Guides · Revision
How to detect broken world rules.
By Daniel Bentes · Published 28 July 2026
The short answer: write each rule down as a sentence with a cost and a limit, then search for every scene where the rule should apply — not every scene that mentions it. Rule violations are invisible in a linear read because you are looking for the absence of a constraint. They rarely break in one place either; they erode, paid in full early and waived later when the plot is in a hurry.
Definition
A world rule is a promise about how things work.
A world rule is a general statement your book makes about how its reality operates — what magic costs, what a technology can and cannot do, who the law protects, how far news travels in a day. It is different from a fact. "Mira is a courier" is a fact about one person. "Couriers cannot enter the inner harbour" is a rule that binds every scene with a courier and a harbour in it.
That difference is why rule violations are their own class. A contradicted fact is wrong in one place. A broken rule is wrong everywhere the rule should have applied and silently did not — and readers feel it as the story losing its stakes rather than as an error they can point to.
The method
Write the rule down, then hunt the exceptions.
1. Extract the rules you have actually made
Most rules are not in your notes. They are implied by scenes — a character pays a price for something, a door does not open, a message takes three days. Read for statements about how the world behaves and write each one as a sentence with a subject and a constraint. If you cannot write it as a sentence, you have not made a rule yet, and every scene is free to invent one.
2. Give each rule a cost and a limit
A rule with no cost is not a rule, it is a capability, and capabilities inflate. Write down what the thing costs, what it cannot do, and who is exempt. The exemptions are the important part: a rule with an undocumented exemption is how the plot escapes and takes the tension with it.
3. Search for every scene the rule touches
Take one rule and find every scene where it should apply — not where it is mentioned. This is the step that finds violations, and it is why "read the book again" does not work: you are looking for the absence of a constraint, and absences are invisible in a linear read.
4. Check the escalation curve
Rules rarely break in one place. They erode: the cost is paid in full in chapter three, paid partly in chapter nineteen, and waived in chapter thirty-one when the plot is in a hurry. Lay every instance in reading order and look at the trend rather than the individual scenes.
Worked example
The rule that quietly stopped costing anything.
Chapter three
Bloodglass took a memory for every hour it bought. He gave up the name of his mother's village and did not get it back.
Chapter thirty-one
He broke the vial, bought the night, and was still himself in the morning.
No fact is contradicted. Nobody's eye colour changed. What changed is that the substance stopped costing anything at the moment the plot could not afford the price — and the book's stakes went with it. A search for scenes mentioning bloodglass finds both passages and flags nothing; only a search for scenes where the rule should apply puts them side by side.
Limits
What a rule audit cannot settle.
- Whether an exception is earned. Rules should sometimes break — that is a climax. The audit tells you a rule was broken; only you can say whether the book paid for it.
- Rules you never made. It can only check against what is written down. An implicit rule you have been honouring by instinct is invisible until you state it.
- Whether the rule is any good. A consistent magic system can still be boring. Consistency is a floor.
- Genre expectations. Some rules come from the genre rather than your text, and readers hold you to them anyway.
Related: the continuity checklist, continuity across a book series (rules bind later volumes hardest), and how to create a story bible.
Loreon · The Writing Studio
Or let the software read it.
Everything above works with a spreadsheet and patience. Loreon does the same reading against a structured story bible and hands you the findings, with the passages cited.