Line Editing

Line Editing

Overview

Own the prose-quality passes that come after structure is settled: the line edit (sentence clarity, rhythm, precision, voice), character-voice differentiation, the copyedit against style-sheet.md, a read-aloud pass, and a proof pass on a built copy. Every change is proposed with a before/after and a one-line rationale so the author can accept or reject it. The author's voice is the standard, not the agent's taste. The better-writing skill, when installed, is an optional complement for anti-generic checks; this skill does not depend on it.

Prerequisites

A story project with story.md and drafted chapters (status draft or later). Read style-sheet.md if present; if it is missing or thin, build it first with the voice-style skill, because the copyedit checks against it.

Language

Read language in story.md (a BCP 47 tag such as en-GB, fr, or ja; a missing field means en). Edit in that language and to its grammar and conventions, and write edit notes in the language the user works in with you, quoting the prose exactly as written. The checklists' word-level advice (filter words, -ly adverbs, said, dialogue punctuation) is English: for another language, apply its aim, not its word lists, and take dialogue and punctuation from the style sheet and references/language-conventions.md. When story prose or story voices reports a check skipped for the book's language, or a check plainly does not fit it, do that pass by reading.

When to Use

• A chapter's structure is settled and the prose needs polish
• Dialogue sounds the same from every speaker
• Preparing a manuscript for beta readers, an editor, or submission
• The line, copyedit, or proof revision pass is next in story passes
• NOT for structural, plot, or continuity revision (use revision-continuity; line-edit only after those passes, or the polish is wasted)
• NOT for setting house style, the voice description, or each character's recorded voice (use voice-style; this skill applies them)
• NOT for scene-level craft such as deep POV, subtext, or exposition strategy (use scene-craft)
• NOT for acting on external reader notes (use feedback-triage)
• NOT for writing or scanning verse (use verse-craft); this skill only flags rhymes that slipped into prose by accident

Workflow

1. Scope and permission

1. Ask which chapters and which pass: line edit, voice differentiation, copyedit, read-aloud, or proof. Default order is the one below.
2. Ask how heavy the edit should be: light (errors and clear improvements only), medium (tighten and clarify), or heavy (restructure sentences and paragraphs). Default to light.
3. Never rewrite a passage wholesale without explicit permission. Propose edits; apply only what the author accepts, or apply all on explicit instruction.
4. Snapshot before a multi-chapter pass (see Draft Snapshots in the revision-continuity skill), and mark the pass in progress. If story.md has no revision-passes yet, story passes . --init writes the default ladder first; story passes . shows where the book is.

story passes . --start line

2. Line edit

1. Read story.md (POV, tense, Tone & Style), the style sheet's Voice section, and the chapter. Run story prose . for the chapter's counts. If the style sheet has no samples, suggest the author list an earlier book or chapter files they are happy with (see the voice-style skill), so the counts are measured against their own voice. A prose-baseline-* warning shows where a chapter drifts from it: use it to find passages to reread, and keep any drift the author meant.
2. Work paragraph by paragraph with references/line-edit-checklist.md: clarity, precision, economy, rhythm, POV distance, and voice.
3. Present edits in the format in references/edit-note-format.md: location, before, after, and one line of rationale. Group by paragraph; lead with the highest-impact changes; cap a batch at about 20 so the author can review them.
4. Leave passages that are unusual but deliberate. When unsure whether a quirk is voice or error, ask.
5. To check a rewritten passage before putting it in the chapter, pipe it in: story prose - < rewrite.md lints it against the style sheet, and story voices - < rewrite.md checks its dialogue against the characters' voice-avoid lists.

3. Differentiate character voices

story voices .

The report fingerprints each character's attributed dialogue (sentence length, contractions, questions, exclamations, signature words) and warns when two voices are near-identical, when a character says a voice-avoid word, and when a voice-words entry never appears.

1. For near-identical pairs, read both characters' Voice & Speech Patterns sections and propose line-level changes that follow them: vocabulary, sentence length, what each avoids saying, how each deflects. See the voice section of references/line-edit-checklist.md.
2. If a character file has no voice notes, propose voice-words and voice-avoid lists drawn from their best existing lines, and ask before adding them to the character file.
3. A line counts only when the narration names its speaker by a speech verb, or names one character in the paragraph. Pronoun tags (she said) and untagged lines are invisible to the report, so the POV character in close third is often under-counted; read those lines by hand, or name the tags in a sample chapter and rerun. story voices --help describes the command and, when story-maintenance is installed, the voices section of ../story-maintenance/references/continuity-checks.md gives the full attribution rules and thresholds.

4. Copyedit

1. Mark the pass: story passes . --start copyedit.
2. Run story prose . and fix every avoided spelling. Then work through references/copyedit-checklist.md against style-sheet.md: grammar, punctuation, dialogue punctuation, capitalisation, hyphenation, numbers, and consistency of names and terms (check the glossary). For a book not in English, take dialogue and punctuation conventions from references/language-conventions.md; if the style sheet has not recorded them, settle them with the author first.
3. Record every new decision in style-sheet.md in the same change, so the next chapter follows it.
4. Tell the user plainly: this is a consistency and correctness pass, not a substitute for a professional copyeditor on a book going to print.