line-editing

Line Editing

Overview

Own the prose-quality passes that come after structure is settled: the line edit (sentence clarity, rhythm, precision, voice), character-voice differentiation, the copyedit against style-sheet.md, a read-aloud pass, and a proof pass on a built copy. Every change is proposed with a before/after and a one-line rationale so the author can accept or reject it. The author's voice is the standard, not the agent's taste. The better-writing skill, when installed, is an optional complement for anti-generic checks; this skill does not depend on it.

Prerequisites

A story project with story.md and drafted chapters (status draft or later). Read style-sheet.md if present; if it is missing or thin, build it first with the voice-style skill, because the copyedit checks against it.

Language

Read language in story.md (a BCP 47 tag such as en-GB, fr, or ja; a missing field means en). Edit in that language and to its grammar and conventions, and write edit notes in the language the user works in with you, quoting the prose exactly as written. The checklists' word-level advice (filter words, -ly adverbs, said, dialogue punctuation) is English: for another language, apply its aim, not its word lists, and take dialogue and punctuation from the style sheet and references/language-conventions.md. When story prose or story voices reports a check skipped for the book's language, or a check plainly does not fit it, do that pass by reading.

When to Use

• A chapter's structure is settled and the prose needs polish
• Dialogue sounds the same from every speaker
• Preparing a manuscript for beta readers, an editor, or submission
• The line, copyedit, or proof revision pass is next in story passes
• NOT for structural, plot, or continuity revision (use revision-continuity; line-edit only after those passes, or the polish is wasted)
• NOT for setting house style, the voice description, or each character's recorded voice (use voice-style; this skill applies them)
• NOT for scene-level craft such as deep POV, subtext, or exposition strategy (use scene-craft)
• NOT for acting on external reader notes (use feedback-triage)
• NOT for writing or scanning verse (use verse-craft); this skill only flags rhymes that slipped into prose by accident

Workflow

1. Scope and permission

1. Ask which chapters and which pass: line edit, voice differentiation, copyedit, read-aloud, or proof. Default order is the one below.
2. Ask how heavy the edit should be: light (errors and clear improvements only), medium (tighten and clarify), or heavy (restructure sentences and paragraphs). Default to light.
3. Never rewrite a passage wholesale without explicit permission. Propose edits; apply only what the author accepts, or apply all on explicit instruction.
4. Snapshot before a multi-chapter pass (see Draft Snapshots in the revision-continuity skill), and mark the pass in progress. If story.md has no revision-passes yet, story passes . --init writes the default ladder first; story passes . shows where the book is.

story passes . --start line

2. Line edit

1. Read story.md (POV, tense, Tone & Style), the style sheet's Voice section, and the chapter. Run story prose . for the chapter's counts. If the style sheet has no samples, suggest the author list an earlier book or chapter files they are happy with (see the voice-style skill), so the counts are measured against their own voice. A prose-baseline-* warning shows where a chapter drifts from it: use it to find passages to reread, and keep any drift the author meant.
2. Work paragraph by paragraph with references/line-edit-checklist.md: clarity, precision, economy, rhythm, POV distance, and voice.
3. Present edits in the format in references/edit-note-format.md: location, before, after, and one line of rationale. Group by paragraph; lead with the highest-impact changes; cap a batch at about 20 so the author can review them.
4. Leave passages that are unusual but deliberate. When unsure whether a quirk is voice or error, ask.
5. To check a rewritten passage before putting it in the chapter, pipe it in: story prose - < rewrite.md lints it against the style sheet, and story voices - < rewrite.md checks its dialogue against the characters' voice-avoid lists.

3. Differentiate character voices

story voices .

The report fingerprints each character's attributed dialogue (sentence length, contractions, questions, exclamations, signature words) and warns when two voices are near-identical, when a character says a voice-avoid word, and when a voice-words entry never appears.

1. For near-identical pairs, read both characters' Voice & Speech Patterns sections and propose line-level changes that follow them: vocabulary, sentence length, what each avoids saying, how each deflects. See the voice section of references/line-edit-checklist.md.
2. If a character file has no voice notes, propose voice-words and voice-avoid lists drawn from their best existing lines, and ask before adding them to the character file.
3. A line counts only when the narration names its speaker by a speech verb, or names one character in the paragraph. Pronoun tags (she said) and untagged lines are invisible to the report, so the POV character in close third is often under-counted; read those lines by hand, or name the tags in a sample chapter and rerun. story voices --help describes the command and, when story-maintenance is installed, the voices section of ../story-maintenance/references/continuity-checks.md gives the full attribution rules and thresholds.

