Try this quick test on your own story. Pick one scene where a character asks about something she shouldn’t know yet. Now see if your AI notices. It takes about five minutes, and it might save you from a plot hole that three rounds of rereading never caught.
A Reddit user in r/PromptEngineering did exactly that, and the result is a neat trick for any writer. You don’t need special software or a paid plan to copy it. You need a few short notes and one suspicious scene.
🕵️ The Setup
The scene: Nora puts a blue tin on the table and asks, “Why didn’t you tell me you visited Mara in 2007?”
The catch is that Eli really did visit Mara in 2007. That’s true in the author’s notes. But Nora hasn’t found that out yet. All she knows is that Eli somehow knew where a key was hidden, even though he said he’d never been inside the house.
So the line is correct for the author and wrong for the character. That’s the kind of slip that sneaks past you on your fifth read. You know the whole timeline, so your brain quietly fills in the gaps. Nora’s brain can’t, because she only has what she has seen on the page so far.
Think of it as a leak between the writer’s head and the character’s head. Mystery writers, fantasy writers and anyone juggling a big cast get hit by this a lot. The more twists you plan, the easier it is for a secret to slip out one scene too early.
🧪 Step by Step
- Write short notes on your story. The original used five: story, characters, timeline, intentional clues, and undecided ideas. A few lines each is plenty. Bullet points are fine, and you don’t need pretty prose.
- Keep “what actually happened” separate from “what each character knows.” This is the whole secret. For every major character, write a small list of facts they have learned and, just as important, facts they haven’t learned yet.
- Tell the AI to read the notes before it touches the scene. Otherwise it will judge the line on its own and tell you it sounds great, because on its own it does.
- Paste the line and ask if it works from that character’s point of view. Be specific. Name the character and the moment in the story, for example “Nora, right after she finds the tin.”
- Set limits: a short explanation, one alternative line, no changes to your notes, under 120 words. Limits keep the answer tight and stop the AI from rewriting your whole story while you weren’t looking.
No notes tool? Attach the notes file to the chat and open with “Read the attached story notes before helping with this scene.” A plain text file or a pasted block works just as well. If your story is huge, don’t paste everything. Start with the timeline and the “who knows what” list, since those two do most of the work.
🔍 What the Results Mean
In the run shown, ChatGPT flagged the problem and offered this instead: “You said you’d never been inside. How did you know where the key was?”
See what happened there? Nora stays suspicious, and she doesn’t get information she hasn’t earned. The new line also does something extra. It pushes the scene forward with a question Eli now has to answer, instead of handing the reader a fact for free. If your AI gives you something like that, your notes are doing their job.
If it misses the problem, your notes probably don’t say clearly who knows what. Fix that first, not the prompt. Reread your “what each character knows” list and ask whether a stranger could tell, from the notes alone, that Nora is in the dark about 2007. If a stranger couldn’t, neither can the AI.
There’s also a middle result. The AI might flag the line but suggest a fix that still gives away too much. That means your notes are mostly right, but one clue is described too loosely. Tighten that one entry and run the test again.
💡 Extra Tips
- Just logging a fact (“Eli visited Mara in 2007”) isn’t enough. The notes need to say why Nora can’t mention it yet. Something like “Nora learns about the visit in chapter 12, from Mara’s letter” gives the AI a clear line it can’t cross.
- Keep “undecided ideas” in their own note so the AI doesn’t treat your maybes as canon. Otherwise a half-baked twist from last Tuesday can show up as established fact in tomorrow’s feedback.
- Don’t trust it blindly. The author says it plainly: this is one example, not a guarantee. Check the suggested line yourself, and read it out loud to see if it sounds like your character.
- Another commenter said Claude caught a similar slip, a character referencing a future event, even after the writer forgot about a timeline shift. So it’s worth trying on more than one model. If two models flag the same line, take that seriously.
- Run the test on your most twisty scenes first: reveals, confrontations, and any argument where someone says “I knew it all along.”
- Update the notes whenever you change the plot. Old notes are worse than no notes, because the AI will confidently defend a timeline you abandoned.
Prompt of the day: “Read my notes first. Which lines in this scene reveal something this character hasn’t learned yet? Quote each one and suggest a fix. Don’t change my notes.”
🚀 Your Turn
Grab one scene, run the test, and see what your AI catches. Pick the scene you’re most proud of, because that’s usually where the sneakiest leak is hiding. Then tell me if it found a leak you missed! ⚓
I asked ChatGPT to check a scene against my story notes. It caught a character knowing a secret she hadn’t discovered yet.
by u/tehmadnezz in PromptEngineering