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.

Whatever the shape: the inciting incident is inside the first 10-12% or the reader leaves; the midpoint changes what the protagonist wants or believes, not just what happens; the ending is caused by a choice the protagonist could only make after everything that came before.

Subplots carry theme or contrast. Each needs its own small arc and must converge with the main line by the third act or be cut.

POV plan in the outline: whose head, what distance, which chapters. Do not change the plan mid-draft without updating the bible.

Scene design

A scene is a unit where something changes. If nothing changes, it is not a scene; cut it or merge it.

• Goal / conflict / outcome (action scenes) alternating with reaction / dilemma / decision (sequel scenes). Alternate by need, not by rule; three action scenes in a row can be right.
• Enter late, leave early. Start after the greeting, end before the reflection.
• Outcome types: yes-but, no-and, no-but. A clean "yes" ends tension.
• Subtext: what the scene is about is not what the characters talk about.
• Withholding: every scene should have one thing the reader wants to know and does not yet.
• Scene length follows weight. A two-line scene can be the most important in the chapter.
• Sensory anchor: one or two specific details the POV character would actually notice, chosen for meaning, not decoration.

Scene plans (from scene-generator) contain all of this; prose (from chapter-writer) delivers it without naming it.

Character depth

Characters in machine fiction are reasonable, self-aware, and consistent. Human characters are none of these reliably.

• Want vs. need: what they pursue vs. what would actually fix them. They usually pursue the wrong one until late.
• Contradiction: a trait that fights another trait. Brave and petty. Loving and controlling.
• Wrong self-knowledge: they misread their own motives. The reader sees it before they do.
• A verbal signature per character: sentence length, favorite evasion, what they never say, 말투 and 존댓말 register (Korean).
• Secondary characters want things too, and not things convenient to the plot.
• Antagonists are right from where they stand.
• Arc: the character at the end could not have made the choice the character at the start makes, and vice versa. Show the turn through action, never through a realization stated in narration.

Bible entries hold: want, need, wound, fear, contradiction, verbal signature, relationships, and a per-chapter state line.

Dialogue

• People do not answer the question asked. They deflect, interrupt, answer a different one, repeat themselves, lie.
• Cut the greeting, the small talk, and the last line that summarizes the exchange.
• "Said" or nothing. Action beats instead of adverbs.
• Nobody explains what both speakers already know.
• Silence and refusal to answer are dialogue.
• Korean: fix each pair's 존댓말/반말 relationship in the bible and let shifts be events. Dialogue in 큰따옴표; 속마음 without quotes in the narration.
• Japanese: 「」 for speech, line break after each utterance, one 一人称 and 語尾 set per character.

Prose and POV

• Distance: decide how close the narration sits to the POV character's thoughts and keep it. Free indirect style lets the character's diction color the narration; use it or do not, consistently.
• Filter words (saw, felt, noticed, realized, seemed) put glass between reader and experience. Cut most.
• Emotion: never named when it can be shown by what the character does, avoids, or misperceives. One physical reaction at most; often none.
• Rhythm: sentence length follows the character's state. Panic is short. Grief can be long. Uniform 15-20 word sentences are the loudest AI tell in fiction.
• Figurative language: from the POV character's world. A fisherman does not think in software metaphors. Density per the voice fingerprint.
• Time: summary for the uneventful, scene for the consequential. Do not scene everything.
• Chapter endings: cliffhanger, question, reversal, image, or a quiet line with weight. Rotate. Never end with the character reflecting on what the chapter meant.

Fiction-specific tells (in addition to quality-bar.md)

• Every chapter opens with weather, light, or the character waking.
• The protagonist notices exactly the details the plot will need.
• Characters cry, tremble, or feel their stomach drop on schedule.
• Antagonist monologues that explain motivation.
• A wise secondary character who says the theme.
• Coincidences that help the protagonist (coincidences that hurt are fine).
• Backstory delivered in a paragraph the moment a character is introduced.
• Flashbacks that answer the question the reader just asked.
• The final chapter that revisits every character for a bow.
• Metaphors that explain themselves ("like a wound that never healed, the memory...").

Length and format notes

• English: 70-100K words commercial; 55-80K literary/debut; 90-150K epic fantasy. Chapters 2,500-5,000 typical, but vary.
• Korean: 장편 80,000-120,000자 (공백 제외); 경장편 50,000-80,000자; 웹소설 회당 5,000-5,500자, 100회+. 문단 첫 줄 들여쓰기는 출판 단계에서.
• Japanese: 長編 100,000-150,000字; ライトノベル 80,000-120,000字.

Web-serial fiction (웹소설, web novel): every episode ends on a hook, first three episodes must establish premise and voice, chapter = episode of fixed length. Tell the architect in PRD.md.

Validation (architect scoring for fiction)

Inciting incident placement; midpoint that changes belief; escalation per act; each subplot converges; each POV character has an arc; setup/payoff table complete; no chapter without a change; ending caused by protagonist's choice; timeline consistent; no two consecutive chapters with the same emotional shape.

Visuals

Optional for adult fiction; expected for children's, middle-grade, illustrated editions, and web novels (cover per volume, character sheets). When used: 0-4 illustrations per chapter by weight; chapter headers as motifs, not scenes; never illustrate a withheld reveal; character sheets locked before any scene illustration so faces and costumes hold. Maps for secondary-world fantasy are figure-engineer base layers (SVG from bible geography) stylized by the illustrator. All images through /book-visuals; the art bible's character constants come from bible.md.