Revising Your Draft

You've written your first draft — scenes are in Draft status, the prose exists, and the story is told. Now it's time to revise. This guide walks you through Proseweave's revision tools and a recommended workflow for turning a rough draft into a polished manuscript.

Overview

Revision in Proseweave follows a natural progression:

1. Analyze — find structural and consistency issues
2. Fix — address issues with targeted rewrites
3. Polish — refine prose quality and voice
4. Finalize — mark scenes as Final and prepare for export

Step 1: Run a Consistency Check

Start by finding factual contradictions in your manuscript.

1. Navigate to Consistency Check (⌘6).
2. Click Run Scan. The AI reads your entire manuscript and Story Bible, looking for contradictions — a character described as left-handed in Chapter 2 but right-handed in Chapter 8, or a setting detail that changes between scenes.
3. Review the results. Each issue shows the severity (minor, moderate, major), the affected scenes, and a description of the contradiction.

For each issue, you have three options:

• Fix manually — navigate to the scene and edit the prose yourself
• AI Fix — click Fix to have the AI suggest a correction that you can accept or reject
• Dismiss — if the issue is intentional or not a real contradiction

tip

Run Consistency Check early in revision — it catches factual errors that are easy to miss when you're focused on prose quality. It's cheaper to fix contradictions before you polish the language.

Step 2: Run Story Analysis

Next, review the structural health of your story.

1. Open Story Analysis from the Canvas toolbar.
2. The analysis covers pacing (scene lengths, chapter balance), character arcs (protagonist development gaps), and structural patterns.
3. Click any issue to jump to the relevant scene in the Canvas Outline.

Common findings and how to address them:

Finding	What to do
"Very short scene" (< 500 words)	Expand with Continue Writing or merge with adjacent scene
"Very long scene" (> 5,000 words)	Split into two scenes or tighten with Structured Rewrite
"Character disappears"	Add the character to scenes in the gap, or acknowledge the absence in the narrative
"Pacing imbalance"	Adjust scene lengths across the chapter for more even rhythm

Step 3: Use the Arc Tracker

For character-driven stories, chart your protagonist's emotional arc.

1. Open the Arc Tracker and select a character.
2. Click Analyze Arc to have the AI read every scene and estimate the character's emotional state.
3. Look for gaps (stretches with no data) and flat lines (no emotional change over several scenes).
4. Decide if these gaps are intentional or need attention.

Step 4: Revise Scene by Scene

Now work through your manuscript, revising each scene. Update scene statuses as you go:

1. Open the Manuscript (⌘2).
2. For each scene, decide what it needs:

Scene needs...	Use...
Minor phrasing fixes	Edit manually — type directly in the editor
A passage that isn't working	Rewrite Selection — highlight and instruct
Structural changes (add tension, remove exposition)	Structured Rewrite — specify Remove/Add/Adjust/Keep criteria
Alternative phrasings to choose from	Rewrite Options — get three options for a passage
More content	Continue Writing — extend the scene

3. After revising a scene, change its status from Draft to Revision by clicking the status badge.

tip

Use batch status updates in the Outline view to advance multiple scenes at once after a revision sprint.

Step 5: Polish with the Style Guide

Make sure your Style Guide is dialed in before final polishing:

• Avoidances — add words or patterns you want the AI to avoid (e.g., "avoid adverbs", "never use 'suddenly'")
• Voice samples — paste 2–3 paragraphs of your best writing. The AI uses these as a reference for tone and rhythm.

Then use Rewrite Selection on passages that don't match your voice, with instructions like "match the tone of my voice samples" or "tighten this paragraph."

Step 6: Finalize and Export

1. Change polished scenes from Revision to Final status.
2. Use the Canvas Outline progress bars to see which acts are fully finalized.
3. When ready, export with the Final only status filter for a clean manuscript.

The Revision Toolbox

Tool	Best for	Where to find it
Consistency Check	Finding factual contradictions	⌘6
Story Analysis	Pacing, structure, arc issues	Canvas toolbar
Arc Tracker	Character emotional arcs	Canvas sidebar
Rewrite Selection	Fixing specific passages	Highlight text in Manuscript
Structured Rewrite	Full-scene structural changes	AI toolbar in Manuscript
Version History	Comparing before/after	Versions button in Manuscript
Find & Replace	Changing terms project-wide	⌘⇧H