A Reader’s Guide to the New Reports Section

A set of reports for the writing desk

My dear reader, a manuscript can keep a surprising number of small secrets. A missing title may hide in plain sight; a character may vanish for six scenes; and “just” may have taken up lodgings on every other page. The new Reports section offers five ways to inspect such details: Preflight, Prose Habits, Cast Presence, Pacing, and Readability.

Each report gives you a different view of the pages. None can decide whether your novel is good, or whether a curious choice ought to stay. That judgment remains yours. Think of these reports as a tidy writing desk, with the right papers laid out when you wish to look closer. You can find the tools at Unblockifier novel writing software.

Preflight: a final check before export

Preflight checks for details that are missing, unfinished, or perhaps at odds with one another before you export. It gives each finding a severity and links to the scene or chapter concerned, so you needn’t go searching through the whole house for one loose floorboard.

To fix

These are items a reader would likely notice: a missing book title, or a title still set as “Untitled project”; no author name; no chapters; or chapters with no prose. Preflight also looks for notes to yourself left in scenes, including TK, TKTK, TODO, FIXME, XXX, and bracketed reminders such as [insert name] or [check this]. A manuscript is a fine place for private instructions while you’re drafting. They make rather less graceful guests in an exported book.

To look at

Some findings may be deliberate, but are worth a glance. Preflight notes empty scenes, chapters sharing a title, and gaps in chapter numbers. It checks for numbering gaps only when there are at least three numbered chapters, and it reports no more than ten missing numbers.

It also flags scenes where paragraphs are divided by single line breaks instead of blank lines. Depending on the export, those paragraphs can run together as one stretch of text. A small mark on the screen can make a very long day for a reader.

Preflight checks curly speech marks, too. It flags a closing mark without an opening one, and two or more opening marks in a paragraph when one is left unclosed. Speech that carries on across paragraphs is not flagged; that is correct English, and the report leaves it be.

To know about

This group notes scenes excluded from the compile and deleted scenes that can still be recovered. If no findings appear, Preflight tells you that every check passed.

Prose Habits: patterns across the pages

Prose Habits looks at repeated words and phrases across the whole book, or in one chapter you choose from a dropdown. Its four lists are useful for spotting habits you may wish to keep, trim, or simply know about.

• Most used words: the top 25. Words under four letters and words on a common-word list are skipped. A word must appear at least three times to be listed, and counts are shown per 10,000 words.
• Repeated phrases: the top 20 three-word sequences that each appear at least three times.
• Filler: a fixed list of 23 words and phrases, counted and ranked. Examples include “just,” “really,” “suddenly,” “began to,” “sort of,” and “in order to.”
• -ly adverbs: the top 20 words longer than five letters that end in “ly.”

This report is designed for English. It works from a fixed list of English words, and treats a word ending in “ly” as an adverb. That makes it a useful pattern-finder, not a grammar tutor in a powdered wig. If it points to a repeated word, you can decide whether the repetition suits the voice, the scene, or the sentence.

Cast Presence: who appears in each scene

Cast Presence arranges your characters in rows and your scenes in timeline order as columns. Filled squares show which characters appear in which scenes. The report also gives each character’s scene count and their longest gap: the greatest number of consecutive scenes they were absent between two appearances. Gaps of five or more are highlighted.

Presence comes from the characters you assigned to each timeline scene on the story side. The report does not search the prose for names. So if a character walks through a scene in the text but was never added to that scene’s timeline details, Cast Presence will show them as absent. The report needs at least one character and one timeline scene; it depends on timeline data to do its work.

Pacing: a view of scene length

The Pacing report lists every scene in reading order, with its chapter, word count, and a bar showing its length relative to the other scenes. It also estimates dialogue share: the percentage of a scene’s text that falls inside straight or curly speech marks.

A scene is marked long when it runs to more than twice the book’s median scene length. It is marked short when it is below 40% of that median. These labels help you notice variation. They don’t prescribe a proper scene size; a quiet exchange and a climactic chase may have different needs, as well they might.

Readability: a description, not a verdict

Readability uses standard Flesch measures to estimate how demanding prose may be to read. These numbers describe the writing, not its quality. You can view a summary for the whole book or for a chapter you select. It includes the word count, sentence count, average words per sentence, reading ease with a plain label from very easy to very hard, and grade level.

The Longest Sentences list shows sentences of 45 words or more, in full, with their length. It displays up to 15. By Scene gives the same measures scene by scene, along with the longest sentence in each one. If a sentence has acquired a small procession of clauses, this is a convenient place to find it.

Syllable counts are estimates. They’re more useful across a body of writing than for judging any one word. The report’s own note says fiction comfortably spans grades 4 to 10, so treat a grade-level number as a description, not a target. A novel is not a schoolroom exercise, and no arithmetic need tell it how to speak.

Choose the question you want to ask

Before export, open Preflight. For repeated wording, try Prose Habits. For characters across the timeline, look at Cast Presence. Pacing gives you a view of scene length, while Readability summarizes sentence and reading-ease measures.

Each report offers clues you can weigh against the book you mean to write. Keep the useful ones, set aside the rest, and let the novel have the final word. It has, after all, been waiting patiently for its turn.