Un-slush-it: A Slush Pile Sim
The Slush Sim is a tool writer’s can use to see how much their first page will appeal to a publisher or editor. Paste in the text to any manuscript & see how it scores!
[The First-Page Report loads here when the post is previewed or published.]
I'm releasing the Slush Sim:the first writer's toolI'm releasing publicly. It employs a bounded AI models to improve your writing today.I use a less-polished version to assess my pitches to publishers-it really helps me strip the fat, kill my darlings, & sharpen the crucial qualities of my writing.
How it Works:theSlush Simscores the initiating page of your manuscript based on several, dynamic factors proven to influence readers & editors.
How to Use.Paste the opening page of a story or novel in order to recieve a technial report that mirrors the evaluative sentiments an editor would form (but, infuriatingly, never tell you).
- Rubric:Your writing undergoes assessments in 13 categories including the shape, habits, imagery, opening. Each category has a benchmark and its source.
- Aim. Pick your preferred magazine. The Slushinator checks your page against that magazine's published guidelines.
- Ask. It writes prompts for an AI model, built from your numbers. The model reads and quotes; it never drafts. A model that rewrites your page hands you back its page.
Why the first page? Because it is the part that gets read. One Story closes each reading period at 2,000 submissions and Strange Horizons at 1,000, and someone reads the top of every one. The measuring happens in your browser. No AI is involved until you choose to paste a prompt somewhere, and nothing you type is uploaded.
Step 1 · Paste your first page
A deliberately bad page is loaded so you can see every check fire.
A dial outside its band is a question, never a ruling. Faulkner fails several of these on purpose and seems to be doing fine.
Step 2 · Choose where it is going
Step 3 · Prompts built from your page
Each button copies the prompt with your page attached. Paste it into any AI model.
How to read the answers. Run "The stop line" and "The dissent" back to back. One reader quits; one fights for you. Your revision list is the gap between them.
Sources: Ben Blatt, Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve (2017). John Gardner, The Art of Fiction (1983). Steen et al., "Metaphor in usage," Cognitive Linguistics 21(4), 2010. Kincaid et al., U.S. Navy readability study (1975). Magazine guidelines as published on each magazine's site, checked November 9, 2026; they change, so read the page before you submit.
