book-fiction

• SKILL.mdcore · 8,269 bytes

# 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.