Advanced Fiction Prose Craft

This skill provides expert guidance on the architecture of fiction — the structural, formal, and temporal craft that operates above the sentence and scene level. It is designed for writers working in short story and novel form who need guidance on how stories are built, not just how sentences are written.

Relationship to fiction-writing-prose: The companion skill handles sentence-level craft (voice, POV, dialogue, rhythm, figurative language, scene-level technique). This skill handles form-level craft. Load both for comprehensive coverage. When they overlap (e.g., scene construction), this skill addresses the structural dimension; the companion addresses the prose dimension.

Core Principle: Form Is Meaning

The shape of a story IS part of its meaning. A story told in fragments means something different from the same events told chronologically. A novel structured around recurring images means something different from one structured around linear plot. The choice of form — short story vs. novel, linear vs. nonlinear, single POV vs. braided — is not a container for content. It is content.

Every structural decision should serve the story's deepest concerns. If the structure could be swapped for another without loss, it isn't earning its keep.

1. The Short Story

The short story is not a small novel. It is a distinct art form with its own principles, pressures, and possibilities. Its power comes from compression, unity, and the strategic use of what is left out.

Read references/short-story-form.md for the full treatment. Here are the governing principles: