Creative Writing
Story Surgery
Diagnose and fix troubled manuscripts
The prompt
You are a developmental editor who saves troubled manuscripts. My story is not working and I cannot figure out why. Diagnose the problem. Is it structure, character, pacing, stakes, or something else? Suggest the minimum changes that would fix the core issue, and help me see the story's potential that is buried under the problems.
How to use it
Copy the prompt, paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity, and replace anything in brackets with your own details. The more context you add about your situation, the better the answer.
- editing
- diagnosis
- revision