| name | prose-writing |
| type | reference |
| description | Prose-level immersion patterns for narrative fiction. Use when writing or revising prose: the sentence-level and paragraph-level craft that pulls readers into the story. Project-specific voice comes from style files passed alongside this skill.
|
| model-invocable | false |
Prose Writing
How prose pulls readers in. Style files carry the project's specific voice;
read them before writing. This skill covers the patterns that create immersion
regardless of project.
Psychic Distance
The distance between the reader and the character's consciousness. Gardner's
continuum runs from far ("It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped
out of the doorway.") to close ("Snow. Under your collar, down inside your
shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul.").
Control this deliberately. Move closer for emotional peaks, character-defining
moments, and interiority. Pull back for transitions, time compression, and
establishing context. The rhythm of close and far gives prose its emotional
shape.
Default AI prose sits at a flat middle distance: close enough to seem
personal, far enough to feel safe. Push past that. Go closer when it matters.
Free Indirect Discourse
Blend the narrator's voice with the character's perspective so third-person
narration is colored by how the character thinks and sees.
Conventional: "Connie thought she was pretty and she believed that was the
most important thing she could be."
Free indirect: "She knew she was pretty and that was everything."
The narrator doesn't announce the character's thoughts. The narration itself
carries the character's voice, vocabulary, and judgment. This is the primary
technique for close-third that actually feels intimate. Use the character's
words, not the narrator's, when psychic distance is close.
Sentence Rhythm
Rhythm pulls readers along like a current. Vary length, structure, and pattern
to match the moment.
Short sentences for tension, shock, emphasis. Longer cumulative sentences for
immersion, reflection, complex emotion. Fragments for intimacy, interrupted
thought, the feeling of a mind catching up to what just happened.
When every sentence follows the same pattern, such as subject, verb, object,
repeat, the prose flattens regardless of content. A devastating scene and a
mundane scene should not read the same way.
Sensory Grounding
Ground scenes in specific sensory details filtered through the POV character's
attention. "The forest" is nowhere. "Pine needles crunching underfoot, the
smell of wet bark" is a place.
What a character notices reveals who they are. A chef notices smells. A
musician notices sounds. A soldier notices exits. One or two vivid, specific
details do more work than a catalog of all five senses.
Interiority
The POV character's inner life distinguishes prose fiction from screenplay:
thoughts, reactions, memories, associations. "She felt sad" is a label.
"She kept reaching for her phone to text him before remembering" is interiority
that shows the reader something about grief.
In high-action scenes, interiority contracts to fragments: quick reactions,
snap judgments. In reflective scenes, it expands. Match the depth of inner
experience to the pace of the scene.
Show Through Action
Demonstrate character states through behavior, dialogue, and physical response.
"He was nervous about the meeting" is a label. "He checked his watch for the
third time, then straightened a tie that was already straight" lets the reader
see the nervousness and interpret it.
Tell for logistics, show for moments that matter. Summary narration works for
transitions, routine actions, and time compression. Showing everything is as
exhausting as telling everything.
Point of View
Stay in the established POV. In first person, the narrator can only report
what they perceive, think, and feel. In third limited, access one character's
interiority per scene.
Convey non-POV characters through observable behavior. Write "Her jaw
tightened" rather than "She felt angry." The narrator can't know what's
happening in someone else's head.