danjdewhurst/story-skills/series-continuity

Series Continuity

Overview

Plan and maintain sequels, prequels, and companion books as linked Story Skills projects. Each book stays a standalone project with its own story.md, characters, world, chapters, and continuity files. Books point at each other through story.md frontmatter, and story series checks the canon they share.

• series - kebab-case series id shared by every book, such as the-ember-cycle
• series-title - optional retail series name, such as The Ember Cycle, that the metadata sheet prints in place of the id
• book-number - publication order (1, 2, 3...); 0 for a prequel published later, a decimal such as 1.5 for a between-books novella
• follows - paths to books set earlier in the story's chronology
• precedes - paths to books set later in the story's chronology

Chronology and publication order are separate. A prequel written after the first book has book-number: 2 and lists ../book-one under precedes.

This skill owns the book-level layer: linked books and the canon they share. The within-serial installment layer — how serial or episodic installments are structured — is covered by the genre-craft skill's serial/episodic structure reference.

Links are relative paths from the book root, and every link needs a matching backlink: if book two lists ../book-one under follows, book one must list ../book-two under precedes. Keep sibling books in the same parent folder so the paths stay short and portable.

When to Use

• Starting a sequel, prequel, interquel, or companion book to an existing project
• Carrying characters, locations, systems, factions, artifacts, or glossary terms into another book
• Revising a book that other books in the series depend on
• Keeping a series bible, or planning and pitching a series of several books (see references/series-bible.md)
• NOT for a single standalone book (use story-init), for within-book continuity (use revision-continuity), or for the query letter, pitch, or synopsis of a single book (use submission). A series pitch stays here: the series overview and the series line in book one's query (see references/series-bible.md)

Starting a Linked Book

1. Read the existing book first: story.md, characters/_index.md, worldbuilding/_index.md, plot/timeline.md, continuity/state.md, open files in continuity/questions/ and continuity/promises/, and the final chapters.
2. Ask the user for:

• Title and synopsis
• Relationship: sequel (set after), prequel (set before), or companion (set alongside, with no chronology link)
• How much time passes between the books
• Which characters and places return

1. Create the project with the CLI, run from the folder that contains the existing book:

# Sequel: set after book one
story init '{Title}' --follows '{existing-book-dir}' --synopsis '{synopsis}'
 
# Prequel: set before book one
story init '{Title}' --precedes '{existing-book-dir}' --synopsis '{synopsis}'
 
# Companion: set alongside book one, with no chronology link
story init '{Title}' --series '{series-id}' --synopsis '{synopsis}'

The title and synopsis are the user's own words, and a folder name can hold spaces, so wrap each value in single quotes. Never paste a value into double quotes, where $(...), backticks, and " still take effect. A single quote inside a value depends on the shell: write it as '\'' in a POSIX shell (bash, zsh, sh, Git Bash) and as '' in PowerShell. Never run the command in cmd.exe, which has no single quotes and runs & inside a value; use PowerShell or a POSIX shell.

Run init from the folder that contains the existing book, never from inside it: init refuses a new book inside another project, and a linked book outside the new book's parent folder. It also refuses a --series that differs from the linked book's, and a --book-number already used in the series. init checks that the linked path is a story project, writes the relative link, adds the backlink (and the new book's series, when the existing book has none) to the existing book's story.md, and inherits series, genre, sub-genre, pov, and tense, plus series-title, author or authors, and language when the linked book sets them. When any book in the linked series has a book-number, it sets book-number to one more than the highest whole number used anywhere in the series, so publication numbers never collide. A normal story init book has none, so a series with no numbered books leaves the new book unnumbered. Pass --book-number (or write the field on both story.md files) in that case. Pass --series, --genre, --pov, or --tense to override the inherited values.

If the existing book has no series yet, pass --series {series-id}: init also writes that series into the existing book's story.md. Add matching book-number values to both story.md files yourself.

A companion has no follows or precedes link. So init inherits nothing from book one, and it writes nothing to book one's story.md. Pass --genre, --pov, and --tense to match book one. Use the same --series id as book one. Set series in book one by hand if it has none. Set book-number by hand: pass --book-number to the companion's init, or write the field in each story.md. story series does not see an unlinked companion, so compare its canon by hand (see references/series-bible.md).

