11. Revision Checklist

Run each significant descriptive passage against this list before deciding it stays as written. Each item corresponds to a test in §7 or a pattern in §8.

Selection

• I can name why this detail was chosen over the countless other true things present.
• I can complete the sentence: *these details, and not others, because ___* — with something other than “because they were there”.
• Something is known, felt or anticipated after the detail that was not before it.
• Reordering the passage’s elements would lose something.

Domains

• I can name which domains — plot, character, world, theme, texture, temporal — this passage actually serves, as against which it merely visits.
• At least one detail here carries two domains.
• No domain column is empty by accident; any that is empty is empty by choice.
• At least one element carries duration — a tense, a state of wear, an act of maintenance, a date.

Connotation

• The detail’s connotation is doing work beyond its denotation.
• The connotation is not so loud that the object has left the room.
• Nothing here borrows its meaning from a brand, a period reference or a stock association the book has not built.

Focalisation

• Whoever is noticing this would plausibly notice it, given who they are and what they want right now.
• The selection reveals the observer, not only the observed.
• Nothing is described that this perceiver could not have perceived, unless the narration’s access has been declared.

Density and range

• The element count is proportionate to what I actually want retained.
• No noun is carrying three modifiers that a better noun would have carried alone.
• At least one element is not visual.
• Some sentences are doing only one thing, so the load-bearing ones can be felt.

Recurrence

• Recurring details are varied or developed, not repeated identically out of habit.
• Anything given conspicuous emphasis is something I am willing to be held to.
• Any motif has at least three appearances and at least one in which it does nothing.

Air

• Something in this book is present because the world is, and not because it is useful.