story-decisions
Story Decisions
Story decisions evaporate faster than code decisions. The reasoning behind a character's age, a meeting scene's tone, a timeline ordering, a rejected plot thread — it lives in brainstorm sessions that get compacted, in conversations that end, in the author's head between writing sessions. A month later, the question resurfaces: "why did we make the character 8 instead of 10?" and the reasoning is gone. Worse, a writer agent drafts a scene that contradicts a decision nobody recorded.
Record decisions while the reasoning is fresh — in the moment the choice is made, not retroactively. A decision captured from memory after a long brainstorm flattens the nuance: alternatives blur together, constraints lose specificity, reasoning becomes post-hoc justification.
What to Record
Every decision entry answers three questions: what was decided, why it was chosen, and what else was considered.
- The choice itself. State it concretely — name the characters, scenes, mechanics, or world elements affected. "We decided on a lighter tone" is vague. "The Route 1 meeting uses comedic misunderstanding, not a shared-threat scenario" is a decision.
- The reasoning. What constraints, goals, or creative instincts drove the choice? Was it narrative pacing? Character voice? Thematic consistency? Reasoning without specifics is opinion — "felt right" doesn't help the writer who needs to execute the decision six sessions later.
- Alternatives rejected. Name them and say why they were rejected. "We considered a combat-first meeting but rejected it because the character doesn't have battle experience yet and it would require explaining their competence" is the most valuable sentence in any story decision record — it prevents the next brainstormer from re-proposing the rejected approach.
- Constraints discovered. Often the decision itself is less interesting than the constraint that forced it. "The timeline doesn't allow more than two days on Route 1" explains more than "we compressed the Route 1 arc."
- What changed. If this decision revises a prior one, reference what it replaces and why circumstances shifted. Story direction evolves — that's fine, but the evolution should be traceable.
Where Decisions Live — Inline, Not Separate
Decisions are written inline with the artifacts they relate to in the kb (meridian context kb). Not in a separate decisions file. Not in a master log.
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