2026-08-30
User:
You are running the pre-David pass on three newly drafted scenes of a novel. Working directory: redacted.
Read, in this order, in full:
- .claude/skills/pre-david-pass/SKILL.md (the checklist you apply)
- draft/book-01/VOICE.md
- The scenes before: draft/book-01/scenes/29-birds-go-around-a-field.md, 30-twelve-miles-of-flat.md
- The three scenes under review: draft/book-01/scenes/31-the-pantry-door.md, 32-nobodys-going-to-laugh.md, 33-a-man-in-a-robe.md
- redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted"), notes/canon/world/magic.md (the Working bullets on the Weave's two images and misreadings), notes/llm-tells.md.
- draft/book-01/REMAINDER.md §3 (especially rulings 3 and 4: the Weave's man in a robe — Peri suspects Ferrin, is wrong, and the page lets her be wrong without mocking her; nothing confirms either reading) and the act-two binding list at the foot of draft/book-01/SCENES.md.
Apply the pre-David pass exactly as the skill says: Part 1 sentence by sentence (restate flat; check every count, fact, inference, viewpoint knowledge, continuity within the scene — e.g. the muck rows: Mattie says the bottom went down and the crown is as the fork left it; Peri's "A man in a robe" reading and Edwin's reply "He's in his shirt": does the exchange parse; the chain figures on the door; who is in the kitchen when), then one pass each with Parts 2–7. redacted sentence: unpublished prose Report findings only — quote, Part/bullet, one sentence why, replacement or "cut". No praise. Do not edit files. End with two lines on any device a second round of comments would be about.
I'll start by reading the required materials.
🔧 Bash: cd redacted && cat .claude/skills/pre-david-pass/SKILL.md (Read pre-david-pass skill)
✅ 394 lines, 23789 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted && cat draft/book-01/VOICE.md (Read VOICE.md)
✅ 150 lines, 8390 chars
🔧 Bash: cat 29-birds-go-around-a-field.md 30-twelve-miles-of-flat.md (Read preceding scenes)
✅ 130 lines, 12397 chars
🔧 Bash: cat -n 31-the-pantry-door.md 32-nobodys-going-to-laugh.md 33-a-man-in-a-robe.md (Read scenes under review)
✅ 169 lines, 16399 chars
Now the canon.
🔧 Bash: cd redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose (Read canon chars)
✅ 45 lines, 2240 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/notes/canon && cat world/silent-soil.md && echo ====HEALING==== && cat worl… (Read world canon)
✅ 169 lines, 10040 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/notes/canon && cat characters/ferrin.md (Ferrin canon)
✅ 361 lines, 20826 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/notes/canon && sed -n '1,200p' world/healing.md (healing canon)
✅ 200 lines, 10801 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/notes/canon && grep -n -A30 -i "redacted" world/healing.md; echo ====MAGI… (healing redacted, magic weave)
✅ 33 lines, 2018 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/notes/canon && grep -n -i -A8 "fenholt\|alehouse\|sennet\|burl\|tess" chara… (minor chars Fenholt)
✅ 120 lines, 7198 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/notes/canon && grep -n -i -B3 -A20 "Weave" world/magic.md | head -160 (magic Weave)
✅ 29 lines, 1583 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01 && sed -n '/^## *3/,/^## *4/p' REMAINDER.md (REMAINDER section 3)
✅ 90 lines, 5823 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/notes/canon/characters && sed -n '/^## Established/,/^## /p' peri.md | head… (peri canon)
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01 && tail -60 SCENES.md (SCENES act two binding list)
✅ 142 lines, 8782 chars
✅ 60 lines, 6255 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01 && grep -n -i "binding" SCENES.md | head -20 (find binding list)
✅ 3 lines, 173 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/notes/canon/characters && sed -n '/^## Voice — binding/,/^## /p' edwin.md (edwin voice rules)
✅ 277 lines, 17314 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01 && sed -n '1,100p' SCENES.md (SCENES binding lists)
✅ 100 lines, 6647 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted redacted sentence: unpublished prose (peri direction)
✅ 142 lines, 7824 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/draft/book-01 && grep -n "^| 3[0-4] " SCENES.md; sed -n '100,130p' SCENES.md (scene table rows)
✅ 36 lines, 2660 chars
🔧 Bash: cd redacted/notes/canon && grep -n -i "wystow\|forty miles\|fenholt" world/geography.md… (geography/timeline check)
✅ 42 lines, 2962 chars
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
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redacted sentence: unpublished prose Either say what they are ("the clover, the hay going in, the sheep, the dates of all of it") or drop "eleven".