4. Copyedit

1. Mark the pass: story passes . --start copyedit.
2. Run story prose . and fix every avoided spelling. Then work through references/copyedit-checklist.md against style-sheet.md: grammar, punctuation, dialogue punctuation, capitalisation, hyphenation, numbers, and consistency of names and terms (check the glossary). For a book not in English, take dialogue and punctuation conventions from references/language-conventions.md; if the style sheet has not recorded them, settle them with the author first.
3. Record every new decision in style-sheet.md in the same change, so the next chapter follows it.
4. Tell the user plainly: this is a consistency and correctness pass, not a substitute for a professional copyeditor on a book going to print.

5. Read-aloud pass

Follow references/read-aloud-guide.md. Build the narration script:

story build . --format narration

Offer to play chapters with the system's text-to-speech if one is installed (say on macOS; espeak-ng or spd-say on Linux). Check with command -v; ask before installing anything. Choose a voice for the book's language (say -v '?' and espeak-ng --voices list them); an English voice reading another language is no test of the prose. Listen for stumbles, unintended rhymes, tongue-twisters, and runs of same-length sentences; record them as edit notes.

6. Proof pass

1. Mark the pass: story passes . --start proof.
2. Build the copy the reader will see:

story build . --format html
story build . --format print --trim 6x9

3. Proof against references/copyedit-checklist.md's proof section: typos introduced by editing, doubled or missing words, broken scene breaks, chapter headings, matter pages, widows and orphans in the print copy. Cite locations by the HTML copy's paragraph anchors (ch03-p12).

4. To proof the print copy as a PDF, add --pdf to the print build:

   story build . --format print --trim 6x9 --pdf
   

   It finds and runs a paged-media engine the user has installed (Prince, WeasyPrint, pagedjs-cli, or Chrome as a fallback) and writes dist/<story-id>.pdf. Name an engine with --pdf-engine <name|path>. With none installed it stops (exit 4) and lists what to install; the CLI bundles none. Ask before installing anything.

7. Close the pass

1. Summarise what changed, what was kept on purpose, and any style-sheet or character-file updates.
2. Update chapter status only when the author agrees (draft to revised).
3. Mark the pass done, for example story passes . --done line, and run CLI Maintenance.

Conventions

• The author's voice wins. Edit toward what the prose is already trying to do, not toward a generic "good prose" standard.
• One rationale line per change, naming the effect (clearer subject, cuts a filter word, restores past tense), never "sounds better".
• Edits are made directly in the chapter markdown, below ## Chapter Text; never through a script that rewrites prose in bulk.
• Style decisions go in style-sheet.md; voice decisions about a character go in the character file (voice-words, voice-avoid, Voice & Speech Patterns), which stays canon.
• A line edit does not change events, facts, or who knows what. If an edit would, stop and hand it to revision-continuity.

CLI Maintenance

Use the Story CLI when it is available. If story is not installed, use the bundled fallback node ../story-maintenance/scripts/story.js with the same arguments. Use node <checkout>/bin/story.js instead only when the user names a Story Skills repository checkout or you are working in one. Write the script as an absolute path (resolve the fallback relative to this skill folder) and run it from the folder you would run story from, so . and other relative paths keep their meaning. Use Node, not Bun or a package script: Bun would load that folder's bunfig.toml (which can run code) and .env, and a package script runs from the checkout's root. If no CLI is available, apply the checklists by reading and keep word counts current by hand.

After editing chapters, character voice fields, or the style sheet:

story reindex .
story wordcount . --write
story check .
story prose .
story voices .

Reference Files

• references/line-edit-checklist.md - Paragraph-level line edit checks (clarity, precision, economy, rhythm, POV distance, voice) and character-voice differentiation levers
• references/copyedit-checklist.md - Copyedit and proof checks against the style sheet: grammar, punctuation, dialogue punctuation, consistency, and the proof pass on built copies
• references/read-aloud-guide.md - Running a read-aloud pass with the narration build and OS text-to-speech, and what to listen for
• references/language-conventions.md - Dialogue and punctuation conventions by language (quote marks, dialogue dashes, spacing before punctuation, Spanish ¿¡, CJK brackets), and how to record them in the style sheet
• references/edit-note-format.md - How to present edits to the author: before/after with rationale, batching, and recording accepted and rejected changes

Shared Conventions

Every story skill follows the shared conventions in ../story-maintenance/references/conventions.md, resolved relative to this skill folder. Read it before creating, renaming, or linking story files. If that file is missing because this skill was installed without story-maintenance, the essentials are: kebab-case ids and filenames, YAML frontmatter on every story-project file, _index.md registry tables that story reindex rebuilds (never edit them by hand), bidirectional links between entities, characters for who is on the page and mentions for who is only referred to, status: deceased plus died-in: chapter-{NN} for deaths, and no project-local generator or build scripts (run only the installed or bundled Story CLI).