authoring-story-content

name

authoring-story-content

description

Author or revise content for the Wander & Tales children's story-kit library: story narration (simple and rich reading levels), world lore, canon registry entries, puzzles, idea banks, rules-page text, and the Guide for the Grown-Up, in British English (en-GB, canonical) and the synced locales kept in step with it (defined in build/locales.py REQUIRED_LOCALES; currently Spanish from Spain es-ES, Italian it-IT, and European Portuguese pt-PT). Use this skill whenever you write, draft, translate, or edit any kid-facing or grown-up-facing prose or YAML content for Wander & Tales (any world or story, including The Floating Isles / The Sleeping Garden and the Greek-myth world), even when the request only says "write the story", "draft the narration", "add a creature", "translate this to Spanish", or "write the grown-up guide". It encodes the no-lose, kind-and-imaginative ethos, the writing constraints (no em or en dashes), the associational (non-causal) claims rule, reading-level and peril-tone guidance, the en-GB-first then es-ES workflow, and canon-name discipline.

Authoring Wander & Tales story content

Wander & Tales is a public, multilingual library of printable, cooperative, adult-led story-adventure kits for kids (print-and-play PDFs played with simple dice and household objects). The whole architecture rests on one bet: content is the unit of work. Adding a world, a story, a language, or an age tier is a writing task, not a coding task. This skill is how that writing stays consistent, warm, and on-brand across every author, language, and session.

The wider system (architecture, conventions, and build pipeline) is described in CLAUDE.md at the repository root. This skill covers how to write the words.

The one thing to hold onto

Every kit teaches the same quiet lesson: there are no wrong answers, and you win by being kind and full of ideas. The games are cooperative (a grown-up and one or more children, together, on the same side), and nobody loses. The grown-up is not a referee standing apart: they guide the story and play along as a fellow adventurer, taking a hero of their own, helping the children through, and letting themselves be surprised even though they have read ahead. Write the rules and the Guide so a story works for two or more players (one adult and one or more children), and never assume exactly two. A failed dice roll is never a defeat; it is a detour to a different route. There are no real villains in gentle and mild stories, and the "antagonist" usually turns out to be lonely or misunderstood rather than wicked (in the first story it is a sprite who only wanted a friend). Conflicts resolve through imagination, care, and working things out together, never through force or elimination.

If a sentence you are writing would make a child feel they have failed, lost, or been left out, rewrite it. The legacy kit's footer says it best: "here nobody loses, you just look for another way."

This ethos is also the product's honest promise. Keep it intact in every piece, from a puzzle hint to the world lore to the grown-up guide.

Mechanical rules that are easy to break

These are small and unforgiving, so check them deliberately.

1. Never use em dashes or en dashes, anywhere. Use a hyphen only to connect words (print-and-play, screen-free). Do not use a hyphen as a stand-in for a dash. Rewrite with commas, parentheses, a colon, or two sentences. For number ranges write "3 to 5", not a dash. A PreToolUse hook blocks any file write that contains a dash, so this is enforced, but writing it correctly the first time saves a bounce.

2. Claims about children must be associational, never causal. This game does not "make kids smarter", "boost IQ", "improve grades", or "build" skills. It is "a way to practise" curiosity, imagination, problem-solving, and teamwork; shared screen-free time is "associated with" or "linked to" good outcomes, not a cause of them. Keep verbs soft: practise, nurture, exercise, a chance to, not builds, boosts, increases, improves. This rule comes straight from the evidence base; see research/evidence-base/marketing-paragraph.md for the exact phrasings that are cleared and the list of claims never to make. It governs all grown-up-facing copy (world intros, the Guide, any positioning text).

3. Write every locale in build/locales.py REQUIRED_LOCALES (read that file for the live set; the project gains languages over time). Each is a specific locale with its own register:

   • British English (en-GB), canonical: British spelling and idiom (colour, organise, maths, autumn, "have you got").
   • Spanish from Spain (es-ES): peninsular Spanish, "vosotros" for the players, full correct accents. Never Latin American Spanish.
   • Italian (it-IT): natural, warm Italian, "voi" for the players, full accents.
   • European Portuguese (pt-PT): natural Portugal Portuguese, "vocês" for the players (and "tu" when a prompt speaks to one child), full accents. Never Brazilian Portuguese. The two traps a non-native writer falls into are the archaic "vós" register (use "vocês" with 3rd person plural verbs: "Leiam", "São", "fizeram", never "Lede", "Sois", "fizestes") and Brazilian gerunds (use "a + infinitivo": "está a dormir", never "está dormindo"). For pt-PT, follow the pt-pt-quality skill, which holds the full register guide and a scanner; run it whenever you write or review Portuguese. US English, Latin American Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and other languages are separate languages that slot in later, each in its own content files, exactly like European versus Brazilian Portuguese, or French and German. Never quietly mix an Americanism into en-GB, a Latin American turn of phrase into es-ES, a non-native turn into it-IT, or a Brazilianism into pt-PT. See references/voice-and-reading-levels.md. Adding a new language to the project is the add-language skill, which also extends this register list.

