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

The Standings → Claude Opus 5

Live run data

Anthropic

Claude Opus 5

high 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 medium0.77

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

Headline 0.776 compliance × craft
Compliance 0.970 of 1.0
Craft 0.799 of 1.0

The record: 10 items · 30 verdicts · 0 errors · 2,430 words on average · est. generation cost $2.02

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
4.33
Prose
4.23
Character
4.03
Scene
4.23
Integration
4.33
Momentum
4.00
12345
craft mark, 1–5; bars begin at the scale’s floor of 1

Voice is the strongest dimension (4.33); momentum the weakest (4.00). 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
The Awakening
Red Harvest
Persuasion
The Secret Garden
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
Leave It to Psmith
The Sun Also Rises
The Moonstone
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 0.860.870.960.752,330
The War of the Worlds item 006 · after ch. 1 · H. G. Wells 0.850.750.920.872,339
The Awakening item 016 · after ch. 7 · Kate Chopin 0.820.750.960.751,757
Red Harvest item 023 · after ch. 2 · Dashiell Hammett 0.790.710.920.752,497
Persuasion item 001 · after ch. 1 · Jane Austen 0.780.710.920.712,613
The Secret Garden item 013 · after ch. 2 · Frances Hodgson Burnett 0.740.750.920.572,312
The Mysterious Affair at Styles item 017 · after ch. 3 · Agatha Christie 0.740.710.830.682,475
Leave It to Psmith item 022 · after ch. 3 · P. G. Wodehouse 0.740.790.710.713,190
The Sun Also Rises item 021 · after ch. 3 · Ernest Hemingway 0.740.750.750.712,004
The Moonstone item 011 · after ch. 8 · Wilkie Collins 0.700.680.790.632,787

  The widest judge split in the run: Gemini 3.7 Flash 0.92 against GPT-5.6 Sol 0.57 on The Secret Garden (item 013).


§ 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
2,330
The War of the Worlds
2,339
The Awakening
1,757
Red Harvest
2,497
Persuasion
2,613
The Secret Garden
2,312
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
2,475
Leave It to Psmith
3,190
The Sun Also Rises
2,004
The Moonstone
2,787
08001,6002,4003,200
words; the ink tick marks each brief’s maximum

Eight of ten items landed inside their brief’s word range. Persuasion and Leave It to Psmith ran over by 13 and 390 words respectively.


§ IV

Worst Flaws, as Recorded

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

The chapter leans on near-verbatim sentences lifted from Burnett (\"Mary found out afterward that this was Yorkshire,\" \"It was in this way Mistress Mary arrived at Misselthwaite Manor and she had perhaps never felt quite so contrary in all her life\"), so some of its most convincing voice is borrowed rather than earned.

on The Secret Garden, item 013 · Fable 5

By having the narrator argue on the spot that the cylinder came from Mars, the chapter gives him a prescience that deflates the dramatic irony of the retrospective voice and has to be patched with the defensive authorial aside \"I would not have the reader think me wiser afterwards than I was at the time.\"

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

Mina's 3 June letter spends its first half re-summarizing the Vollmer letter the reader has just read in full — the chapter's one patch of redundancy — and compounds it with the small date slip of placing Jonathan's hurried lines at 'the twelfth of May' when her 9 May letter had already reported them.

on Dracula, item 015 · Fable 5

The final third leans on stacked, unmotivated coincidences — Psmith just happening to be in the one bookshop Eve visits, then Mike unprompted serving up her name and destination at dinner — so the brief's machinery becomes visible exactly where the chapter needs to feel inevitable.

on Leave It to Psmith, item 022 · Fable 5

§ V

The Mechanical Docket

Automated screening results across the ten outputs.