genre-craft

Files (11)

• SKILL.md
• comedy.md · references/
• fantasy.md · references/
• historical.md · references/
• horror.md · references/
• mg-ya.md · references/
• mystery-fair-play.md · references/
• romance-beats.md · references/
• scifi-pipeline.md · references/
• serial-episodic.md · references/
• thriller.md · references/

SKILL.md (first lines)

# Genre Craft

## Overview

Genre-specific structural packs: the codified craft each genre expects, as
checkable rules, ledgers, and audits. Packs cover mystery (fair play + clue
ledger), romance (beats + HEA contract), thriller (ticking clock, power
imbalance, set pieces), horror (dread/terror ordering, monster rules),
MG/YA (category constraints), science fiction (load-bearing speculative
elements), fantasy (quest structure, magic paid off by its rules and costs),
historical fiction (period voice, anachronisms, real people), comedy
(escalation, comic set-ups and payoffs, tone), and serial/episodic
structure. Use at story-init (pick the pack, set the constraints) and in
revision (run the pack's audit).

## Prerequisites

A story project must already exist (created via the story-init skill) with
its genre recorded in `story.md`. A plot structure (plot-structure) should
exist or be in progress.

## When to Use

- Starting or re-categorizing a story in one of the covered genres
- Planning genre load-bearing elements (clues, clocks, season goals)
- Auditing a draft against its genre's contract
- NOT for line-level genre voice (that belongs to the `better-writing`
  skill's genre work); these packs are structural
- NOT for literary fiction as a pack — its conventions resist deterministic
  encoding by design

## Workflow

1. **Pick the pack.** Read `story.md` for genre/sub-genre and load the
   matching reference:
   - Mystery / crime / detective → `references/mystery-fair-play.md`
   - Romance → `references/romance-beats.md`
   - Thriller / action / suspense → `references/thriller.md`
   - Horror → `references/horror.md`
   - Middle grade / young adult → `references/mg-ya.md`
   - Science fiction → `references/scifi-pipeline.md`
   - Fantasy (epic, quest, secondary-world) → `references/fantasy.md`
   - Historical fiction → `references/historical.md`
   - Comedy (romantic comedy, farce, satire, cosy comedy) →
     `references/comedy.md`; a cosy mystery not played for laughs needs
     only the mystery pack
   - Serial / episodic / web serial → `references/serial-episodic.md`
   - Multi-genre stories: load each applicable pack; where packs conflict
     (e.g. horror's slow dread vs. thriller's cliffhangers), decide with
     the user which genre's contract dominates per section and record the
     decision in `story.md` notes.
2. **Set the constraints up front.** Apply the pack's structural
   requirements during planning:
   - Mystery: create `continuity/clues/` and ledger every clue and red
     herring via `story add clue '...' --planted chapter-NN --payoff
     chapter-NN`, with `significance-delayed` frontmatter where the reader
     sees the clue before understanding it and `red-herring: true` on
     misleading clues (`story add clue '...' --red-herring`; their
     `payoff` is the chapter that debunks them).
     Run `story clues .` for the fair-play matrix and `story diagram clues`
     for the plant-to-reveal flow.
   - Thriller: log every promised deadline in `continuity/promises/` and
     give every scene a `date` and `time`, so `story timeline .` shows the
     story clock.
   - Serial: record `season-goal:` in `story.md` and `episode-question:`
     in each installment's frontmatter, and the release cadence as
     `release-every:` (days, or months such as `1 month`) and
     `release-start:` (YYYY-MM-DD) in `story.md`, or `release-date:` on a
     chapter. `story next .` shows the next episode due and warns when one
     due within `release-warn-days:` (default 3) has no prose.
   - MG/YA: record `target-words:` in `story.md` and check the category
     constraints (protagonist age, minimized adult involvement).
   - Sci-fi: write the speculative element's rules, costs, and limits in
     `worldbuilding/systems/` before the climax exploits them.
   - Fantasy: write the magic's rules, costs, and limits in
     `worldbuilding/systems/` (the `worldbuilding` skill designs them) and
     log the quest goal and any prophecy in `continuity/promises/`.
   - Historical: record `setting-era` in `story.md`, the chosen period
     register in the style sheet, and a `research/` note (the `research`
     skill) for every fact the plot leans on and every real person; run
     the `editorial-review` real-people pass for anyone living or recently
     dead.
   - Comedy: record the comic sub-genre in `story.md`, the tone line (where
     comedy stops) in its `## Tone & Style` section, each comic lead's flaw
     in their character file, and each running gag or call-back the reader
     is owed a payoff on as one promise in `continuity/promises/`.
     Sentence-level comic timing belongs to the `line-editing` skill.
3. **Draft against the pack.** Use the pack's beat concepts and rules
   alongside the `chapter-writing` workflow and the `scene-craft`
   scene-grain tools. Cross-link thriller pacing to the Fichtean curve
   note in `references/thriller.md`, and check thriller and serial chapter
   endings with `story pacing .` (chapter `hook` values, and runs of
   `resolution` endings); cross-link serial book-level canon
   to the `series-continuity` skill.
4. **Run the pack audit in revision.** Each reference ends with an audit
   checklist. Run it as part of a developmental revision pass (see the
   `revision-continuity` skill) and record findings in the revision plan.
5. **Record genre decisions.** Any deliberate deviation from the pack (a
   romance without a black moment, a mystery that withholds) is a story
   decision: note it in `story.md` with the reason, so later audits don't
   "fix" it.

## Conventions

- Pack-specific entities use the project conventions: kebab-case ids,
  YAML frontmatter, `_index.md` registries where a collection exists
  (`continuity/clues/` follows the `continuity/promises/` pattern).
- Clue `planted` must precede `payoff` (`story continuity` flags payoff-before-
  plant as an error); deadline promises follow the same ordering logic as
  promise/question ordering.
- Clues carry the links: each clue names its `planted` and `payoff`
  chapters and, under `characters`, the suspects it implicates or clears,
  and `story links` checks those ids. Character files have no clue field;
  to list a suspect's clues, run
  `story list clues --where characters={character-id}`.
- Genre audits live in the revision plan or `continuity/` audit files —
  never only in chat.

## CLI Maintenance

From danjdewhurst/story-skills, MIT.

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