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Chapter Writing

An outline-first workflow for drafting story chapters: pack spoiler-free context, get the beat outline approved, write the prose, then record continuity and reindex.

Content & WritingIntermediate★ 401⑂ 61AI score 9/10Last updated: Nov 4, 2026

What it does

  • Pulls a token-budgeted context pack with story context chapter-NN — the chapter outline, cast and location cards, the POV character's knowledge at that point, open promises, clues and questions — while deliberately leaving out anything from later chapters.
  • Confirms scope (what, whose POV, which locations), builds a beat-by-beat outline for your approval, and only then writes full prose in the book's configured language, POV and tense.
  • After drafting, writes machine-readable scene files (date, time, outcome, hook, state-changes), carries character/object/knowledge state into continuity/state.md, and flips promise, clue and question records to planted / paid-off / answered.
  • Finishes with CLI maintenance: story reindex, story wordcount --write, story check, story pacing, story progress — never hand-editing generated _index.md tables.
  • Hands off cleanly: scene-craft for scene design, line-editing for the prose pass, revision-continuity for edits, interactive-fiction for branching books.

Who it's for

  • Novelists and serial-fiction writers drafting chapter by chapter with Claude Code
  • Authors with large casts who struggle to track who knows what, and when
  • Anyone who wants foreshadowing, payoffs and timeline tracked as structured files

Examples

  1. "Write the next chapter" → loads chapter 3 context, proposes a beat outline, and after approval writes chapters/chapter-03.md.
  2. "Write the scene where Mara realizes the ledger was forged at the docks" → records outcome: yes-but, scene date/time, and adds a knowledge-state entry for Mara.
  3. Post-draft, story check . surfaces continuity errors (undated scenes, broken links) to fix before marking the chapter done.

· · · Install guide · · ·

Try it now, no install

Paste this into Claude to use the skill without installing anything.

Read the instructions in this file and follow them to help me:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/danjdewhurst/story-skills/HEAD/skills/chapter-writing/SKILL.md

What I want: (describe your task here)

If Claude can't open the link, open it yourself and paste the contents instead.

↓ If it works for you, download the ZIP below and install it. Then it runs on its own — no pasting each time.

Install in the Claude app (no terminal)
  1. Download the ZIP with the button below.
  2. In Claude, open Settings → Capabilities and turn on 'Code execution and file creation'. (one time)
  3. Go to Customize → Skills → + → 'Upload a skill' and upload the ZIP.
↓ Download ZIP
Install in Claude Code

Let Claude do it — paste this into Claude Code

Install the skill I found on AI Skill Mart.
Copy the skills/chapter-writing folder from the GitHub repo danjdewhurst/story-skills into my ~/.claude/skills/chapter-writing/.
When it's done, tell me in one line what this skill can do.

Install with a command instead

git clone https://github.com/danjdewhurst/story-skills.git && mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && cp -r story-skills/skills/* ~/.claude/skills/

⚠ This is a third-party skill. Check the source repository before installing.

  1. Open a terminal in your working directory.
  2. Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/danjdewhurst/story-skills.git
  3. Create the skills folder: mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
  4. Copy the whole bundle: cp -r story-skills/skills/* ~/.claude/skills/ — chapter-writing depends on siblings like story-maintenance, line-editing and scene-craft, so don't install it alone.
  5. (Recommended) Make the Story CLI available. If you can't install it, use the bundled fallback node ~/.claude/skills/story-maintenance/scripts/story.js with the same arguments (Node.js required).
  6. Make sure your story project already has story.md and at least one character file in characters/; otherwise scaffold the project first.
  7. Restart Claude Code and ask "write chapter 3" or "outline the next chapter" to trigger the skill.
View source on GitHub ↗License: MIT