4. Use plain, everyday words a parent can relay to a child, especially when describing the game itself. A grown-up reads the description and then has to explain it to their child in the moment; if the wording is elaborate, the parent is left hunting for the right words. So describe the game in words a six-year-old would understand. Avoid jargon and abstract labels, even correct ones: do not call it "cooperative" (say "you play together, on the same side"), a "narrator" (say "you read the story aloud"), or a "puzzle" where "a little challenge" works. Lead with the fun and what you actually do, not the category. This governs the Guide, the one-page How to Play, world intros, and any copy a parent reads aloud or paraphrases.

5. Refer to children and players inclusively, never defaulting to the masculine. When you mean kids in general (not a specific named character), use gender-neutral or inclusive wording. In en-GB this is easy: "a child", "the children", "they/them", "a grown-up and a child"; avoid defaulting to "he", "boy", or "his". The synced locales have grammatical gender, so each one's quality guide gives the natural inclusive form to use (es-ES "peque/peques" or "niña y niño"; pt-PT "criança", which is already neutral; it-IT "bambina e bambino" or a recast). Follow it. A named character of course keeps their own gender; this rule is only about generic references. Use only each language's accepted inclusive forms, never non-standard spellings ("niñe/niñx", the schwa "bambinə", "l@s").

Content types and where they live

File	Audience	Reading level	Notes
content/<locale>/narration.simple.md	kid (read aloud by adult)	simple	covers early + young
content/<locale>/narration.rich.md	kid (read aloud or self)	rich	covers older
content/<locale>/rules.md	adult GM	adult	difficulty bands, the no-lose golden rule, the newcomer callout
content/<locale>/puzzles.md	adult GM	adult	the challenges and their solutions
worlds/<world>/content/<locale>/idea-bank.md	adult GM	adult	world-level improv prompts; one per world, shared by its stories
worlds/<world>/world.yaml	adult	adult	world name per language, tone, palette, lore summary
worlds/<world>/canon/*.yaml	system	both	the name registry (see below)
worlds/<world>/heroes.yaml	adult	both	four example heroes (2 young, 2 older) for the sample adventure sheets
guide/<locale>/guide.md	adult GM	adult	the generic Guide for the Grown-Up
story.yaml	system	n/a	tags and metadata only

<locale> is always an explicit code: en-GB (canonical) plus the rest of REQUIRED_LOCALES (today es-ES, it-IT, pt-PT), with others like en-US or es-419 added later as their own folders. The same codes key the title: map in story.yaml and the names: map in canon.

Glossary appendices, hand-drawn map labels, and the catalog are generated from canon, so you do not hand-write them; you keep canon correct and they follow.

Every story also gets a generated trail map when it has no hand-drawn one: the build reads your ## Stop N: Name headings (and the ending heading) and draws a START, the numbered stops, and a GOAL on a winding path, in each language straight from your headings. So the stop headings are not just structure: they become the map's waypoint labels. Name each stop after the place or landmark it happens at (The Vine Gate, The Foggy Square, Milo's Kitchen), short enough to sit beside a marker (about two to four words), and give the final ## an ending that names where the journey lands. There is nothing extra to author: a good set of stop names is a good map. An author may later drop in a bespoke assets/map.svg to override the generated one, but it is never required.

The stop headings are load-bearing in one more place: the website reader pairs each stop's grown-up solution to its question by matching the ## Stop N: Name heading in puzzles.md to the same heading in the narration, and it shows each stop's scene image inline. So keep the headings identical between narration.simple.md, narration.rich.md, and puzzles.md (the puzzles file may add a band suffix like (Easy), which is fine), and order the images: so the scenes follow the stops (a cover, then one scene per stop, then the ending). Matching headings keep the printed kit and the website in step.

The idea bank is world-level (one per world per locale), not per story; the narration, rules, and puzzles remain per story. Version numbers, the colophon, and the licence are added automatically at build time, so you never edit them.

