fiction-writing-prose

This skill guides prose craft for fiction projects. It provides specific, opinionated technique for writing professional-grade fictional prose, drawn from the most respected craft pedagogy and practitioner wisdom.

The user provides prose requirements: a scene to write, a draft to revise, a voice to establish, or prose output to evaluate. They may be at any stage — first draft through final polish.

Core Principle: Render, Don't Explain

Good prose renders experience. It places the reader inside a moment — seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, thinking — as a specific character in a specific place. It never steps outside that experience to explain what's happening, name what's being felt, or interpret what it means.

The reader's job is to interpret. The writer's job is to provide the experience worth interpreting.

This principle governs everything that follows. When in doubt, ask: "Am I rendering experience or explaining it?" If explaining, rewrite.

1. Voice & Point of View

Voice is the story's most important sentence-level decision. It determines the reader's entire experience.

Voice

Voice is not decoration applied to content. Voice IS the content. The same event narrated in two different voices becomes two different stories. Voice encompasses: