Series Continuity

Overview

Plan and maintain sequels, prequels, and companion books as linked Story Skills projects. Each book stays a standalone project with its own story.md, characters, world, chapters, and continuity files. Books point at each other through story.md frontmatter, and story series checks the canon they share.

• series - kebab-case series id shared by every book, such as the-ember-cycle
• series-title - optional retail series name, such as The Ember Cycle, that the metadata sheet prints in place of the id
• book-number - publication order (1, 2, 3...); 0 for a prequel published later, a decimal such as 1.5 for a between-books novella
• follows - paths to books set earlier in the story's chronology
• precedes - paths to books set later in the story's chronology

Chronology and publication order are separate. A prequel written after the first book has book-number: 2 and lists ../book-one under precedes.

This skill owns the book-level layer: linked books and the canon they share. The within-serial installment layer — how serial or episodic installments are structured — is covered by the genre-craft skill's serial/episodic structure reference.

Links are relative paths from the book root, and every link needs a matching backlink: if book two lists ../book-one under follows, book one must list ../book-two under precedes. Keep sibling books in the same parent folder so the paths stay short and portable.

When to Use