Draft narrative fiction that serves the story's needs. This skill covers craft technique — the how of prose. Project-specific voice, character speech patterns, and formatting conventions come from style files. Read those before writing.

Back-and-forth with the author. They describe what they want, you draft, they react, you revise. The conversation IS the feedback loop — don't produce a "final" draft on the first pass. Offer options when the direction is ambiguous. Ask about intent when a scene could go multiple ways.

You receive a brief (scene outline, beat list, emotional arc, relevant context) and produce a draft. No author in the loop — the draft goes to critics next, not to a human. This means:

Open scenes in the middle of something happening. The reader should orient through action and context, not through setup narration. A character already mid-task, mid-conversation, or mid-thought gives the reader something to track immediately.

Avoid:

The exception is when the setting itself IS the story beat — a character seeing a destroyed city for the first time, or arriving somewhere that changes everything. Then the setting description carries narrative weight.

Every scene needs to change something — character knowledge, relationships, power dynamics, stakes, emotional state. If nothing is different at the end than at the beginning, the scene is a candidate for cutting.

Before writing, identify what changes. In interactive mode, ask the author. In autonomous mode, extract it from the brief. If the brief doesn't specify what changes, flag it: .

Stay in the established POV. First person means the narrator can only report what they perceive, think, and feel — not what other characters are thinking. Third limited means access to one character's interiority per scene.

POV violations are the most common craft error in AI-generated fiction. Watch for:

Demonstrate character states through behavior, dialogue, and physical response rather than narrating them directly.

Telling: "He was nervous about the meeting." Showing: "He checked his watch for the third time, then straightened a tie that was already straight."

This doesn't mean never tell. Summary narration is appropriate for:

The heuristic: tell for logistics, show for moments that matter.

Dialogue should do at least two things simultaneously: advance the plot AND reveal character, or reveal character AND build tension, or build tension AND seed information. Single-purpose dialogue ("As you know, the reactor is on the third floor") feels flat because real conversation is never purely transactional.

Subtext. Characters rarely say exactly what they mean. They deflect, understate, change the subject, answer a different question than the one asked. The gap between what's said and what's meant is where characterization lives.

Voice differentiation. Each character should sound distinct enough that you could identify the speaker without dialogue tags. This comes from vocabulary, sentence structure, speech patterns, and what they choose to talk about — not from accent spelling or verbal tics bolted on.

Action beats over dialogue tags. "Said" is invisible; use it freely. Avoid creative tags ("he exclaimed," "she retorted") — they draw attention to the tag instead of the dialogue. Use action beats to show how something is said: "She set the cup down carefully. 'That's not what I meant.'"

Vary sentence length and structure to control reading speed. Short sentences speed things up — good for action, tension, shock. Longer sentences slow the reader down — good for reflection, description, complex emotion.

Scene-level pacing: alternate between high-tension and lower-tension beats. Sustained intensity becomes numbing. The quiet moment after the crisis is what gives the crisis weight.

Chapter-level pacing: end on forward momentum. Not necessarily a cliffhanger — an unanswered question, a new complication, an emotional shift. Give the reader a reason to continue.

Ground scenes in specific sensory details rather than generic description. "The forest" is nowhere. "Pine needles crunching underfoot, the smell of wet bark" is a place.

Use the POV character's sensory priorities. A chef notices smells. A musician notices sounds. A soldier notices exits. What a character pays attention to reveals who they are.

Avoid cataloging all five senses mechanically. One or two vivid, specific details do more work than a comprehensive sensory inventory.

The POV character's inner life — thoughts, reactions, memories, associations — is what distinguishes prose fiction from screenplay. Don't neglect it.

But interiority should be specific and revealing, not generic emotional labeling. "She felt sad" is a label. "She kept reaching for her phone to text him before remembering" is interiority that shows the reader something about grief.

In high-action scenes, interiority contracts to fragments — quick reactions, snap judgments. In reflective scenes, it expands. Match the depth of inner experience to the pace of the scene.

When reviewing your own draft (or receiving critique), watch for these patterns:

Style files passed alongside this skill contain project-specific voice guidance — character speech patterns, tonal registers, formatting conventions, scene-type techniques. Read them before drafting. They override general craft advice when they're more specific.