How critiq works
critiq evaluates short stories with the same rubric a professional literary critic would use. You provide your text and get a grade out of 10 and actionable feedback in seconds.
The process, step by step
1. You provide your story
Upload a file (PDF, DOCX, DOC or TXT, up to 100 pages) or paste the link to a Substack article or a public Google Docs document.
2. We extract the text
The server extracts the plain text from the file or page. Your story is not stored: it is used only for that evaluation.
3. The AI evaluates it
The AI scores the 10 rubric categories and writes the feedback, backed by evidence from the text.
4. You get a grade and feedback
You receive the weighted grade out of 10, the per-category breakdown, the story's strengths, actionable improvements and a final summary.
What we evaluate
The final grade is a weighted average of 10 categories (each one weighs differently):
How the grade is calculated
Each category is scored from 0 to 10. The final grade is the weighted average using the weights above, not a simple average. critiq is slightly lenient: when in doubt between two scores, it picks the higher one.
What the evaluation is based on
The rubric isn't arbitrary: it rests on an extensive knowledge base built from reputable sources on the craft of storytelling. It distils the recurring principles found in creative-writing manuals, works of literary theory and narratology, the editorial criteria of magazines and publishing houses, and the guidelines that contest juries and workshops use to assess short fiction. From close readings of reference works —both classic and contemporary— we identified the traits that set a strong story apart and organised them into the 10 categories above. The aim is for each score to reflect a broad consensus about what works in short fiction, rather than the opinion of a single school or a single author.