The 7-Level Diagnostic for Publication-Ready Scenes

You know your writing isn't working. You just can't figure out why.

Score Your Scene is a free diagnostic workbook from Story Grid that walks you through the 7 levels every publication-ready scene must pass. By the end, you'll know exactly where YOUR scene first breaks, and where to begin revising.

Apply the diagnostic to a scene from your own work-in-progress
Identify the first level where your scene breaks
Get specific revision instructions for that exact level

Download the Workbook

Inside the Workbook

A complete, self-scoring diagnostic you can apply to a scene of your own in under an hour.

Walkthrough, scorecard, pinpoint diagnosis, and revision instructions, calibrated to the layer your scene actually needs.

What's Inside

The 7 levels every scene must pass

Score Your Scene walks you through the 7 levels of a publication-ready scene, in the order they must be applied. Each level depends on the one before it. When a level fails, the levels above it cannot be evaluated meaningfully. This is the diagnostic that tells you where your work begins.

Five Commandment Structure

The minimum conditions for a scene to exist as a functional unit of narrative.

Scene Type

Is the scene the type it is trying to be?

Emotional Criticality

Does the scene carry genuine emotional weight?

POV Lock and Camera Position

Is the Point of View held line by line?

Voice Coherence

POV, Frame, Mode, and Tense in alignment.

Reader Compulsion

Does the scene compel the reader to keep reading?

The Truth Test

The standard built into every prior level. Earned through the work, never imposed at the end.

By the end of the workbook, you'll have applied each level to a scene of your own.

Why This Diagnostic Works

Stop trying to fix everything at once.

Most writing advice tells you to make your scenes "better." It does not tell you where to look. The 7-level pathway gives you a sequential, gated diagnostic. Each level tests one specific layer of your scene. Pass it, advance. Fail it, that is where your revision begins.

You revise the layer that is actually broken. The rest of the work follows from there.

Built by Story Grid

The diagnostic Story Grid uses with fiction writers from first draft to publication.

Story Grid is the writing education company founded by Shawn Coyne, longtime book editor and author of The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know.

The 7-level pathway distills decades of work analyzing what makes masterwork scenes work. It is the same diagnostic Story Grid uses with writers at every level, from first scene to finished manuscript.