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The Storgy Toolkit · Free

Story Rater — an honest score for your fiction

Paste any short story, or a chapter of your novel, and get an honest rating with sub-scores for prose, character, plot, originality, emotion, and dialogue — plus what's working and what to fix. Calibrated for amateur work, not the canon.

Rating a poem instead? Use the Poem Rater.

6
Sub-scores
~12s
Avg time
1 run
Free to try

0 / 30,000

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What a rating looks like

A complete sample, typeset in full

Public-domain archive

The Kitchen

A working draft, rated honestly

The kitchen was exactly how she remembered it, which was somehow the worst part. June set her bag down on the chair that had always been hers. "You came," her aunt said, not turning from the stove. …Excerpted — the same sample draft the Story Checker examines, read here for score.
Overall
7 / 10A quiet, controlled reunion scene that trusts its objects — held back by a familiar premise and one over-explained beat.
Sub-scores
Emotion8Dialogue8Character8Prose7Originality6Plot6
What's working
The dialogue does real characterizing work in nine words, and the two waiting cups are the kind of concrete detail that earns emotion instead of announcing it. The close-third POV never slips.
What to improve
The estranged-relative-returns premise is well-worn, and the excerpt tells us the cups' meaning ("certainty was a kind of love") right after showing it — pick one. Plot will need a complication soon; nothing here is at stake yet.
Verdict
Strong instincts, light on event: keep the restraint, cut the explanation, and give June a harder choice before page two.

A representative rating. Scores are calibrated for amateur and working drafts — the canon isn't the yardstick. Paste your story above for the same treatment.

How we score

01

Prose

Sentence craft, voice, and clarity. We reward writing that controls rhythm and word choice over flat, functional reporting — and we mark down purple excess just as fast.

02

Character

Depth, distinct voices, and motivation. Characters who want something specific and act on it score higher than names that exist only to move the plot.

03

Plot

Structure, pacing, and tension. We look for scenes that turn, stakes that build, and a shape the reader can feel — not a flat sequence of events.

04

Originality

Freshness of premise and execution. A familiar setup told a new way still wins; a stock idea handled in the obvious way loses points.

05

Emotion

Whether the stakes land. Earned feeling beats stated feeling — grief shown through a small detail beats a character announcing they are sad.

06

Dialogue

Whether people sound natural, distinct, and purposeful. Lines that reveal character or move the scene score higher than on-the-nose exposition.

Calibration

We calibrate for amateur fiction, not the canon. Average reasonable amateur work scores 5.5–7. Strong amateur work 7–8. Real craftsmanship 8.5+. Anything above 9 is rare. Chekhov and Morrison aren't on this scale — your draft is.

Writer questions

Frequently asked

Is my story good?

Paste it and find out. The rater returns an honest score with six sub-scores — prose, character, plot, originality, emotion, and dialogue — calibrated for everyday fiction rather than the literary canon. Average amateur work lands around 5.5–7; strong work reaches 7–8. You also get a plain-language note on what's working and what to push further.

Can AI critique my story?

Yes — that's exactly what this does. It reads your prose against its own apparent intent and genre, then returns a structured critique: an overall score, six sub-scores, the moments that land, and the ones to revise. Treat it as a fast, honest first reader, not a final verdict — then trust your own judgment.

Can I rate a chapter from my novel?

Yes — paste one chapter at a time. The tool takes up to 30,000 characters, roughly 5,000 words, so a full chapter usually fits in one run. Each chapter gets its own score and permalink, which also makes it easy to compare where the manuscript is strongest.

I've written a whole novel. What do I paste?

One chapter at a time, starting with the opening. Each chapter gets its own score and its own link, so after three or four you can see where the manuscript is strongest and where it sags. If you want the whole book read in one sitting — every chapter, then one editorial letter about the manuscript as a whole — that's Rate My Book, which costs 12 to 75 credits by length.

Is the first chapter enough to rate a novel?

Enough to rate the opening, which is the part most readers judge you on. A first chapter tells you whether the prose, the voice and the first promise of a story are working. It can't tell you whether the middle holds or the ending pays off — for that you need the later chapters here one by one, or the full-manuscript read.

What does the score mean for a manuscript I'm about to send out?

Read it as a first reader's verdict on the pages you pasted, not as a prediction. The scale is calibrated for working drafts: 5.5–7 is typical amateur fiction, 7–8 is strong. If the opening chapter lands below 6, the note under the score will say why, and that's the revision to make before the manuscript goes anywhere. Above 7, the question moves to whether the rest of the book keeps the promise — which one chapter can't answer.

How do you score?

Six sub-scores: prose, character, plot, originality, emotion, and dialogue, plus an overall that leans toward the weaker axes. Average reasonable amateur fiction scores 5.5–7. Strong amateur work 7–8. Real craftsmanship 8.5+. Calibrated against everyday writing, not Chekhov or Morrison.

Is it really free?

Yes, to try — one free run with no signup, shared across all Storgy AI tools. Signing up for a free account adds one more and keeps your ratings together in one place. The free runs are one-time, not daily. After that, plans start at $9/month for 100 credits (most runs cost 1 credit).

Is my story private?

Each rating lives at a permalink with an unguessable short id — it isn't indexed by search engines, but anyone with the link can open it, so it isn't fully private. Don't paste anything sensitive or unpublished you need kept secret. For low-stakes drafts and workshop sharing, the link works well.

Can I ask why it scored the way it did?

Yes — the conversation sits under the result, with the reader who wrote it, on runs made while you were signed in. Ask why plot or dialogue landed where it did. Push back — tell it the slow middle is deliberate and see what comes back. It's given your story and the notes on the page to work from, and it's instructed never to re-score and never to draft prose for you. Each message costs 1 credit. The recorded score and its link don't change.

Whole manuscript rather than one chapter? Rate My Book reads every chapter — 12 to 75 credits by length.

Don't have a story yet? Start from a curated prompt — three hundred story engines, free →

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Keep going with the toolkit

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Looking for anovel checker → Story Checkerbook analyzer → Story Analyzerwhole-manuscript report → Rate My Book