11. Revision Checklist

Run each secondary thread in a completed draft against this list. Each item corresponds to a test in §7 or a pattern in §8.

Is it a plot at all?

• I can state this thread’s goal, conflict and consequence in three sentences without mentioning the protagonist.
• The thread has at least two branching points — moments at which it could have gone another way.
• Every one of its scenes descends causally from the one before it; I can trace the chain without a broken link.
• If it is a recurring character rather than a chain, I have said so and sized it accordingly.

What it supplies

• I can name the domain or domains it serves, and the naming survives a sceptical reader.
• At least one of those domains is something the main plot could not supply by its own nature.
• If the only domain is pacing relief, I have looked for the second job it could do in the space it already occupies.
• I can complete: “Because this thread exists, the reader understands that the main plot’s situation is qualified in the following way: …”
• The thread does not restate the main plot’s point in the same key.

Convergence

• I can name the page at which deleting this thread would break the main plot’s causal logic — or I have accepted that the convergence is thematic and paid for it with dense braiding.
• The convergence is a consequence, not a coincidence, and not merely a meeting.
• The object or fact that converges the threads was planted before the reader knew there was anything to recognise.
• Anything introduced with apparent weight is paid off, or its abandonment is itself a narrative event.

Proportion and rhythm

• I have counted the page-share of every thread, and the distribution matches the book I think I have written.
• The longest dormancy interval is one the resumption can afford; where it is not, I have inserted a crossing rather than a re-establishing scene.
• The thread is left mid-question whenever it is suspended.
• A thread converging at the climax appears in the quarter immediately preceding it.
• Crossings occur where the material requires them, not where the rotation demands them.

Hierarchy

• The thread does not structurally outshine the main plot — or, if it does, I have promoted it or declared the book a double plot.
• I have asked the promotion question honestly, and recorded the answer rather than the verdict.
• If the book has three or more co-equal chains, it declares that fact in its opening pages and accepts the three duties at §5.4.

Removal

• I have cut the thread on the outline and read what remains.
• I can name what is lost in domain terms, not in feelings.
• I have asked whether the loss could be supplied more cheaply in a single scene elsewhere.