---
name: polish-chinese-fiction
description: Full-lifecycle editorial system for Chinese fiction, covering story-bible review, plot and character architecture, continuity and causal repair, scene-level rewriting, character voice and relationship pacing, native-Chinese line editing, English-syntax residue and translationese removal, colloquial adverbs and emotional expression, multi-round revision integrity, public-edition cleanup, illustration highlight copy, detailed change logs, and publication QA. Use for Chinese novels, web fiction, serialized chapters, “去 AI 味”, “翻译腔/英语语法痕迹”, unnatural pronouns or abstract judgments, emotionally flat dialogue, punctuation or spoken-language tuning, proofreading, rewriting, manuscript optimization, repeated-version audits, or formal pure-reading editions for DOCX, PDF, and websites.
---

# Polish Chinese Fiction

Improve only the layer that the current draft actually needs. Do not confuse repeated proofreading with new editorial value.

## 1. Classify the task

Read [references/editorial-layers.md](references/editorial-layers.md) for multi-stage books, multi-version retrospectives, or requests covering more than sentence-level language.

Choose one or more gates:

| Gate | Use when | Primary output |
|---|---|---|
| A. Editorial architecture | Premise, theme, world rules, character arcs, plot, romance, or clue recovery is unstable | Story bible and chapter architecture |
| B. Continuity and causality | Ages, timelines, props, identities, observation limits, or consequences conflict | Continuity ledger and targeted repairs |
| C. Scene and voice rewrite | Draft is complete but reads thin, explanatory, uniform, or emotionally unearned | Scene-level second draft and voice bible |
| D. Native-Chinese line edit | Syntax is translated, abstract, referentially vague, or unnatural despite correct plot | Revised manuscript and full change table |
| E. Public-edition copy | The book needs a pure-reading edition, blurb, metadata, captions, or removal of process language | Public copy pack and clean manuscript |
| F. Publication verification | DOCX, PDF, website, illustrations, or chapter data must remain synchronized | Hash, structure, anchor, and browser checks |

Run only necessary gates. Preserve guarantees established by earlier versions unless new evidence shows they failed.

## 2. Write a delta brief for every revision

Before editing, record:

- Canonical baseline file and SHA-256.
- User feedback that triggered this round.
- New defects targeted by this round.
- Guarantees inherited from earlier rounds.
- Protected plot, relationships, settings, voice, paragraph breaks, and illustration anchors.
- Deliverables and acceptance tests.

After editing, record only this round's unique contribution. Merge recurring operations such as “full read”, “punctuation check”, “public copy cleanup”, and “format synchronization” into shared safeguards rather than listing them as new achievements every time.

## 3. Apply the selected gates

### Gate A: editorial architecture

Establish or review:

- One-sentence story and core dramatic question.
- Theme expressed through opposing character choices rather than a thesis alone.
- World rules, power costs, and prohibited shortcuts.
- Character Want, Need, Ghost, Lie, arc, voice, and relationship function.
- Act structure, chapter purpose, irreversible turn, and aftermath.
- Romance and relationship beats with behavioral setup before payoff.
- Clue/plant/payoff table.
- Style rules and anti-patterns.
- Side stories that deepen relationships or consequences rather than repeat the main plot.

Do not draft a long manuscript before these dependencies are coherent.

### Gate B: continuity and causality

Audit facts separately from prose quality:

- Ages, dates, elapsed time, entry years, and titles.
- Object ownership, transfer, damage, repair, and later use.
- Who knows what, when, and how.
- Point-of-view observation limits.
- Identity and naming transitions.
- Institution powers, rules, counts, geography, and travel time.
- Emotional and material consequences after conflict.

Repair the earliest causal break, then update downstream references. Do not hide a continuity error with smoother prose.

For manuscripts revised repeatedly, also test the version chain itself: duplicated paragraphs, missing sections, heading drift, paragraph-count drift, edit overlap, and illustration-anchor displacement. Use `scripts/audit_revision_integrity.mjs` when a locked baseline and revised manuscript both exist.

### Gate C: scene and voice rewrite

Create a short voice bible for narrator and recurring characters. For each scene require:

1. A character objective.
2. Resistance.
3. A turn or discovery.
4. A changed relationship, cost, or next constraint.
5. Enough aftermath for the event to matter.

Rewrite exposition into action, objects, spatial relationships, and subtext. Differentiate character syntax, vocabulary, humor, emotional restraint, and willingness to explain. Let romance develop through remembered details, misjudgment, boundary negotiation, conflict, and shared responsibility.

Control paragraph rhythm. Use single-sentence paragraphs only for real impact. Review every chapter ending and remove generic thematic summaries.

### Gate D: native-Chinese line edit

Read [references/problem-taxonomy.md](references/problem-taxonomy.md). Ask of each suspicious sentence:

1. Who acts or feels?
2. What do “这、那、它” refer to?
3. Does this collocation exist naturally in living Chinese?
4. Would this narrator or character say it?
5. Is the sentence depicting something concrete or naming an abstract conclusion?

Use `scripts/scan_candidates.mjs` for candidates only. Never apply its matches mechanically.

