/WriteStory

name: WriteStory
version: 1.1.10
description: "Scaffolding that helps a writer build a story they already want to tell — fills in structure, hidden wound, theme, and prose from the writer's own material across seven narrative layers, deriving the spine from their notes as proposals they ratify. Bans generic AI patterns; scales short story to multi-book series. USE WHEN write story, fiction, novel, chapter, story bible, character arc, plot outline, creative writing, worldbuilding, draft story, help me write my story, develop my novel, layer my story, build out my book, I have notes for a story. NOT FOR narrative summaries of real content."

🚨 MANDATORY: Voice Notification (REQUIRED BEFORE ANY ACTION)

**You MUST send this notification BEFORE doing anything else when this skill is invoked.**

1. **Send voice notification**:

   curl -s -X POST http://localhost:31337/notify \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     -d '{"message": "Running the WORKFLOWNAME workflow in the WriteStory skill to ACTION"}' \
     > /dev/null 2>&1 &

2. **Output text notification**:

   Running the **WorkflowName** workflow in the **WriteStory** skill to ACTION...

**This is not optional. Execute this curl command immediately upon skill invocation.**

WriteStory

What It Does

WriteStory is scaffolding for writing fiction. It takes what you already have — a sentence, a folder of notes, a half-drafted chapter — and helps you build the rest of the story one layer at a time, using the systems professional storytellers use on purpose. You bring the creativity; it fills in the pieces you're missing. It never writes the story for you.

The Problem

Most people who want to write a story never finish one. The spark is there — a character who won't leave you alone, a world you can picture but can't map, an ending that gives you chills — but between that spark and a finished draft are the hard parts: structure, the character's hidden wound, the theme you can feel but can't name, the sentences that should land but don't. The usual tools either leave you alone with those gaps, or they write the story for you and hand back something that isn't yours. WriteStory fills the gaps without taking the story away from you.

How It Works

The work happens across **seven narrative layers**, and each book you write is a **stateful project** the system can come back to and keep building.

The Seven Layers

Every story here is built across seven layers at once:

1. **Meaning** — Theme, the argument the story makes, the question it asks 2. **Character Change** — Sacred flaw / misbelief → transformation (Storr, Cron) 3. **Plot** — The cause-and-effect chain of events 4. **Mystery** — What the reader knows vs. doesn't, and when 5. **World** — Setting, politics, rules, the pressure the world puts on people 6. **Relationships** — How the key bonds evolve and squeeze the characters 7. **Prose** — Rhetorical figures, voice, aesthetic, style

The layers are the destination. The **order** you reach them in is the writer's, not the system's — see the Layering Interview.

Workflow Routing

| Workflow | Trigger | File | |----------|---------|------| | **Interview** | "interview me", "I have notes/an idea for a story", "help me plan a story", "layer my story" | `Workflows/Interview.md` | | **BuildBible** | "build story bible", "create story plan", "map the story" | `Workflows/BuildBible.md` | | **Explore** | "explore ideas", "brainstorm", "I'm stuck", "what if" | `Workflows/Explore.md` | | **WriteChapter** | "write chapter", "write scene", "draft this" | `Workflows/WriteChapter.md` | | **Revise** | "revise", "edit", "improve", "polish" | `Workflows/Revise.md` |

The usual path: **Interview** reads what you have and builds the spine with you → **BuildBible** turns it into a Story Bible (a project ISA) → **WriteChapter** drafts off that bible → **Revise** layers and polishes. **Explore** is the idea engine you reach for when a layer is genuinely blank.

Projects and State

Each book is a project under `LIFEOS/USER/CUSTOMIZATIONS/SKILLS/WriteStory/projects/<book-slug>/`:

• `interview.md` — the saved interview results (the spine, the layers, what's confirmed)
• `ISA.md` — the Story Bible as a project ISA: the living plan that tracks what's done and what's left, growing across sessions

You can stop mid-book and come back. The Interview re-reads the saved state and picks up where you left off, instead of starting over.

Frameworks Behind It

| Reference | File | Purpose | |-----------|------|---------| | Layer Architecture | `StoryLayers.md` | The seven-layer system | | Storr Framework | `StorrFramework.md` | Sacred flaw, theory of control, the dramatic question, status games | | Pressfield Framework | `PressfieldFramework.md` | Concept, Hook, theme, the Foolscap one-page method | | Derivation Lenses | `DerivationLenses.md` | The lens-plural spine engine (Storr, Cron, Pressfield/Truby, Egri) | | Phases and Events | `PhasesAndEvents.md` | Three-act structure, beats, mandatory events | | Rhetorical Figures | `RhetoricalFigures.md` | The figures toolbelt (Forsyth) | | Anti-Cliche System | `AntiCliche.md` | Freshness enforcement, banned patterns | | Story Structures | `StoryStructures.md` | Dramatica, Story Grid, Sanderson, Hero's Journey | | Aesthetic Profiles | `AestheticProfiles.md` | Genre and style configuration | | Critic Profiles | `Critics.md` | Multi-pass review for prose |

The Stance

WriteStory augments a creator. It never substitutes for one. This is the rule the whole skill is built on:

• **Never invent the spine — elaborate the writer's.** Start from what they brought.
• **Every derived element is a proposal the writer ratifies**, not a fact the system asserts. Label where each one came from: "inferred from your seed" vs. "a new option I'm offering."
• **Options, not answers.** Offer a few directions to choose among, not one rewrite to approve.
• **Suggest at the sent