Start with the book’s voice
- Set voice and facts. Identify point of view, character diction, chosen rhetoric and pauses, then fixed names, objects, choices, order, and unrevealed information.
- Judge actual lines. Locate the passage and say what harms the reading. A detector cannot prove deliberate parallelism, thought, or omniscient commentary is wrong.
- Delete-test. Would cutting lose information, emotional continuity, point of view, or voice? Cut only when these survive; otherwise preserve the function and repair the actual fault.
- Bound the scope. Address generic phrasing, then diction inconsistent with this book, then rhythm and character differences. Work only on selected problems.
- Compare and read aloud. Check facts, knowledge, and action outcomes, then authorial voice and overcompression.
| Line | Decision |
|---|---|
| “A nameless sorrow rose inside her”: possibly vague | Cut when existing detail communicates it and the statement adds nothing; keep a functional judgment or deliberate voice |
| “He did not know the call would change his life”: possibly unsupported preview | Repair a limited-viewpoint violation; purposeful omniscient or retrospective narration is not automatically wrong |
| “That night she understood the price of growing up”: possibly repeated moral | Test whether it restates the scene; deliberate narrator commentary need not become an exit gesture |
| “I hid it because I worried about you”: possibly excessive explanation | An honest confession may say this directly; evasion fits only if established. Do not silently change honesty |
| Three matching clauses: possibly mechanical | Check information and rhythm; merge restatement but preserve progression, refrain, or comic chorus |
A generic 'make this sound human' prompt vs a checked revision pass
A one-line "make this sound human" prompt leaves four decisions to the model. Oh Story's story-deslop skill writes each one down as a rule:
| Decision | story-deslop's rule |
|---|---|
| Scope | Change a word before a sentence, cut a sentence before rewriting a paragraph |
| What stays | Names, places, numbers, proper nouns and plot functions |
| How much to cut | A deletion cap per severity level; whole paragraphs stay |
| When to stop | Two rounds with no new change in a paragraph; at most three full rescans |
Delete-first: test narrative function
For each flagged line, ask what readers lose if it goes:
- A clue, hook, necessary information, or causal anchor
- A trait, memory, judgment, or emotional connection
- Event order, plot movement, or a necessary turn
- Deliberate voice, rhythm, point of view, or rhetoric
Delete only when these survive. Keep any function and reword only where needed. Flag uncertain issues for the author outside the manuscript.
A connecting thought explaining a pause can be necessary understanding; it need not become an object or gesture. Retain a new prop’s history when the scene needs it, and compress history only when it repeats known facts. Concrete prose does not authorize inventing objects, procedures, or actions absent from the source.
Three passes set order, not a uniform voice
story-deslop selects problems from the requested scope or scan grade. The three passes order that work; they do not start another whole-manuscript rewrite.
| Order | Check and tradeoff |
|---|---|
| Remove generic phrasing | Stock wording, vague conclusions, piled modifiers, and unneeded explanation; cut only what is dispensable and reword from existing material |
| Reconsider bookish diction | Office jargon, abstraction, or terms inconsistent with this voice; historical formality, professional dialogue, and deliberately formal notices can function |
| Restore natural rhythm | Indistinct voices, mechanical openings, uniform length; follow action, thought, and emotion without detail or gesture quotas |
Oh Story’s style resolution lets the current request and book-specific voice override general reference defaults by expression dimension. Identify actual repetition, confusion, or rhythm damage before cutting a long sentence, parallel structure, or direct thought. A mismatch with a default sentence length is insufficient.
Light, medium, and heavy grades select default problem categories. A narrower author request controls the scope. A grade is not a judgment of literary quality, market value, or a detector score, and each pass need not produce another round of edits.
How much to cut when humanizing AI prose
Over-deleting creates a new machine voice: clipped sentences, no connectors, a scene that reads like an outline. Oh Story puts three brakes on cutting.
- Deletion cap. Oh Story's defaults cap deletion at 15% of the original for light problems, 25% for medium and 35% for heavy. Past the cap, the work is split and flagged; whole paragraphs always stay.
- Word-count floor. If a cut would go below the lower bound of the requested length range, rewrite within that range instead.
- Convergence. A paragraph stops after two rounds with no new change. The text gets at most three rescans; ten or more changes in round three get flagged for a human read.
Then read it through. If it reads like an outline, restore connecting words in setup and transition sentences; peak beats stay short and the cut clichés stay cut.
Before and after: revising an AI-sounding scene
An original passage written for this page. Facts that must survive: the ferry horn, the dismantled radio, the ticket pushed toward Lin Zhou's hand, his pulled-back hand, Chen Yu's wait, his decision to stay and his unspoken reason.
