narrative-minimum-viable-prose

name	narrative-minimum-viable-prose
description	Use when drafting concise fiction, reducing purple prose, compressing scenes, cutting lore dumps, avoiding generic AI prose, grounding emotion in concrete observation, or writing only the prose needed for an immediate beat. Based primarily on David Perell's Alain de Botton interview and Morgan Housel's brevity discussion.

Narrative Minimum Viable Prose

Use this skill to draft or revise fiction so the scene does the necessary emotional work with the least invented lore, abstraction, and padding.

Source Protocol

• Read references/source-notes.md for transcript-derived notes from Alain de Botton and Morgan Housel.
• Use these sources as craft lenses, not as voices to imitate.
• Do not quote long transcript passages.

Operating Loop

1. Name the emotional turn the passage must land.
2. Identify the smallest concrete situation that can carry that turn.
3. List necessary lore only: facts that affect danger, status, choice, cost, or relationship pressure.
4. Draft with concrete observation, action, dialogue, and consequence.
5. Cut any sentence that explains an emotion already dramatized.
6. Stop when the beat lands, even if the requested length would allow more.

Minimum Viable Prose Check

Emotional turn:
Necessary lore:
Concrete pressure:
Point-of-view filter:
Lines to avoid:
Target length:
Stop point:

Compression Contract

Keep:
Cut:
Compress:
Revised passage:
Why it is shorter:

Rules

• No speculative lore: do not invent systems, factions, history, mechanics, artifacts, or social rules unless the user asks.
• No ornamental abstraction: avoid philosophy unless it belongs to the viewpoint character and affects the scene.
• No generic AI beauty: replace vague emotional grandeur with specific image, pressure, gesture, or choice.
• No quota-padding: if the beat works in 500 words, do not expand it to 2,000 because more space is available.
• Use the author's strange specific intent over polished generic plausibility.

When Drafting

• Start close to pressure.
• Use one or two consequence-bearing world details.
• Let objects and setting suggest character values when useful.
• Make interiority legible through what the character notices, avoids, misreads, or chooses.
• Preserve mystery when it creates desire; remove confusion when it creates labor.