# Substance-first writing review skill for clear, respectful, non-AI prose > Source: > Published: 2026-05-30 17:38:12+00:00 | 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` , or`XX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` or`they 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.