Review continuity risks

Continuity review is a human decision workflow. Arc can surface risks, but the author decides what matters.

What counts as a risk

A continuity risk is any item that may conflict with the manuscript’s established canon or may not have enough evidence to be trusted.

Common examples include:

one character appearing under several aliases;
a pronoun or reference that could point to multiple people;
a relationship that changes without explanation;
a location, object, or event attached to the wrong entity;
a fact that sounds plausible but lacks source evidence;
a timeline or chapter-order inconsistency.

Start with high-impact items

Do not try to clear every low-level item first. Begin with risks that affect major characters, plot reveals, world rules, or recurring locations.

For each item, ask:

What claim is Arc making?
What source evidence supports it?
Is the claim canon, uncertain, or wrong?
Does this require a manuscript change, a canon correction, or no action?

Use evidence before deciding

The review queue is only useful when evidence remains close to the claim. Open the evidence excerpt or source reference whenever possible.

If the evidence is weak, keep the item unresolved. Do not convert uncertainty into canon simply to make the queue shorter.

Handle pronoun and coreference issues carefully

Pronoun-like review items can be noisy because references such as “he,” “she,” “they,” or “the captain” depend heavily on local scene context.

Good review behavior is:

inspect the excerpt;
identify the likely antecedent;
check whether Arc already has the candidate entity;
merge or resolve only when the source supports it;
leave ambiguous cases open.

Record the decision

A useful review decision should be clear enough that future you understands it. If a claim is accepted, rejected, merged, or deferred, the reason should remain traceable to the manuscript or to an explicit author choice.