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
"'Clean,' said Mattie." — Part 1, two flat restatements and no way to choose: clean is one of the six revealings' verdicts and means healthy; she means empty, which is the opposite. Replacement: "'Empty,' said Mattie."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Cut "for the last twenty years."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Replacement: "fifty miles off". redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Replacement: "the fire" in both places.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Either "four more behind them" or cut the number and let the kitchen be too small.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Replacement: "four hundred parish meetings" (and "with", not "to").
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose Replacement: "They had heard the priest say he did not know. Hearing it from a famous man was worse."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Set it in plain roman or as reported speech.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Replacement: "a ring that gets wider at every measurement."
"had not spoken since the ham" — Part 1, reference the reader does not have: Peri is never shown speaking about the ham (Burl is). Replacement: "had not spoken since supper."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Replacement: "where nobody had thought to notice her."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Replacement: "and got an answer: the boy played out that way."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose It was one." — Part 2, the narrator footnoting its own line ("weird and unnecessary line"). Cut "It was one."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Cut; end on "and two people laughed."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Replacement: "Edwin noticed that she hadn't."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Give one: "the lantern glass fogged at the top."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted; his rule is one fact per full stop. Replacement: "I won't walk that field. I won't tell you why. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
"Ferrin's mouth moved." — Part 6, an unnamed manner is not a description. Replacement, and it is his file's rule 5 behaviour: "Ferrin took the lantern in his other hand."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Cut; "Edwin did not push" carries it.
"most of them would walk that field tomorrow for a shilling" — Part 3/4: blessings in this world cost nothing and oblige nothing (ferrin.md, ch. 021); a fee imports an economy the office does not have. Replacement: "most of them would walk that field tomorrow if you asked them."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Say "at five" to Ferrin.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose He's in his shirt." — Part 1, the antecedent does not exist: nothing has put him in a shirt, and it is night, in a lane, with a lantern. And Part 4 / the §3 ruling 3 binding: the line scores off her by taking the Weave's image literally, which is precisely the mocking the ruling forbids, and the narration does not own it as a deflection. Replacement: cut "He's in his shirt" and let Edwin's answer be the reframe he already gives at L37 — "He's the parish priest," said Edwin, and then Peri's "He was in a robe on the twelfth of Seedmonth" still lands as her thinking, not as her defending herself.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Cut one; this is the stronger placement, so cut it in 30.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Replacement: "Peri, who had talked all the way up the stairs, was asleep almost at once."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted." Replacement: "He had slept in a thousand parishes."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Replacement: "the way a taproom goes quiet when the door opens."
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Replacement: "except the wind coming round and taking the street's noise the other way."
"He lay there another hour… At two he gave it up" — Part 1, clock: eleven plus an hour is midnight, and two hours are unaccounted for. redacted sentence: unpublished prose
redacted sentence: unpublished prose Cut; the plain fact of the wasted hour is the beat.
redacted sentence: unpublished prose redacted sentence: unpublished prose
Device a second round would be about, and what it would take. The Weave-image exchange is the one: the scene needs Peri to fix on Ferrin as the man in a robe, and it currently gets there by having Edwin take her figure literally, which makes his correction the joke and her the butt of it — a rephrase will not fix that, because the device is who supplies the objection. Move the objection into her mouth as a thing she argues past — she names the robe, names the date, and answers her own "every parish has one of him" before Edwin can, and files it anyway — so that being wrong is her judgement rather than something Edwin has to talk her out of.