| name | story-engine |
| description | Use when premise, arc, chapter, scene, pacing, character pressure, reader pull/anticipation, promise movement, structural variation, or developmental review work needs to be designed. |
Story-engine
Story-engine is the positive dramatic-design skill for this repo. It turns character pressure into scene movement and arc shape.
It does not own canon, state, ledgers, spoilers, or lifecycle; serial-process does.
It does not rewrite prose; authors-voice does.
It is for design and structural diagnosis, not for line-level composition or canon rulings.
Use it for
- premise shaping
- arc and chapter design
- scene purpose and pacing
- character pressure and reader pull
- promise movement
- structural variation across a run of scenes or chapters
- developmental review of a finished draft
Load order
- Before planning or drafting, load
references/generation-packet.md.
- After a draft exists, load
references/developmental-read.md for structural evaluation.
- Keep unpublished plans in
plan/ and never paraphrase them in user-facing summaries.
Positive chain
Character pressure → scene action → changed situation → reader desire → arc movement.
Treat that chain as the default diagnostic lens, not a mandatory scene sequence.
Quiet, reaction, recovery, observation, and aftermath beats are valid when they materially change understanding, stakes, relationships, commitment, or the reader's interpretation.
Working boundary
Story-engine owns the why and the shape, not the sentence.
Use it to decide what should happen, what should be withheld, and what should be emphasized.
Then hand the packet to authors-voice for prose.
One packet, one active thread
The generation packet is one compact artefact. Do not split it into separate planning forms.
Use it to capture the current state of the story, the immediate dramatic job, and the design constraints that matter right now.
Stable character voice anchors may live in the bible.
Fast-changing wants, misreadings, and scene-local pressures belong in the packet/current state.
Avoid catchphrase mimicry and psych-label biographies; write for how the character sounds and acts under pressure.
Developmental review
A developmental read is diagnosis only.
It checks causal movement, agency/choice, character-specific pressure, promise movement, reader anticipation, and structural repetition.
It reports findings with exact quotation, reader consequence, materiality, owning layer, and good as-is when nothing needs changing.
It may not check canon or perform line edits.
If a line-level fix is needed, route that to authors-voice.
If a state or spoiler fix is needed, route that to serial-process.
Practical rule
Design from pressure outward:
what the character wants, what blocks them, what action they take, how the situation changes, and what that change makes the reader want next.
That is the work.
