Writing Style Guide

Narrarium now uses a simpler writing-style model.

Primary file

The main always-on writing and review contract for a book lives in:

• guidelines/writing-style.md

This file should contain everything the model needs while drafting or revising prose, including:

• narration rules
• dialogue rules
• person and tense expectations
• scene rhythm
• show vs tell balance
• review constraints
• what to preserve during revision
• what to improve during revision

Chapter-specific overrides

If a chapter needs a local exception or addendum, add one of these files:

• chapters/<slug>/writing-style.md
• drafts/<slug>/writing-style.md

These chapter-local files are layered on top of the global guidelines/writing-style.md.

How writing context works

chapter_writing_context and paragraph_writing_context now do this:

1. read guidelines/writing-style.md
2. read the chapter-specific writing-style.md if it exists in the final chapter or draft folder
3. read the relevant point-in-time canon and draft context

This means the writing style is always visible during both drafting and revision.

Review flow

For paragraph review:

1. read paragraph_writing_context
2. run revise_paragraph
3. inspect the proposal
4. ask the user for confirmation
5. apply with update_paragraph only after confirmation

The same global and chapter-local writing-style files should guide both writing and review.

Legacy note

Older repositories may still contain:

• guidelines/prose.md
• guidelines/style.md
• guidelines/voices.md
• guidelines/chapter-rules.md
• guidelines/styles/

Those are now considered legacy. New repositories should rely on guidelines/writing-style.md plus optional chapter-local writing-style.md files instead.