book-fiction

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• SKILL.md

SKILL.md (first lines)

# Fiction

The reader of a novel is not looking for a well-structured story. They are looking for the experience of being inside someone else's consequential life. Structure is how you keep them there. This file is craft, not a template.

## Structure: choose, do not apply

Pick the shape that fits the premise and say why in `outline.md`. Options:

- **Three-act** (setup 25% / confrontation 50% / resolution 25%). Midpoint reversal. Works for almost everything; risk is a flat second act.
- **Save the Cat 15-beat** (Opening Image → Theme Stated → Setup → Catalyst 10% → Debate → Break into Two 20% → B Story → Fun and Games → Midpoint 50% → Bad Guys Close In → All Is Lost 75% → Dark Night → Break into Three 80% → Finale → Final Image). Best for commercial genre fiction. Risk: fifteen equal-sized chapters that feel engineered.
- **Hero's Journey** (12 stages). Best for quest and coming-of-age. Risk: mentor and threshold scenes that feel obligatory.
- **Story Grid / five commandments per scene** (inciting incident, progressive complication, crisis, climax, resolution) applied at scene, sequence, act, and global level. Best for making every unit turn.
- **Snowflake** for planning: one sentence → paragraph → character summaries → expand. A planning method, not a book shape.
- **Bespoke**: braided timelines, epistolary, nested frames, reverse chronology. Only when the premise demands it and the author agrees.

Whatever the shape: the inciting incident is inside the first 10-12% or the reader leaves; the midpoint changes what the protagonist wants or believes, not just what happens; the ending is caused by a choice the protagonist could only make after everything that came before.

**Subplots** carry theme or contrast. Each needs its own small arc and must converge with the main line by the third act or be cut.

**POV plan** in the outline: whose head, what distance, which chapters. Do not change the plan mid-draft without updating the bible.

## Scene design

A scene is a unit where something changes. If nothing changes, it is not a scene; cut it or merge it.

- **Goal / conflict / outcome** (action scenes) alternating with **reaction / dilemma / decision** (sequel scenes). Alternate by need, not by rule; three action scenes in a row can be right.
- **Enter late, leave early.** Start after the greeting, end before the reflection.
- **Outcome types**: yes-but, no-and, no-but. A clean "yes" ends tension.
- **Subtext**: what the scene is about is not what the characters talk about.
- **Withholding**: every scene should have one thing the reader wants to know and does not yet.
- **Scene length follows weight.** A two-line scene can be the most important in the chapter.
- **Sensory anchor**: one or two specific details the POV character would actually notice, chosen for meaning, not decoration.

Scene plans (from `scene-generator`) contain all of this; prose (from `chapter-writer`) delivers it without naming it.

## Character depth

Characters in machine fiction are reasonable, self-aware, and consistent. Human characters are none of these reliably.

- **Want vs. need**: what they pursue vs. what would actually fix them. They usually pursue the wrong one until late.
- **Contradiction**: a trait that fights another trait. Brave and petty. Loving and controlling.
- **Wrong self-knowledge**: they misread their own motives. The reader sees it before they do.
- **A verbal signature per character**: sentence length, favorite evasion, what they never say, 말투 and 존댓말 register (Korean).
- **Secondary characters want things too**, and not things convenient to the plot.
- **Antagonists are right from where they stand.**
- **Arc**: the character at the end could not have made the choice the character at the start makes, and vice versa. Show the turn through action, never through a realization stated in narration.

Bible entries hold: want, need, wound, fear, contradiction, verbal signature, relationships, and a per-chapter state line.

## Dialogue

- People do not answer the question asked. They deflect, interrupt, answer a different one, repeat themselves, lie.
- Cut the greeting, the small talk, and the last line that summarizes the exchange.
- "Said" or nothing. Action beats instead of adverbs.
- Nobody explains what both speakers already know.
- Silence and refusal to answer are dialogue.
- Korean: fix each pair's 존댓말/반말 relationship in the bible and let shifts be events. Dialogue in 큰따옴표; 속마음 without quotes in the narration.
- Japanese: 「」 for speech, line break after each utterance, one 一人称 and 語尾 set per character.

## Prose and POV

- **Distance**: decide how close the narration sits to the POV character's thoughts and keep it. Free indirect style lets the character's diction color the narration; use it or do not, consistently.
- **Filter words** (saw, felt, noticed, realized, seemed) put glass between reader and experience. Cut most.
- **Emotion**: never named when it can be shown by what the character does, avoids, or misperceives. One physical reaction at most; often none.
- **Rhythm**: sentence length follows the character's state. Panic is short. Grief can be long. Uniform 15-20 word sentences are the loudest AI tell in fiction.
- **Figurative language**: from the POV character's world. A fisherman does not think in software metaphors. Density per the voice fingerprint.
- **Time**: summary for the uneventful, scene for the consequential. Do not scene everything.
- **Chapter endings**: cliffhanger, question, reversal, image, or a quiet line with weight. Rotate. Never end with the character reflecting on what the chapter meant.

## Fiction-specific tells (in addition to quality-bar.md)

- Every chapter opens with weather, light, or the character waking.
- The protagonist notices exactly the details the plot will need.
- Characters cry, tremble, or feel their stomach drop on schedule.
- Antagonist monologues that explain motivation.
- A wise secondary character who says the theme.
- Coincidences that help the protagonist (coincidences that hurt are fine).
- Backstory delivered in a paragraph the moment a character is introduced.
- Flashbacks that answer the question the reader just asked.
- The final chapter that revisits every character for a bow.
- Metaphors that explain themselves ("like a wound that never healed, the memory...").

## Length and format notes

- English: 70-100K words commercial; 55-80K literary/debut; 90-150K epic fantasy. Chapters 2,500-5,000 typical, but vary.
- Korean: 장편 80,000-120,000자 (공백 제외); 경장편 50,000-80,000자; 웹소설 회당 5,000-5,500자, 100회+. 문단 첫 줄 들여쓰기는 출판 단계에서.
- Japanese: 長編 100,000-150,000字; ライトノベル 80,000-120,000字.

Web-serial fiction (웹소설, web novel): every episode ends on a hook, first three episodes must establish premise and voice, chapter = episode of fixed length. Tell the architect in `PRD.md`.

## Validation (architect scoring for fiction)

Inciting incident placement; midpoint that changes belief; escalation per act; each subplot converges; each POV character has an arc; setup/payoff table complete; no chapter without a change; ending caused by protagonist's choice; timeline consistent; no two consecutive chapters with the same emotional shape.

## Visuals

Optional for adult fiction; expected for children's, middle-grade, illustrated editions, and web novels (cover per volume, character sheets). When used: 0-4 illustrations per chapter by weight; chapter headers as motifs, not scenes; never illustrate a withheld reveal; character sheets locked before any scene illustration so faces and costumes hold. Maps for secondary-world fantasy are figure-engineer base layers (SVG from bible geography) stylized by the illustrator. All images through `/book-visuals`; the art bible's character constants come from `bible.md`.

From epicsagas/Velith, Apache-2.0.

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