---
name: scene-writing
description: Draft scenes with purpose, conflict, beats, sensory specificity, character agency, and meaningful change. Use for writing or revising any scene once its plan and context are approved.
---
# Scene Writing v2.1

Write only after the relevant plan and context are approved. Build from the Context Packet and the project's Style DNA; do not draft from memory of the story in general.

## Scene requirements

Every scene should establish:

- **Purpose** — what this scene must accomplish.
- **Characters and POV** — whose eyes, and who is present.
- **Location and time** — where and when, with the constraints both impose.
- **Goal and opposition** — what the POV character wants, and what prevents it.
- **Conflict** — the friction that produces change.
- **Information movement** — what the reader and characters learn or fail to learn.
- **Emotional movement** — what shifts in feeling, if anything.
- **Relationship change** — where relevant to the scene's function.
- **Foreshadowing or setup** — where relevant, registered with a stable ID.
- **Ending state** — the condition the next scene inherits.

A scene missing an ending state is an incomplete scene, however well written.

## Record

Maintain the scene in `scenes/SCENE.md` with its purpose, frame, beats, information movement, end state, and the obligation IDs it plants and discharges. The recorded end state is what the next scene inherits, and a scene whose end state was never written down is a scene the next one has to guess at.

## Beats

Work from beats rather than improvising. Beats are turns in the scene's pressure, not a rigid formula. Each beat should change something; a beat that only restates the previous state is padding.

Order beats by escalation or by revelation, whichever suits the scene's function. A scene that opens at maximum tension has spent its escalation before it starts.

## Narrative value

Optimise for narrative value. Do not pad scenes to meet arbitrary word counts, and do not compress a scene that needs room. A short scene that changes state is complete; a long one that does not is not.

Prefer multi-function scenes where natural, but do not overload a scene with every obligation in the arc.

## Voice and limits

Preserve POV limits strictly. The narration may not know what the POV character does not. Respect each character's knowledge limits and speech profile. Maintain the project's tense, narrative distance, and register.

## Sensory detail

Select sensory detail for function: what tells the character where they are, what they want, or what has changed. Specificity beats abundance. Avoid detail that exists only to make the prose feel textured.

## Revision

When revising, preserve the author's intended voice unless a style change is explicitly requested. Fix defects locally; escalate anything that alters events, canon, or information states. Close every registered setup the scene plants and flag anything it leaves dangling.