Correct, in separate passes:

- Logical subjects and sentence structure.
- Reference and cohesion.
- Collocation and word accuracy.
- Abstract noun chains and translationese.
- Dialogue breath, register, and character identity.
- Chapter endings, repeated molds, and false aphorisms.
- Logic, factual counts, spatial consistency, and callbacks.

Preserve deliberate fragments, genre terminology, motifs, and character-specific strangeness.

When the user identifies English grammar, translationese, “机器人中文”, odd `it/that`-style reference, or a sentence that is grammatical but no native speaker would naturally phrase that way:

1. Read [references/translationese-and-native-syntax.md](references/translationese-and-native-syntax.md).
2. Treat the quoted sentence as a defect-family sample, not a one-line exception.
3. Search the whole manuscript for the same syntactic mechanism: pronoun mapping, relation-clause tails, abstract cognition, self-observation, unnecessary passive voice, object agency, nominalized conclusions, or report-style explanation.
4. Revise in paragraph context so the replacement does not create a new subject, tense, or cohesion error.
5. After ledger-based editing, cold-read the revised manuscript without looking at the ledger and add any newly exposed cases.
6. Run a structural and duplication audit before declaring the full-book pass complete.

When the request specifically concerns colloquial adverbs, modal expressions, direct emotion words, exclamation marks, ellipses, or emotionally flat dialogue:

1. Read [references/emotion-and-modality.md](references/emotion-and-modality.md).
2. Run `scripts/scan_emotion_modality.mjs` on the baseline before editing.
3. Build a character-by-function matrix before selecting candidates.
4. Record every accepted change in the ledger; do not perform global search-and-replace.
5. Run the scanner again with `--compare` after editing and explain distribution changes without treating frequency as a quota.

Example:

```bash
node scripts/scan_emotion_modality.mjs baseline.md --compare revised.md
```

### Gate E: public-edition copy

Separate internal editorial material from public reading content.

Public content may include:

- Accurate title, author, genres, length, structure, and release date.
- One-sentence hook, short description, volume notes, captions, alt text, and SEO metadata.
- The complete authorized manuscript.

Exclude:

- Prompts, model or assistant self-reference, process narration, version notes, edit logs, story cards, and internal checklists.
- Unconfirmed author identity, publisher, ISBN, awards, endorsements, or reviews.

For illustration copy, select one decisive action, choice, or relationship turn. Do not summarize the whole chapter as a character collage. Write captions that add a precise emotional angle without restating the image.

### Gate F: publication verification

Read [references/acceptance-checklist.md](references/acceptance-checklist.md). Regenerate every derivative from one revised source.

At minimum verify:

- Headings, chapter order, and per-section paragraph counts.
- Illustration and footnote anchors.
- Balanced punctuation and clean whitespace.
- Source/revised/public hashes.
- Representative new sentences present and old sentences absent in extracted PDF, DOCX, and website text.
- Route, image, download, and browser behavior.

## 4. Maintain a complete change ledger

For targeted or line-level changes use:

```json
{
  "section": "第三章",
  "type": "欧化时间表达",
  "old": "三十日从现在算。",
  "new": "三十日之期，从此刻算起。",
  "reason": "补足期限名词，并改为符合人物语体的中文表达。"
}
```

Each `old` string must match the baseline exactly once. Use `scripts/apply_revision.mjs` to apply records and generate Markdown/CSV reports with baseline line numbers, category counts, hashes, and structural checks.

If one planned `old` string exists only after an earlier replacement, the two entries overlap. Merge them into one baseline-grounded entry; never build a ledger that depends on text introduced by a previous edit. Derive the displayed section from the baseline location instead of trusting a hand-entered chapter label.

For scene-level rewriting, maintain a chapter ledger instead: previous scene weakness, new objective/resistance/turn/aftermath, voice changes, continuity effects, and protected facts.

## 5. Review multiple versions without duplication

Use `scripts/version_inventory.mjs` to inventory manuscripts. Then build two views:

1. A chronological record showing what changed in each version.
2. A deduplicated capability map showing each distinct editorial improvement once.

When the same technique recurs, describe its escalation instead of repeating it:

- Spot removal of explanatory prose.
- Systematic scene rewrite replacing explanations with action.
- Residual line edit removing abstract sentence structures.

These are one evolving capability—concrete narration—applied at three depths.

For a final multi-round audit, run:

```bash
node scripts/audit_revision_integrity.mjs \
  --source baseline.md \
  --revised revised.md \
  --changes changes.json \
  --versions v1.md,v2.md,v3.md \
  --strict-duplicates true \
  --output integrity.json
```

Treat automatic matches as evidence, not final literary judgment. Manually adjudicate retained refrains, necessary passives, and near-distance references, and record why they remain.

## 6. Deliver

Lead with:

- Scope and versions reviewed.
- Distinct editorial capabilities added.
- Repeated actions merged or discarded.
- Current canonical manuscript.
- Revised files, change logs, and validation status.

Never claim a full-book review after sampling only part of the manuscript. Do not imitate a living writer's exact style; transfer high-level craft techniques while preserving the book's own voice.