Final Polish & Submission Checklist: Manuscript Readiness Score & Line Edit Pass Tracker

Your draft is done. Now comes the part nobody prepares you for: the last twelve percent. The crutch words you cannot unsee, the character whose eyes changed color in chapter nine, the eighteen agents with eighteen different formatting rules, and the quiet panic of hitting send. This dashboard turns that scattered mess into one honest, measurable readiness score so you know exactly what is polished, what is still soft, and whether this manuscript is truly ready to leave your hands.

• THE TWELVE SECTIONS
• Manuscript Readiness Score: a single weighted score pulled from your passes, fixes, and open flags, so gut feeling stops being the deciding vote
• Line Edit Pass Tracker: log each pass by chapter and purpose, so you never sand the same paragraph four times while chapter twenty-two stays untouched
• Repeated Words & Crutch Phrases: build your personal offender list, just, really, suddenly, began to, and track how many you have cleared per pass
• Continuity Error Log: catch the shifting eye color, the wrong day of the week, the sister who was an only child, each with chapter, severity, and fix status
• Formatting Compliance Checklist: font, spacing, indents, headers, scene breaks, chapter starts, checked off before anything goes out