immediate rather than story-scale.
• The balance of information, power or feeling is different at the end than at the start — or has been contested and held.
• Removing the exchange would cost the reader something the summary line cannot carry.

Domains

• I can name which domains — plot, character, relational, theme, texture, silence — this exchange actually serves, rather than merely touches.
• The relational domain is doing something; status is not simply fixed by default.
• Any information delivered here comes at a cost to the speaker, not a courtesy to the reader.
• No character says something purely so that the reader can learn it.

The two channels

• Text and subtext are not identical for at least the key turns.
• I can name which mechanism from §6.4 each oblique turn is using.
• The exchange has some cooperative turns, so that the flouting ones register.
• I have not spent the gap-closing move here unless this is the place for it.

Silence

• At least one speaker is withholding, deflecting or declining to answer something.
• I know who else is in the room, and whether their silence is doing work or is an oversight.
• I know who is being discussed and is not present.

Voice

• With the tags stripped and the lines read aloud, I can tell who is speaking without relying on content.
• I could not move this exchange’s best lines into another character’s mouth without loss.
• Each principal has a different average turn length, a different relation to questions, and a different default evasion.

Surface

• Every attribution that is not said or asked is justified; no adverb is compensating for a line that has not been written.
• Action beats between turns carry a second function, and are not tags with extra words.
• Names are used in the vocative only where the vocative is doing something.
• Dialect is carried by syntax, idiom and lexicon rather than by spelling — or, where it is not, I can defend the choice on the grounds set out at §8.9.

Shape

• The exchange begins at the first turn that could not be cut and ends at the last.
• Interruptions cluster at the crisis rather than being distributed evenly.
• The turns cannot be reshuffled without loss.