creative_writing_craft v1.0.0

name: creative-writing-craft description: Improve fiction drafts at the craft level: choose scene over summary, write dialogue that sounds like real people, and run structured revision passes. Triggers when a draft needs scene/summary diagnosis, dialogue rewriting, or a revision plan. metadata: category: writing

Creative Writing Craft

Purpose

Fix the three things that separate amateur fiction from professional fiction: flat exposition where scenes belong, stiff dialogue that sounds like the author, and revision that is just spellcheck. This skill diagnoses a draft and prescribes specific craft fixes, with before/after examples in references/craft-examples.md.

Workflow

1. Scene vs summary triage

Read the draft section by section and mark each as scene (real-time dramatization) or summary (compressed narration). A section is a scene when a character pursues a goal, conflict rises, and events play out moment by moment. A section is summary when it reports what happened.

Rules:

• The turning points (inciting incident, midpoint reversal, climax, resolution) must be scenes. Never summarize them.
• Use summary deliberately: time passing, transitions between scenes, backstory the reader needs but should not live through, pacing control after an intense scene.
• If a draft is one long summary, pick the 2-3 most dramatic moments and expand those into scenes first.
• Every scene needs: a character with a goal, an obstacle, rising tension, and a change by the end (the scene value shifts up or down).

2. Dialogue rewrite

For each dialogue passage:

1. State the subtext before touching the lines: what does each character actually want from this exchange, and what will they not say directly? If they say exactly what they mean, rewrite around it.
2. Strip tags to "said" and beats. Replace said-bookisms (barked, growled, exclaimed, retorted) with "said" or an action beat that shows the emotion. Avoid adverbs modifying "said".
3. Voice check. Cover the names: could you tell who is speaking from vocabulary, sentence length, and habit alone? Give each character a syntactic habit (short bursts vs winding sentences), a diction range, and one crutch word or avoidance.
4. Cut greetings and filler. Real talk is trimmed; keep the interruptions, the oblique answers, the lines where a character changes the subject.
5. Read-aloud test. Read the exchange out loud. Cut any line a character would never say to the other person in this situation, and any line that explains what both speakers already know.

3. Revision passes (big to small, never mixed)

Run one pass at a time, in this order. Each pass is blind to the others.

1. Story pass. Write a one-sentence summary of what each scene does. Delete or merge scenes that do not advance the plot, deepen a character, raise the stakes, or deliver needed information. Check that scenes connect with "therefore" or "but", not just "and then". Check the protagonist actually changes between page one and the last page.
2. Structure pass. Read only the first sentence of every paragraph or section. If those sentences do not form a coherent spine, fix the order before touching prose.
3. Cut pass. Kill warm-up openings and summary closings that repeat what the scene just showed. Cut backstory that the reader does not need yet.
4. Dialogue pass. Run the dialogue rewrite (step 2) across the draft.
5. Line pass. Replace vague verbs and abstract nouns with concrete specifics. Break the rhythm: vary sentence length so prose does not drone. One pass on word choice only.
6. Read-aloud pass. Only now. Read the whole thing aloud. Every stumble is a spot the reader will stumble; fix by cutting words first, swapping words second.

Output Contract

When asked to revise a draft, return:

• Diagnosis: a short list of what is wrong, each item tied to one craft principle (scene/summary choice, dialogue subtext, voice, or pass order).
• Rewritten sections: before/after for the worst passages, with a one-line note per change explaining the principle applied.
• Revision plan: the ordered passes still needed, with what each pass should target in this specific draft.
• No generic praise filler. If a passage works, say so in one line and move on.

Operating Rules

1. Never summarize a turning point. Scenes carry the weight; summary carries the transitions.
2. "Show, don't tell" is a preference, not a law. Summary is a tool. Use it on purpose.
3. Dialogue must do at least one of: reveal character, advance plot, shift a relationship, deliver necessary information. Otherwise cut the scene.
4. Never polish prose that might get cut. Story pass always comes first.
5. All factual claims about published craft (book titles, author advice, quoted rules) come from the sources file. Do not invent quotes.
6. Worked examples live in references/craft-examples.md; the scene/summary decision criteria and the full revision checklist live in references/revision-checklist.md. Keep this file tight.