Genre Craft

Overview

Genre-specific structural packs: the codified craft each genre expects, as checkable rules, ledgers, and audits. Packs cover mystery (fair play + clue ledger), romance (beats + HEA contract), thriller (ticking clock, power imbalance, set pieces), horror (dread/terror ordering, monster rules), MG/YA (category constraints), science fiction (load-bearing speculative elements), and serial/episodic structure. Use at story-init (pick the pack, set the constraints) and in revision (run the pack's audit).

Prerequisites

A story project must already exist (created via the story-init skill) with its genre recorded in story.md. A plot structure (plot-structure) should exist or be in progress.

When to Use

• Starting or re-categorizing a story in one of the covered genres
• Planning genre load-bearing elements (clues, clocks, season goals)
• Auditing a draft against its genre's contract
• NOT for line-level genre voice (that belongs to the better-writing skill's genre work); these packs are structural
• NOT for literary fiction as a pack — its conventions resist deterministic encoding by design

Workflow

1. Pick the pack. Read story.md for genre/sub-genre and load the matching reference:
   • Mystery / crime / detective → references/mystery-fair-play.md
   • Romance → references/romance-beats.md
   • Thriller / action / suspense → references/thriller.md
   • Horror → references/horror.md
   • Middle grade / young adult → references/mg-ya.md
   • Science fiction → references/scifi-pipeline.md
   • Serial / episodic / web serial → references/serial-episodic.md
   • Multi-genre stories: load each applicable pack; where packs conflict (e.g. horror's slow dread vs. thriller's cliffhangers), decide with the user which genre's contract dominates per section and record the decision in story.md notes.
2. Set the constraints up front. Apply the pack's structural requirements during planning:
   • Mystery: create continuity/clues/ and ledger every clue and red herring via story add clue "..." --planted chapter-NN --payoff chapter-NN, with significance-delayed frontmatter where the reader sees the clue before understanding it and red-herring: true on misleading clues (story add clue "..." --red-herring; their payoff is the chapter that debunks them). Run story clues . for the fair-play matrix and story diagram clues for the plant-to-reveal flow.
   • Thriller: log every promised deadline in continuity/promises/ and track story-time in plot/timeline.md.
   • Serial: record season-goal: in story.md and episode-question: in each installment's frontmatter.
   • MG/YA: record target-words: in story.md and check the category constraints (protagonist age, minimized adult involvement).
   • Sci-fi: write the speculative element's rules, costs, and limits in worldbuilding/systems/ before the climax exploits them.
3. Draft against the pack. Use the pack's beat concepts and rules alongside the chapter-writing workflow and the scene-craft scene-grain tools. Cross-link thriller pacing to the Fichtean curve note in references/thriller.md, and check thriller and serial chapter endings with story pacing . (chapter hook values, and runs of resolution endings); cross-link serial book-level canon to the series-continuity skill.
4. Run the pack audit in revision. Each reference ends with an audit checklist. Run it as part of a developmental revision pass (see the revision-continuity skill) and record findings in the revision plan.
5. Record genre decisions. Any deliberate deviation from the pack (a romance without a black moment, a mystery that withholds) is a story decision: note it in story.md with the reason, so later audits don't "fix" it.

Conventions

• Pack-specific entities use the project conventions: kebab-case ids, YAML frontmatter, _index.md registries where a collection exists (continuity/clues/ follows the continuity/promises/ pattern).
• Clue planted must precede payoff (story continuity flags payoff-before- plant as an error); deadline promises follow the same ordering logic as promise/question ordering.
• Bidirectional links apply: clues link suspects and chapters; suspects' character files link back to the clue ids that implicate or clear them.
• Genre audits live in the revision plan or continuity/ audit files — never only in chat.

CLI Maintenance

Use the Story CLI when it is available. If story is not installed, use bun run story -- from the Story Skills repository checkout or the bundled fallback node ../story-maintenance/scripts/story.js with the same arguments, resolving the path relative to this skill folder. If no CLI is available, perform the registry, backlink, and word-count checks manually.

After adding or changing genre entities (clues, deadlines, season goals, episode questions):

story reindex .
story links .
story validate .
story continuity .
story clues .     # mystery: fair-play matrix and warnings

Reference Files

• references/mystery-fair-play.md - Fair-play doctrine, clue-planting techniques, red-herring discipline (red-herring: true), gather-suspects reveal, clue ledger convention, the story clues fair-play matrix and story diagram clues
• references/romance-beats.md - Widely-published romance beat concepts (paraphrased), HEA/HFN reader contract, the black moment
• references/thriller.md - Ticking clock honored once promised, power imbalance, set pieces, mini-cliffhanger endings, Fichtean curve pairing
• references/horror.md - Dread vs. terror vs. gross-out ordering, the uncanny, monster rules stated early, recovery periods
• references/mg-ya.md - Word-count norms, age-appropriate voice/stakes, minimized adult involvement, content boundaries
• references/scifi-pipeline.md - Speculative element must be load-bearing, rules stated before exploited, worldbuilding→plot pipeline
• references/serial-episodic.md - Season/volume goal, per-episode dramatic question, a reward in every installment, recap discipline