Vol. I · No. 1 · MMXXVI
NextChapterBench A Benchmark of Literary Continuation
13 models · 10 items · 3 judges

The Standings → Fable 5.1 (xhigh)

Live run data

Anthropic

Fable 5.1 (xhigh)

xhigh reasoning effort · via Claude CLI · judged by Fable 5 and Gemini 3.7 Flash and GPT-5.6 Sol · the setting shown on the standings; also run at high0.77 low0.76 medium0.75

Results from run ‘first’: ten items, 30 verdicts.

Headline 0.817 compliance × craft
Compliance 0.993 of 1.0
Craft 0.822 of 1.0

The record: 10 items · 30 verdicts · 0 errors · 2,588 words on average · est. generation cost $15.15

Read the chapters in full

§ I

Craft by Dimension

Six dimensions, each marked 1–5, averaged over ten items and all judges.

Mean craft mark by dimension · 30 verdicts, run ‘first’

Voice
4.43
Prose
4.27
Character
4.13
Scene
4.30
Integration
4.63
Momentum
3.97
12345
craft mark, 1–5; bars begin at the scale’s floor of 1

Integration is the strongest dimension (4.63); momentum the weakest (3.97). Hover or focus a bar for the per-judge means.


§ II

The Three Judges, per Item

Each item receives one verdict from each judge; the spread of the dots is the disagreement.

Headline score per item, by judge · run ‘first’

Fable 5 Gemini 3.7 Flash GPT-5.6 Sol
Dracula
The War of the Worlds
Leave It to Psmith
Persuasion
The Secret Garden
The Moonstone
The Awakening
The Sun Also Rises
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Red Harvest
00.250.500.751.00
headline = compliance × craft, 0–1, one verdict per judge
The same ten items in figures, with word counts.
Item Headline Fable 5 Gemini 3.7 Flash GPT-5.6 Sol Words
Dracula item 015 · after ch. 5 · Bram Stoker 0.880.881.000.752,558
The War of the Worlds item 006 · after ch. 1 · H. G. Wells 0.860.830.920.833,005
Leave It to Psmith item 022 · after ch. 3 · P. G. Wodehouse 0.850.830.960.752,930
Persuasion item 001 · after ch. 1 · Jane Austen 0.820.750.960.752,918
The Secret Garden item 013 · after ch. 2 · Frances Hodgson Burnett 0.820.750.880.832,330
The Moonstone item 011 · after ch. 8 · Wilkie Collins 0.810.750.830.832,849
The Awakening item 016 · after ch. 7 · Kate Chopin 0.810.750.920.751,865
The Sun Also Rises item 021 · after ch. 3 · Ernest Hemingway 0.810.750.880.792,071
The Mysterious Affair at Styles item 017 · after ch. 3 · Agatha Christie 0.760.750.790.752,561
Red Harvest item 023 · after ch. 2 · Dashiell Hammett 0.760.750.790.752,790

  The widest judge split in the run: Gemini 3.7 Flash 1.00 against GPT-5.6 Sol 0.75 on Dracula (item 015).


§ III

Length Against the Brief

Words written per item, against each brief’s maximum.

Word count per item vs. brief maximum · run ‘first’

words written brief maximum
Dracula
2,558
The War of the Worlds
3,005
Leave It to Psmith
2,930
Persuasion
2,918
The Secret Garden
2,330
The Moonstone
2,849
The Awakening
1,865
The Sun Also Rises
2,071
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
2,561
Red Harvest
2,790
08001,6002,4003,200
words; the ink tick marks each brief’s maximum

Four of ten items landed inside their brief’s word range. The War of the Worlds and Leave It to Psmith and Persuasion and The Moonstone and The Awakening and Red Harvest ran over by 405 and 130 and 318 and 49 and 65 and 190 words respectively.


§ IV

Worst Flaws, as Recorded

Each verdict names the chapter’s single worst flaw, with evidence. Quoted verbatim from run ‘first’.

The most damaging flaw is that the brief's machinery occasionally shows through the surface — most visibly in Poirot announcing "I have one question to ask you, and one only," which telegraphs the required beat instead of letting it arise naturally, and in the two-hour search being compressed into a paragraph of summary between the chapter's two strong scenes.

on The Mysterious Affair at Styles, item 017 · Fable 5

The chapter's first half is spent re-narrating events the reader already has from the source chapter — the three proposals and the camp-fire dinner retold from extra angles in Seward's and Lucy's documents — which delays the chapter's genuinely new material (the Bistritz letter, Renfield's question) and slackens its early momentum.

on Dracula, item 015 · Fable 5

The chapter occasionally slips from Hemingway's flat understatement into self-conscious epigram ("Everywhere else people were awake because they could not sleep," "Everybody is something"), and the mandated plain sentence about Biarritz over-explains a jealousy the dialogue had already made perfectly legible.

on The Sun Also Rises, item 021 · Fable 5

The crowd-gathering middle stretch turns into a leisurely catalogue (the beer barrel, the constable, the trap, the disappointed sightseers) that pads the chapter well past its budget and lets the tension built by the cylinder's unnatural regularity go slack before the burning revives it.

on The War of the Worlds, item 006 · Fable 5

§ V

The Mechanical Docket

Automated screening results across the ten outputs.