Before a binder cases a book, she collates it: every gathering lifted, checked against the pattern, in order. Makers of generated series need the same habit, because the only judge usually applied to a new page is a feeling — and feelings are generous after an hour at the bench. A small, fixed set of checks is stricter and faster: five of them, run the same way every time, against the pattern sheet you wrote before the session began. It takes under a minute a page, and it is the difference between a binding full of keepers and a folder of maybes.
The five checks
1. Likeness. Is she the character on the pattern sheet — same hair, same face, same signature — or a near relative? Judge against the sheet, not against the previous page, because drift compounds quietly when each page is only compared with its neighbour.
2. Hands. Hands first, then joints, then anything the pose bends. A page can survive soft detail; it cannot survive anatomy the eye trips over at thumbnail size.
3. Light. One source, behaving consistently across skin, fabric and background. Light that disagrees with itself is the most common reason a strong page feels vaguely wrong.
4. Edges. Hair against background, fingers against props, lace against skin. Clean edges are what let a page sit beside others in a binding without announcing how it was made.
5. Purpose. Does the page do the one job it was briefed for — the cover, the teaser, the quiet filler? A beautiful page that does the wrong job fails here, and rightly.
The threshold that saves money
Score each check out of two: fails, passes, strong. A page needs eight of ten to earn finishing spend — a mend at 21 credits, a swap at 26, an upscale at 61. Below eight, the page goes back to the generator at the 6-credit standard cost, where correction is cheapest. The checks are not about being harsh; they are about spending the expensive credits only where the work already holds. Keep the scores with the set, dated. A month later they will tell you which of your habits actually improved — noted, not remembered. Makers who collate honestly for a single month usually find the pattern quickly: one check, most often light or edges, accounts for nearly every culled page, and fixing that one habit lifts the whole binding more than any new setting ever will.