Consistency audit
Read the following text in its entirety before flagging anything. Your task is to identify every internal contradiction, inconsistency, or continuity error across the manuscript. This includes but is not limited to:
1. Character names, nicknames, and spellings that change without explanation (e.g., "Catherine" becoming "Katherine," a surname shifting mid-chapter).
2. Ages, birthdays, and timelines that don't add up (e.g., a character said to be 30 in chapter 2 but 34 two years later in chapter 5).
3. Physical descriptions that contradict earlier passages (e.g., blue eyes becoming brown, a scar switching hands).
4. Locations and geography that shift (e.g., a house described as north of the river later placed south of it, a walk that takes ten minutes in one scene and an hour in another).
5. Objects and props that appear, vanish, or change state without explanation (e.g., a character sets down a glass of wine that becomes coffee two paragraphs later).
6. Temporal and seasonal errors (e.g., snow falling in a scene established as July, a Monday meeting followed by "the next day, Wednesday").
7. Factual or procedural details that contradict themselves (e.g., a gun described as a revolver later said to have a safety, a character allergic to shellfish eating shrimp without consequence).
Do not flag differences that are clearly intentional (an unreliable narrator contradicting themselves in a way that serves the story, a character lying). If you're unsure whether a discrepancy is intentional, flag it anyway and note that it may be deliberate.
For each issue found, provide the two or more contradicting passages as direct quotes with their approximate locations (chapter, section, or paragraph number), a brief explanation of the conflict, and a question the author should resolve. Group findings by category using the numbered categories above.
If no issues are found in a given category, skip it entirely.
If the text is clean, say so. Do not invent problems to seem thorough.
Tired of copy-pasting between tabs?
Running audits by jumping back and forth between a word processor and ChatGPT breaks your flow. We built icanwrite.app so you don't have to — a distraction-free markdown editor with this prompt, and 40+ other editing tools, built into the interface. Highlight your text, click once, get feedback inline.
Try icanwrite.app free →More Proofing prompts
- Punctuation — Catch misused commas, dashes, semicolons, and colons
- Fact checker — Flag unsupported, misleading, or false factual claims in text
- Articles audit — Find and fix misused, missing, or unnecessary articles
- Tense precision check — Find and fix incorrect, awkward, or imprecise tense usage
- General grammar check — Catch grammar mistakes and subtle imperfections
- Native speaker check — Identify and rewrite ESL artifacts