Know what your scene needs—and what to leave alone.
Scene Pressure Test is a reusable AI skill for evaluating drafted fiction scenes. Find the changes that serve your story, with evidence and practical revision checks.
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Includes Claude/Codex files, standalone ChatGPT instructions, setup guide, author preferences sheet, and worked examples. Your AI account and usage costs are separate.
What it checks
- Scene purpose, reader reward, motivation, and cause and effect.
- Conflict, stakes, changing pressure, turning points, and consequences.
- Emotion, character, dialogue, subtext, and physical action.
- Chemistry, intimacy, sexual tension, and explicitness as separate dimensions.
- Pacing, POV, continuity, setting, sensory detail, voice, and scene connections.
How it works
- Choose your format. Use the skill in Claude or Codex, or supply the standalone instructions in ChatGPT or an ordinary Claude conversation.
- Provide the scene. Add its intended purpose, genre, POV, boundaries, and relevant surrounding events. The preferences sheet is optional.
- Get a compact scene card. See the verdict, what to preserve, the main weakness, and prioritized revisions. Request the complete twelve-dimension diagnostic whenever useful.
- Revise deliberately. Findings include evidence, confidence, a specific fix, tradeoffs, and a way to check improvement.
- Recheck the result. Bring the original findings and revised scene to confirm fixes and catch new problems.
Use it on every scene
For a manuscript pass, ask it to inventory scenes and keep a coverage ledger. It reviews manageable batches, tracks unread material and context gaps, and checks repeated patterns after covering the supplied scenes. Save the ledger to continue accurately.
Preserve your story’s intent
Quiet scenes, grief, tenderness, recovery, humor, and atmosphere can earn their place. The skill separates scene design from prose execution and does not prescribe extra violence or explicitness to raise a score. It can recommend no revision when the scene achieves its purpose.
Your first prompt
Use Scene Pressure Test on this scene. Distinguish design from execution. Preserve what works, prioritize specific fixes with evidence and confidence, and tell me when no revision is needed. Do not rewrite yet.
This is an AI-assisted editorial workflow and written guide, not a browser app or personal editing service. You choose which suggestions to use. Short examples demonstrate the process; feedback varies by model and cannot guarantee a perfect scene or reader response.