If the CLI is not available, add the fields to both story.md files by hand.

1. Add a ## Series Notes section to the new story.md body. Record where the book sits in the chronology, the time gap, and the canon facts it must not contradict. references/series-bible.md covers what to put in it.

Carrying Canon Across Books

Only carry entities the new book actually uses. For each one, copy the file from the other book and then adjust it:

• Keep the filename id identical. story series matches entities across books by id. A renamed file is a new entity to the checker. story rename warns when the id is also defined in a linked book; rename it there too, or keep the old id.
• Keep `name` identical. Put new titles or epithets in aliases, such as General Maren in a prequel for Lord Maren. A different name produces a warning, and so does a different pronunciation.
• Set state for this book's starting point, not the source book's ending.
• Sequel: start from the earlier book's final status, relationships, ownership, and knowledge.
• Prequel: start from the earlier situation, and write the later book's facts as fixed endpoints in a ## Series Canon section.
• Remove book-local references. died-in, the from of each progressions entry, and every other chapter id point at chapters in the source book. Set the frontmatter to the state the character starts this book in, and drop the source book's progressions. For a character who died before this book begins, by died-in or by a status progression, keep status: deceased, remove died-in, and list them only in mentions: story continuity warns when one appears in a chapter or scene cast. If they come back in this book, add a status progression to alive from that chapter; story series then allows them on the page from there.
• Prune or carry every link. Relationships, locations, notable-characters, faction members, and artifact owner/location must point at entities that exist in this book, with backlinks. Either carry the linked entity too, or remove the reference.
• Do not copy chapters, scenes, arcs, questions, promises, or continuity/state.md. Rebuild them for the new book:
• Unresolved questions or promises the new book continues become new files in its continuity/ folders.
• Events from the other book become Backstory Events rows in plot/timeline.md (sequel) or Series Canon notes (prequel).
• continuity/state.md starts at current-chapter: 0 with the carried character and object state. Carried knowledge goes in knowledge-state without learned-in, because the character already knew it when the book began.
• An artifact destroyed or lost in an earlier book keeps its object-state entry with status: destroyed (or lost) and no since: that marks it gone before this story, so story continuity errors on any scene whose state-changes use it while still allowing mentions.

Fact Ids

Give series-relevant knowledge a stable fact id in continuity/state.md, and use the same id in every book:

knowledge-state:
  - character: kael-voss
    knows: The gallery tunnel reaches the Whisper Gate
    fact: whisper-gate-route
    learned-in: chapter-04

• Fact ids are kebab-case, and each character lists a given fact only once per book. story continuity checks both rules.
• Add learned-in only in the book where the character discovers the fact on the page. In later books, carry the entry without learned-in. Do not put that rule in an inline comment: a command that rewrites the entry drops the comment.
• Reuse the exact id in every book. The checker matches the character id plus the fact id, never the knows text.
• Give ids to the reveals, secrets, and discoveries a later or earlier book depends on. Everyday knowledge does not need one.

After carrying entities, run in the new book:

story reindex .
story wordcount . --write
story check .
story series .

What story series Checks

story series [path] follows follows and precedes to every linked sibling book, orders the books by chronology, lists the canon they share, and reports deaths, casts, learned facts, and destroyed artifacts that contradict an earlier book, and names or pronunciations that drift from it. Errors exit 1. Fix each one in the book that breaks canon (in a prequel, the later book is canon), move a dead character's flashbacks and memories to mentions, and ask the user before changing an earlier book. Treat warnings as prompts to check the named files. story series --help describes the command and, when story-maintenance is installed, the series section of `../story-maintenance/references/continuity-checks.md` lists every error and warning and the order rules.

story links . also checks the book's own series links: each path exists, has a matching backlink, and uses the same series id.

The checker cannot judge knowledge without fact ids, or ages, dates, travel time, or tone. Check those by reading both books' timelines and Series Canon notes.

Writing Against Canon