| name | substance-writing-review |
|---|---|
| description | Use when reviewing, rewriting, or quality-checking essays, articles, scripts, posts, or long-form drafts for substance-first writing in the spirit of On Writing Well: clear ideas, concrete evidence, reader respect, no AI tone, no mystification, and no empty rhetorical packaging. |
Use this skill to check or revise writing so the piece earns attention through content, not packaging. The writing should persuade through substance: concrete evidence, real scenes, clear judgments, disruptive ideas that genuinely exist in the source, precise insights, and reasoning the reader can follow. The reader does not owe us attention; every section must make the next section worth reading.
Clarity before polish- Each section should answer: what is being said, why it matters, and where the judgment comes from.
-
Delete lines that create mood or cleverness without increasing understanding.
Substance drives the piece- Substance includes facts, scenes, people, choices, consequences, disruptive ideas, and clearly stated insights.
-
Do not force disruption for its own sake. If the source contains a surprising or frame-shifting idea, let it surface naturally and explain why it is true.
-
Replace unsupported abstractions with the path that produced the claim: evidence, example, comparison, reasoning, or implication.
Open directly- State the core problem and core judgment early.
-
Do not stall with floating aphorisms, repeated hooks, or empty atmosphere.
No invented inner life- Do not add thoughts, feelings, or motives the speaker did not express.
-
Natural first-person reasoning is fine when it follows the source.
Structure helps comprehension- Use sections and frameworks only when they clarify the content.
- Avoid invented labels such as
XX法则
,XX障碍
,XX困境
,XX之墙
, orXX模型
unless the source itself uses them.
Respect the reader- Do not talk down to the reader or shame them.
-
When discussing a gap in cognition or action, use empathy and admit the speaker can share the same problem.
Critique mechanisms, not people- When a draft describes someone missing advice or failing to act, avoid landing the sentence on
they do not understand
orthey cannot receive it
. - Move the critique up one level: the advice gets thrown away, this kind of advice is easy to miss, the evaluation standard fails, the structure makes the advice hard to process.
-
This keeps the authorial stance broad and fair rather than invested in being right about a specific person.
-
When a draft describes someone missing advice or failing to act, avoid landing the sentence on
Avoid AI tone- Avoid hard template turns such as
不是……而是……
. - Avoid excessive parallelism, list padding, and rhetorical over-ordering.
- Avoid hard template turns such as
No mystification- Do not use importance as fog. Use concrete stakes and time horizons.
-
Avoid inflated or mystical phrasing when a plain consequence would be clearer.
Keep the source of judgment visible
- Preserve stories and the reasoning path.
- For every major claim, ask whether the draft shows why the author thinks this.
When reviewing, lead with the highest-impact issues and quote only short excerpts. When rewriting, keep the author's substance and voice while making the draft clearer, more concrete, and more respectful.