/voice-style

name: voice-style
description: This skill should be used when the user asks to "create a style sheet", "style guide", "house style", "keep the voice consistent", "voice drift", "British or American spelling", "character voices", "lint the prose", "prose check", "filter words", "said-bookisms", "overused words", "repeated phrases", "similar character names", "voice fingerprints", or wants to record and enforce the voice and surface conventions of a story project. NOT for rewriting dialogue to make the voices distinct when everyone sounds the same (use line-editing), or a character's profile or arc (use character-management).

Voice & Style

Overview

Record the book's voice and surface conventions in `style-sheet.md`, then enforce them. The style sheet is the copyeditor's record: dialect and spelling choices, capitalisation, hyphenation, numbers, dialogue punctuation, a one-line voice summary per major speaker, and a watch list. Its frontmatter is machine-readable, and `story prose` counts violations and prose tics in every chapter. Use this skill so voice stays the same across chapters, drafting sessions, and agents.

Prerequisites

A story project with `story.md` in the root. `story init` scaffolds `style-sheet.md`; older projects can add it with `story init '<title>' --dir . --force`, which only adds missing files, or by copying `references/style-sheet-guide.md`'s frontmatter block by hand.

Language

Read `language` in `story.md` (a BCP 47 tag; a missing field means `en`). The style sheet records the conventions of that language, and the voice description is written about prose in it. `dialect: british` and `american` and the built-in word lists behind filter words, -ly adverbs, and said-bookisms are English. For another language, set `dialect: unspecified`, record spelling variants as `preferred` entries, and settle dialogue and punctuation with `../line-editing/references/language-conventions.md`. When `story prose` or `story voices` reports a check skipped for the book's language, do that pass by reading (see `references/prose-checks.md`, Other languages).

When to Use

• Starting a project, once the first chapter or a writing sample exists
• Before drafting when voice has drifted between chapters or sessions
• When a copyedit pass needs a style decision recorded (the copyedit itself belongs to the `line-editing` skill, which reads this file)
• When the user wants a mechanical prose check before sharing a draft
• Recording each character's voice (the style sheet's Character Voices line, `voice-words`, `voice-avoid`) and checking it with `story voices`
• NOT for character personality or arc (use `character-management`)
• NOT for scene-level craft such as deep POV or subtext (use `scene-craft`)
• NOT for the line-by-line prose pass itself (line edit, copyedit, read-aloud, proof): use the `line-editing` skill, which reads this style sheet and runs these checks
• NOT for rewriting dialogue so the voices sound distinct when everyone sounds the same: use the `line-editing` skill's voice differentiation pass, which follows the voices recorded here

Workflow

1. Build or update the style sheet

1. Read `story.md` (genre, POV, tense, Tone & Style), `style-sheet.md`, and two or three drafted chapters or a sample the user supplies. If there is no prose yet, ask the user for a paragraph that sounds right or three published books whose voice is close. 2. Fill the sections in `style-sheet.md` following `references/style-sheet-guide.md`. Record decisions the prose already makes; do not invent new ones silently. When the draft is inconsistent (both *grey* and *gray*), ask the user which form wins. 3. Set the frontmatter:

• `dialect: british | american | unspecified` (`unspecified` for a

book not in English)

• one `preferred` entry per variant: `use` is the house form, `avoid`

the form to flag. Repeat entries for several variants of one word.

• `watch-words`: words or phrases this book overuses
• `allow-words`: built-in filter words, adverbs, or dialect spellings

this book uses on purpose (a proper noun like *Harbor Street* in a British book)

• `samples`: files or folders of the author's own prose that sound right,

relative to the project folder: an earlier book (`../book-one`) or chapters the author has approved, each file named on its own (`chapters/chapter-01.md`, never `chapters/`, which warns `style-sample-own-chapters`). A listed chapter is the measure, so `story prose` does not compare it. Ask the user which; never list prose the agent drafted and the author has not approved, or the profile measures the agent's voice. With at least 2,000 words of narration, `story prose` compares each chapter with the samples instead of fixed limits 4. Character Voices entries summarise each character file's Voice & Speech Patterns section in one line and link to it. Record words a speaker reaches for in the character file's `voice-words` list and words they would never say in `voice-avoid`, so `story voices` can check them. The character file is canon; if the two disagree, fix the style sheet, or ask the user before changing the character.

2. Draft and revise against it

• `chapter-writing` and `discovery-drafting` read `style-sheet.md` before

drafting. Write in the recorded voice, use the house spellings, and give each speaker the recorded patterns.

• When a new convention appears mid-draft (a new invented term, a number

style), add it to the style sheet in the same change.

3. Run the prose check

story prose .

The report lists, per chapter: sentence count, average and longest length, and spread; filter words and -ly adverbs per 1,000 narration words (dialogue is excluded); plain and said-bookism dialogue tags; words echoed within 30 words; watch-word counts; and avoided spellings. Across the manuscript it lists repeated 4-word phrases a