Prose Writing
Shape agent-drafted fiction and narrative copy with deliberate psychic distance, free indirect discourse, and paragraph-level immersion instead of flat middle-distance AI prose.
Overview
Prose-writing is a journey-wide agent skill that teaches sentence- and paragraph-level immersion patterns for narrative fiction—usable whenever a solo builder needs to revise prose for psychic distance and voice before p
Install
npx skills add https://github.com/haowjy/creative-writing-skills --skill prose-writingWhat is this skill?
- Psychic-distance continuum: move closer for emotional peaks and interiority, pull back for transitions and time compress
- Free indirect discourse patterns to color third-person narration with character voice without explicit thought tags
- Explicit warning that default AI prose sits at a flat middle distance—skill pushes closer when stakes matter
- Designed as reference craft layered on top of project-specific style files the agent reads first
- model-invocable: false—intended as human-orchestrated revision guidance alongside style files
Adoption & trust: 1 installs on skills.sh; 241 GitHub stars; 3/3 security scanners passed (skills.sh audits).
What problem does it solve?
Agent-drafted fiction reads safe and flat at a constant middle psychic distance, so readers never feel pulled into character consciousness or emotional peaks.
Who is it for?
Indie authors, newsletter fiction writers, and content builders who revise narrative scenes with an agent and maintain separate style files per project.
Skip if: Teams shipping only non-narrative SaaS UIs, API docs, or transactional copy with no fiction craft requirements.
When should I use this skill?
Writing or revising prose: sentence-level and paragraph-level craft that pulls readers into the story; read project style files first.
What do I get? / Deliverables
Revised scenes use deliberate close/far distance shifts and free indirect discourse so third-person prose carries character perspective without sounding like generic LLM copy.
- Scene or paragraph revisions applying psychic distance and free indirect discourse
- Notes on when to move closer vs pull back in a passage
Recommended Skills
Journey fit
Useful at every journey phase - explore requirements and options before committing to a direction.
Where it fits
Explore how close narration should feel for a protagonist before committing to a full serial outline.
Polish a sample chapter prototype to test whether readers stay immersed past the first scene break.
Revise weekly fiction installments so emotional beats use closer psychic distance than transition paragraphs.
Apply narrative rhythm to developer-facing stories or case-study docs without slipping into stiff corporate tone.
How it compares
Use as craft reference layered on style files—not as a one-click story generator or marketing SEO skill pack.
Common Questions / FAQ
Who is prose-writing for?
Solo builders and indie authors using coding agents to draft or revise narrative fiction, serials, or long-form content who already maintain project-specific style files.
When should I use prose-writing?
Use it during Grow content drafting, Validate story prototypes, Build docs with narrative sections, or anytime you revise scenes—especially when emotional peaks need closer psychic distance or third-person voice needs free indirect coloring.
Is prose-writing safe to install?
It is reference prose craft with no shell or network hooks in the skill itself; review the Security Audits panel on this page before trusting any community skill in your agent workflow.
SKILL.md
READMESKILL.md - Prose Writing
# Prose Writing How prose pulls readers in. Style files carry the project's specific voice; read them before writing. This skill covers the patterns that create immersion regardless of project. ## Psychic Distance The distance between the reader and the character's consciousness. Gardner's continuum runs from far ("It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of the doorway.") to close ("Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul."). Control this deliberately. Move closer for emotional peaks, character-defining moments, and interiority. Pull back for transitions, time compression, and establishing context. The rhythm of close and far gives prose its emotional shape. Default AI prose sits at a flat middle distance: close enough to seem personal, far enough to feel safe. Push past that. Go closer when it matters. ## Free Indirect Discourse Blend the narrator's voice with the character's perspective so third-person narration is colored by how the character thinks and sees. Conventional: "Connie thought she was pretty and she believed that was the most important thing she could be." Free indirect: "She knew she was pretty and that was everything." The narrator doesn't announce the character's thoughts. The narration itself carries the character's voice, vocabulary, and judgment. This is the primary technique for close-third that actually feels intimate. Use the character's words, not the narrator's, when psychic distance is close. ## Sentence Rhythm Rhythm pulls readers along like a current. Vary length, structure, and pattern to match the moment. Short sentences for tension, shock, emphasis. Longer cumulative sentences for immersion, reflection, complex emotion. Fragments for intimacy, interrupted thought, the feeling of a mind catching up to what just happened. When every sentence follows the same pattern, such as subject, verb, object, repeat, the prose flattens regardless of content. A devastating scene and a mundane scene should not read the same way. ## Sensory Grounding Ground scenes in specific sensory details filtered through the POV character's attention. "The forest" is nowhere. "Pine needles crunching underfoot, the smell of wet bark" is a place. What a character notices reveals who they are. A chef notices smells. A musician notices sounds. A soldier notices exits. One or two vivid, specific details do more work than a catalog of all five senses. ## Interiority The POV character's inner life distinguishes prose fiction from screenplay: thoughts, reactions, memories, associations. "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. ## Show Through Action Demonstrate character states through behavior, dialogue, and physical response. "He was nervous about the meeting" is a label. "He checked his watch for the third time, then straightened a tie that was already straight" lets the reader see the nervousness and interpret it. Tell for logistics, show for moments that matter. Summary narration works for transitions, routine actions, and time compression. Showing everything is as exhausting as telling everything. ## Point of View Stay in the established POV. In first person, the narrator can only report what they perceive, think, and feel. In third limited, access one character's interiority per scene. Convey non-POV characters th