11. Revision Checklist

Run a draft against this list once the manuscript is complete. The first four groups are applied chapter by chapter; the last two are applied to the whole book, and are the ones most often skipped and most often decisive.

Proposition and payoff

• I can state, in one sentence, the question or tension this chapter raised near its start.
• I can write the chapter’s eighteenth-century heading: *In which ___*.
• The ending resolves, escalates, holds open, re-interprets or exchanges that proposition — and I can name which.
• The chapter’s first page and last paragraph, read consecutively, are audibly related.

The exit

• I have decided whether stopping here should be free, moderate or expensive, and I can say why in terms of the chapters on either side.
• A reader who closed the book here and returned in three days would carry what I intend them to carry.
• Any cliffhanger is attached to a situation the reader already has a stake in.
• Any unresolved danger is one the next chapter honours; nothing is dispelled trivially on the following page.

Placement

• I have tried the break one beat earlier and one beat later, and can say why the current position is right.
• I know which of the twelve placement strategies this cut uses.
• Any reveal or turn sits at the chapter’s close, unless it is deliberately buried and the burial is attributable to the narration.
• The chapter does not continue past the point at which its own question was answered.
• The next chapter does not have to re-establish anything the reader already had.

Proportion

• This chapter’s length matches its weight in the book, not a habitual target.
• Its length is not within a few hundred words of every other chapter’s by default.
• Nothing has been added to reach a size.

The sequence (whole manuscript)

• I have made the four-column table — number, length, ending type, price — and read it without the manuscript.
• Ending types vary deliberately; the column does not repeat one word.
• There are genuine soft landings, placed at the ends of movements, so the expensive exits keep their value.
• The chapter-length sequence has a shape I can describe in one sentence.
• No stretch of five consecutive chapters has interchangeable final sentences.

The architecture (whole manuscript)

• Chapter numbering and titling are consistent from the first chapter to the last.
• If there are Parts, each boundary marks a real change and I can name it.
• If there are epigraphs, each is in tension with its chapter rather than a caption for it.
• Reading only the headings and the first and last sentences, the shape of the book is legible.
• The last chapter’s ending is not the fifteenth time this book has performed a full close.