The authoring workflow

Follow this order. It is what keeps names consistent and translations faithful.

1. Canon first. Before naming any place, character, creature, item, or special term, check the world's canon/ files and the repo-wide lexicon/terms.yaml. Use the canonical name for the language you are writing. If you are introducing something genuinely new, add a canon entry for it (see references/canon-and-content-types.md) before using it in prose. The point: prose follows canon, and a lightweight lint will flag any name in the text that is not in canon, or any case where EN and ES disagree for the same id.

2. British English is canonical. Draft en-GB first. It is the source of truth and the version a human reviews. Get it right before translating.

3. European Spanish is synced, not literal. Translate for a Spanish (Spain) child's ear, not word for word. Match meaning, warmth, and rhythm; use correct accents and the canon Spanish names. See references/voice-and-reading-levels.md for es-ES register and worked examples.

4. Write to pass lint clean. No name outside canon, no EN/ES name mismatch. When in doubt, fix canon, not the prose.

More locales slot in later the same way (canonical en-GB, then the new locale, whether en-US, es-419, pt-PT, French, or German), with no code changes. Write so that is true.

Reading levels in one breath

Two narration levels per language. simple (for ages 3 to 8): short sentences, concrete words, present-tense action, strong sensory hooks, easy to read aloud, few subordinate clauses. rich (for ages 9 to 12): longer sentences, a wider vocabulary, a little more interiority and suspense, while staying warm and clear. Both tell the same story with the same beats; only the language grows up.

For detailed guidance, contrasts, and EN plus ES examples, read references/voice-and-reading-levels.md.

Peril and tone

A story's peril tag sets how much tension is allowed.

• gentle: nobody is hurt, no villains. Cozy and reassuring. The obstacle is a puzzle or a sad creature who needs help. (The Sleeping Garden is gentle.)
• mild: real obstacles and suspense, but nobody dies and no one is cruel. A bit more edge, still safe.
• heroic: higher stakes for an older audience; foes can be outwitted or "fall". The cooperative, no-elimination engine stays underneath, and good ideas and kindness still win. The Greek-myth world uses a non-magic framing (wits and courage rather than the four magics), and even a fearsome foe can be befriended rather than slain where the story allows.

Match vocabulary and intensity to the peril and the age tier. Heroic is braver, not grim or violent.

Talking about dice and difficulty

Rules and narration never name a specific die. They use difficulty bands: Easy, Normal, Hard. A single reference table in each kit maps the bands onto whatever dice a family owns, and every story must be playable with a single d6. Write "this is a Normal challenge", not "roll a d20". The help mechanic and the surprise table scale the same way. This keeps one story playable with any dice set and avoids multiplying the build.

Quality checklist before you call a piece done

• No em or en dashes; ranges written as "3 to 5".
• Nobody loses; failure reads as a detour, not a defeat.
• Every named thing exists in canon with matching EN and ES names.
• Any claim about children is associational, never causal.
• Reading level matches the file (simple vs rich) and the age tier.
• Tone matches the story's peril tag.
• Difficulty is expressed in bands, not specific dice.
• Stop headings name a place or landmark and are short: they become the map's labels.
• Spanish reads naturally to a native child and uses correct accents.
• Read narration aloud once: it should sound good in a grown-up's voice.

Images and art prompts

When authoring a world, write its visual_style (one paragraph of art direction: medium, mood, the world palette hexes, "nothing scary") and any world-level images (a cover, key portraits). When authoring a story, write its images: a cover and a scene per major beat or stop.

Rules for every image:

• The prompt is the subject only, in English, locale-neutral. The world's visual_style and a technical line are added automatically at export, so do not repeat the style in each prompt.
• The art must contain no text, letters, words, or numbers (so one image serves every language, like the maps). Never ask for captions or titles in the image.
• Keep it gentle and on-palette, in the no-lose, kind-and-imaginative spirit: nothing frightening, no real violence, friendly faces.
• Set canon_ref to the canon id when an image depicts a named place, character, or creature, so the export adds that entry's description and the art stays consistent with the bible.
• Write alt text in en-GB first, then es-ES, like all other prose, following the en-GB and es-ES conventions (British spelling, peninsular Spanish with accents).

Reference files

• references/voice-and-reading-levels.md: simple vs rich with worked EN and ES examples, plus Spanish register and how to avoid translationese.
• references/canon-and-content-types.md: the canon entry shape, when to add an entry, what belongs in each content file, and the Guide for the Grown-Up contents checklist.