What is Chapter Critique?

Chapter Critique gives you instant feedback on a chapter of your story. It gives you a unified overview of your chapter, as well as actionable improvements and issues identified with exact locations in your text.

Your critique will contain a beat-level outline of your narrative, with ways to improve point-of-view and characterization. It will also detect possible issues with chapter structure, dialogue, and writing style.

How to access Chapter Critique

You can access Chapter Critique in our Web Editor, Desktop Everywhere integrations and browser extensions.

Click the “Critique” button in your integration. Then click the “Chapter Critique” button. To find out more, please read our guide on how to use Chapter Critique.

When you run Chapter Critique, a report will generate in a new window. We have shown an example of the report in the image below.

What type of feedback does Chapter Critique provide?

Chapter Critique gives you specific feedback on key points of a chapter in your story:

• Overview - an overall review of your chapter including a summary, narrative function, POV, character roles, and word count
• Core Strength - one overarching thematic strength of your chapter that applies across its narrative
• Chapter Outline - an outline of the narrative beats in your chapter, focusing on POV and description within each beat
• Tension & Pacing - includes pacing rhythm, emotional spikes, turning points and commentary on momentum
• Protagonist's Arc - analysis of the motivations and changes for the main character in the chapter
• Narrative Structure - looks for 2 types of narrative issues with exact text locations
• Pacing and Flow - looks for 6 types of pacing issues with exact text locations
• Language and Style - looks for 17 types of prose issues with exact text locations
• Characters - looks for 4 types of character issues with exact text locations
• Dialogue - looks for 5 types of dialogue issues with exact text locations.

Chapter Critique is specific to the writing in your chapter when you run it. Each time you run Chapter Critique after editing, your report may spot different issues.

If you want to see your previous Chapter Critiques, you can access these in your “Feedback History.” To access your Feedback History, click on the “Critique” button, then click on “Feedback History.”

Can I run Chapter Critique on my whole manuscript?

No, Chapter Critique is designed to work on a single chapter.

We recommend running Chapter Critique on at least 500 words to ensure you get a meaningful amount of feedback. You can use Chapter Critique on up to 6,000 words each time you run the report.

Running the report on shorter pieces gives you in-depth analysis of sections of your writing without getting overwhelmed with improvement suggestions.

If you write short stories of 6,000 words or less, this means you can get an analysis of your entire piece in one report.

What is the difference between Chapter Critique and Manuscript Analysis?

Both Chapter Critique and Manuscript Analysis offer on-demand feedback for writers.

Chapter Critique is ideal for individual chapters or shorter pieces of text. It gives you instant feedback on plot, pacing, characters, descriptions, dialogue, and more on up to 6,000 words.

Manuscript Analysis is designed to run on larger pieces of text, like novels. It can be used on up to 300,000 words with a recommended minimum word count of 6,000 words for best results.

Read our comparison of Chapter Critique, Manuscript Analysis, and Virtual Beta Reader.

ProWritingAid is made by writers, for writers. That’s why we work wherever you do and follow industry-standard best practices to ensure your data is always protected.