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

The Standings → GPT‑5.6 Sol

Live run data

OpenAI

GPT‑5.6 Sol

medium reasoning effort · via Codex CLI · judged by Fable 5 and Gemini 3.7 Flash and GPT-5.6 Sol

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

Headline 0.744 compliance × craft
Compliance 0.985 of 1.0
Craft 0.754 of 1.0

The record: 10 items · 30 verdicts · 0 errors · 2,235 words on average · est. generation cost $1.42

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
4.10
Prose
4.07
Character
3.93
Scene
4.07
Integration
4.10
Momentum
3.83
12345
craft mark, 1–5; bars begin at the scale’s floor of 1

Voice is the strongest dimension (4.10); momentum the weakest (3.83). 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
Persuasion
The War of the Worlds
The Moonstone
The Secret Garden
Red Harvest
Leave It to Psmith
The Sun Also Rises
The Awakening
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
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 0.820.710.960.792,320
Persuasion item 001 · after ch. 1 · Jane Austen 0.810.710.960.752,643
The War of the Worlds item 006 · after ch. 1 · H. G. Wells 0.780.710.920.712,551
The Moonstone item 011 · after ch. 8 · Wilkie Collins 0.750.750.750.752,448
The Secret Garden item 013 · after ch. 2 · Frances Hodgson Burnett 0.750.750.750.752,176
Red Harvest item 023 · after ch. 2 · Dashiell Hammett 0.740.670.750.792,196
Leave It to Psmith item 022 · after ch. 3 · P. G. Wodehouse 0.710.710.750.672,206
The Sun Also Rises item 021 · after ch. 3 · Ernest Hemingway 0.710.710.710.712,109
The Awakening item 016 · after ch. 7 · Kate Chopin 0.690.750.750.571,502
The Mysterious Affair at Styles item 017 · after ch. 3 · Agatha Christie 0.690.710.750.592,199

  The widest judge split in the run: Gemini 3.7 Flash 0.96 against Fable 5 0.71 on Persuasion (item 001).


§ 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
2,320
Persuasion
2,643
The War of the Worlds
2,551
The Moonstone
2,448
The Secret Garden
2,176
Red Harvest
2,196
Leave It to Psmith
2,206
The Sun Also Rises
2,109
The Awakening
1,502
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
2,199
08001,6002,4003,200
words; the ink tick marks each brief’s maximum

Nine of ten items landed inside their brief’s word range. Persuasion ran over by 43 words.


§ IV

Worst Flaws, as Recorded

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

Lady Verinder's prohibition scene is the one visible seam: her demand arrives within a minute of Franklin's welcome with its motive flatly withheld ("I have reasons for this which I shall not explain"), so the beat reads as an item being ticked rather than something the scene earned.

on The Moonstone, item 011 · Fable 5

The chapter plants a glaring timeline hole — the widow was told her husband \"had been hurt\" twenty minutes before he was shot — and the Op, established in the source as the man who nailed those exact times, never remarks on it, so it reads as authorial oversight rather than clue.

on Red Harvest, item 023 · Fable 5

Robert's remark about "a voice no one else can hear" is too neat a theme statement, and by being quoted verbatim three times — on the walk, in Adèle's repetition, and again in the closing paragraph — it over-underlines a motif Chopin would have trusted the reader to carry.

on The Awakening, item 016 · Fable 5

Elizabeth's surprising support — the brief's boldest divergence — is immediately deflated by a paragraph of narrated motive ("She could fancy it spoken of as Miss Elliot's plan"), explaining away the one moment that should have been left to unsettle the reader.

on Persuasion, item 001 · Fable 5

§ V

The Mechanical Docket

Automated screening results across the ten outputs.