Style Drift Detector v2.1

Compare new or revised prose against this novel's own Style DNA and established representative passages — not against a generic genre standard. Prose that is unusual is not drifting if the novel has always been unusual.

Dimensions

Check drift in:

diction and register, sentence rhythm and length, tense, narrative distance, POV handling, dialogue ratio, description density, imagery and metaphor density and sourcing, humour, emotional explicitness, and formatting.

Intentional versus accidental

This is the whole judgement. Before flagging, ask whether the departure is:

• Intentional evolution — the story has moved somewhere, and the style moved with it. Chapter twelve can be terser than chapter three if something has changed.
• Accidental drift — a single scene written in a different register, most often because it was drafted in isolation or by a different pass.

Evidence for intention: sustained change across a span, correlated with a narrative development, and consistent in later chapters. Evidence for accident: isolated to one scene, uncorrelated with anything in the story, and reverting immediately afterwards.

Record