Novel Writing

A Codex skill for fiction planning, chapter drafting, scene continuation, and revision that stays concrete about narrative problems instead of giving vague workshop-style feedback.

This skill is meant for longform fiction work where narrative judgment matters.

It helps Codex:

• plan scenes, chapters, arcs, and whole stories with an explicit causal spine
• draft or continue fiction prose without collapsing everything into summary
• keep dialogue embodied without attaching arbitrary gestures to every line
• review prose with concrete findings instead of soft impressions
• protect style-bearing material during revision
• check whether scenes obey realism and access limits

Use this repo when the task is mainly about fiction craft:

• scene, chapter, arc, volume, or whole-story planning
• standalone story synopsis or canon-document structure
• prose continuation
• rewrite while preserving voice
• structural review of a chapter
• character introduction quality
• realism constraints inside a scene

If your main problem is project recovery, chapter-state tracking, or workspace governance across a large novel, use novel-project-strategy alongside this skill.

• Use novel-writing. Review this chapter and give concrete findings with locations, not vague feedback.
• Plan a chapter that introduces the rival clearly and moves the relationship forward.
• Build a standalone volume outline that separates pre-story state, causal story, author truth, and reveal boundaries.
• Continue this scene without flattening the author's voice or cutting style-bearing detail.
• Review this meeting or laboratory scene for transcript-like dialogue, decorative gestures, and procedural action that does not change the human exchange.

Manual install:

git clone https://github.com/wgwtest/novel-writing.git
mkdir -p ~/.codex/skills
cp -R novel-writing/novel-writing ~/.codex/skills/novel-writing

For local development with easy upgrades:

git clone https://github.com/wgwtest/novel-writing.git
mkdir -p ~/.codex/skills
ln -s "$(pwd)/novel-writing/novel-writing" ~/.codex/skills/novel-writing

Restart Codex after installing or updating the skill.

On Windows, maintainers can install the development checkout as a junction with backup protection:

powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\scripts\install-local-dev-link.ps1

Installer-style inputs:

• repo: wgwtest/novel-writing
• path: novel-writing

• novel-writing/: installable skill package
• scripts/: local development and package validation helpers
• CODEX_START_HERE.md: maintainer startup and release workflow
• README.md: landing page for humans
• .github/: templates for issues and pull requests

The installable skill lives in a subdirectory so the repository root can hold public-facing files without leaking extra repo metadata into the package.

• novel-project-strategy: longform fiction workflow, reload order, chapter-state, and sync discipline
• project-engineering-strategy: engineering workflow governance for code projects

If you want to improve the skill, start with CONTRIBUTING.md. The highest-value contributions are better prompts, cleaner narrative diagnostics, and sharper boundaries around when this skill should or should not fire.

MIT. See LICENSE.

This repository is the source of truth for novel-writing. Edit the installable package only under novel-writing/; local Codex installations and copies in other repositories are runtime links or derived mirrors, never editable sources. Run powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\scripts\check-package.ps1 before committing or releasing a change.