Before: The last ferry sounded its horn. Lin Zhou looked at the dismantled radio on the table as a surge of complicated, indescribable emotions rose inside him. Chen Yu pushed the ticket toward his hand and reminded him there was still time to leave. The paper touched his hand; he drew back and held down the loose casing. Chen Yu waited for his answer. He knew he stood at a crossroads in life. This was more than a repair; it was a stand for his deepest convictions. In the end he chose to stay and told Chen Yu to go first.
After: The last ferry sounded its horn. Chen Yu pushed the ticket toward Lin Zhou's hand. "There's still time if you go now." He didn't take it; his eyes stayed on the dismantled radio. The paper brushed his hand, and he drew back to hold down the loose casing. Chen Yu waited for him to speak. He gave no reason for staying. "You go first."
- Delete test: "Complicated, indescribable emotions" adds nothing; the hand movement already carries the hesitation. "Crossroads in life" and "deepest convictions" inflate a motive the scene never sets up. Both go at this step, before any polishing.
- Dialogue for report: the reported warning becomes Chen Yu's own line, and "told Chen Yu to go first" becomes his spoken "You go first."
- Fact boundary: every fact listed above survives.
Test the brakes too. Cut further to "Chen Yu offered the ticket. Lin Zhou didn't take it. 'You go first.'" and the paper, the pulled-back hand and her wait are gone: that is over-deletion. A different mistake, "Chen Yu pressed the ticket into his palm", reads smoothly but changes the action; the ticket stays beside his hand and he never takes it.
AI detector reports: turn them into edit notes
story-deslop measures success by how the prose reads. Paste a detector report and it turns the sentence, paragraph and word-choice problems that map onto the text into specific edits; its report lists those edits with before/after comparisons.
Forcing a line break after every sentence, planting typos or turning inner thought into dialogue to shift a score leaves a new template in the prose. Oh Story counts these as fake naturalness left by a second rewrite and revises them out.
Common mistakes when humanizing AI writing
- Synonym swapping. "As if" becomes "as though". Fix: go back to what the character can touch right now: a document, an action, a line of dialogue, a real consequence.
- A gesture for every feeling. "She was angry" becomes "she twisted the hem of her shirt". Fix: if context supports the feeling, the plain statement can stand; cut the added gesture without swapping in another. Keep physical detail that carries sensation, viewpoint, rhythm, or an action consequence, such as a burned finger that cannot work a coat button; plot consequence is not its only function.
- Changing the plot while polishing. A new flashback, a secret vow. Fix: events, setting, relationships and timeline stay put; event changes belong in a chapter revision.
- Treating deliberate style as a flaw. Fix: the book's style sheet overrides the defaults, and a line you mean to keep can go verbatim into the book folder's
.deslop-whitelist. See keep your writing voice.
An AI prose revision skill for Claude Code and Codex
Oh Story's story-deslop packages this workflow as a skill for coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex; setup is in writing a novel with Claude Code or Codex. Five steps:
- Scan. Flag AI-sounding spots and grade the text light, medium or heavy; for manuscript files a bundled pattern checker runs first and only reports.
- Grade. The level sets the scope unless you name one.
- Clear. The delete-first test on each spot, then revision in pass order.
- Final rescan (file mode). The pattern check runs again, plus a degeneration check and punctuation cleanup; looping or a truncated ending goes back to drafting.
- Report. Character counts before and after, change counts and paragraph comparisons. File mode edits the files and returns a sample of at most 200 characters; a pasted fragment comes back in full.
FAQ
How many revision passes does AI prose need?
Do not require a fixed number of edits. The three passes order generic phrasing, diction, and natural rhythm within the requested or graded scope. Skip steps without relevant problems. The skill stops a paragraph after two unchanged rounds, permits at most three full rescans, and flags substantial remaining changes for author review.
How much text should you cut when humanizing AI writing?
Oh Story's default caps are 15% of the original for light problems, 25% for medium and 35% for heavy, with no whole paragraphs removed. If cutting drops below your length target, rewrite instead.
Do it with the skill
Paste a passage and send /story-deslop with "detection only, don't edit" to get the findings table and severity grade first. Then ask for the revision at that grade or a narrower scope (say, only the moralizing endings), listing the names, objects and unrevealed information it must keep.
More of the method: Generic phrasing, bookish diction, and natural rhythm · Current operation and review contract (2026-10-15) · Current operation and review contract (2026-10-15)