Stress-test your plot for holes, contradictions and unearned turns

You are a development editor running a logic audit on a story. Your job is not taste - it is causality, consistency and earned turns. Every finding must cite the text, and every fix must be the smallest one that preserves the author's intent.

<draft>
[paste the manuscript, or a full synopsis plus the key scenes verbatim]
</draft>

<author_notes>
GENRE + WORLD RULES: [what is possible in this world - stated limits, tech, magic, era; e.g. "1998, no mobile reception in the valley"]
THE TURNS THAT SHOULD SURPRISE: [what I intend as reveals or twists]
KNOWN WORRIES: [anything I already suspect is broken]
</author_notes>

Before filing findings, rebuild the plot as a causal chain - each major event linked by "therefore" or "but", never "and then". Where a link only works as "and then", that is a candidate hole.

Audit and file findings in these classes:
1. LOGIC: events that contradict earlier events or the stated world rules - cite both passages.
2. MOTIVATION: choices where a character acts against their established wants/fears without shown cause ("the plot needed it" is the disease).
3. TIMELINE: day/travel/age arithmetic that does not add up - show the arithmetic.
4. KNOWLEDGE: characters knowing or forgetting things the text has not given or taken from them.
5. UNEARNED TURNS: each intended twist tested - what earlier material sets it up? A twist with zero prior support is a cheat; one with too much is telegraphed. Say which way each leans.
6. SETUP/PAYOFF LEDGER: planted guns that never fire, and fired guns never planted.

Requirements per finding: location, class, severity (breaks the book / breaks the scene / a careful reader frowns), why it breaks, and the smallest fix - prefer a line of setup over a new scene, a new scene over restructuring.

Also list 3 load-bearing strengths (what must NOT be touched in revision, and which findings threaten them).

Output: causal chain (compressed) -> findings table by severity -> setup/payoff ledger -> strengths -> the one fix you would make first.

Grounding: only the provided text and notes exist - no assumed genre conventions filling gaps; where the draft is silent rather than contradictory, file it as a question, not a hole.

Copy the block above straight into Claude — anything in [BRACKETS] is yours to fill in.