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Style Pack

POV Type

Third-person limited, tight to Felix. Controlled, selective drift to other characters (Zenith figures, rival players, public observers) for scene-scale purposes only. Brief forum/chat/news inserts allowed as social-scale texture, used sparingly.

Tense

Past tense for narration. System UI copy reads as present-tense notification text. Direct thoughts in past tense unless rendered as italicized immediate thought.

Vocabulary

Accessible, direct, mildly cynical. Contemporary register for real-world scenes; clean fantasy register for in-game scenes. Gaming jargon used without explanation after first use. Financial terms used crisply when needed, then dropped. Avoid academic, ceremonial, or ornate diction. No forbidden-list words or their near-synonyms used as cliché substitutes.

Prose Priorities

  • • natural first-pass readability
  • • scene clarity and physical grounding
  • • paragraph flow with light connective tissue
  • • precision of wording over intensity
  • • restraint — one heightened beat per scene
  • • character-bound specificity in voice and detail
  • • embedded exposition over detached summary
  • • calibrated certainty matched to Felix's actual knowledge
  • • hook-forward openings with immediate pressure
  • • speakable, character-specific dialogue

Style Failures to Avoid

  • • fragment chains masquerading as intensity
  • • inventory description of rooms and bodies
  • • repeated thematic restatement across paragraphs
  • • max-intensity diction in consecutive lines
  • • exposition pasted in as narrator briefing
  • • generic backstory shorthand
  • • action beats used only to dodge simple dialogue tags
  • • flattening prose in the name of clarity
  • • negation cascades ('not X, not Y, not Z')
  • • em-dash overuse making prose feel assembled
  • • ceremonious or academic interior narration
  • • decorative metaphors that advertise style
  • • atmospheric openings that delay the hook
  • • overcompressed clipped prose that loses meaning
  • • awkward uncommon collocations that sound engineered
  • • definitive-statement chains used for false force
  • • explanatory after-lines forcing a point already made
  • • repeated rhetorical stems as default intensifiers
  • • dialogue clipped into unsayable shards
  • • exposition that keeps explaining past its dramatic value
  • • NPCs naming 'mana' in the first arc
  • • enumerating Felix's full future plan when a partial reveal would do
  • • AI-default phrases (shiver ran, eyes widened, heart pounded)
  • • real-world investing consuming page time
  • • in-game numbers narrated instead of shown through UI

Sentence Model

Default: medium-length sentences connected with natural conjunctions ('and', 'but', 'because', 'so', 'which') that actually carry thought rather than pad it. Vary: after two or three medium sentences, deploy one short punch or one longer sweep to keep rhythm alive. Fragments: legal, rationed — at most one per paragraph, and only when instantly legible. Em-dashes: reserved for genuine interruption of thought; prefer comma or period otherwise. Avoid parallel negation ('not X, not Y, not Z') as an emphasis pattern. Avoid stacked metaphors and decorative similes. When the emotional temperature rises, the syntax should simplify, not ornament. Calibrate certainty in the sentence itself — hedging verbs ('probably', 'had to be', 'looked like') when Felix is inferring; flat indicative when he knows.

Paragraph Model

Paragraphs are units of perception, decision, or beat. Open each with an anchor sentence — an action, observation, or thought the rest of the paragraph grows from — then accumulate specifics. Keep geography and sequencing legible at all times. Use short paragraphs (1–2 sentences) for reactions, beats, dialogue, and hard pivots. Use medium paragraphs (3–6 sentences) for most narration. Use long paragraphs only for layered planning, combat sequences, or worldbuilding tied to immediate stakes. Avoid paragraphs built entirely from fragments. Avoid paragraphs that restate the previous paragraph's emotional meaning. One heightened sentence per paragraph is the ceiling; return to plain prose immediately after. For chapter openings, the first paragraph must put a concrete pressure, wrongness, or stake on the page.

Dialogue Rules

1. Dialogue should sound speakable. If you read it aloud and it snags, rewrite it. 2. Prefer simple tags ('he said', 'she asked') and let action beats carry emotion. Do not chain action beats just to dodge tags. 3. Felix's voice: dry, clipped, rhetorically humorous, shameless when leverage matters. He undercuts tension rather than escalating it. He rarely announces his feelings. 4. Other characters should sound like themselves within three lines — a cadence, a tic, a regional phrasing, or a social register. No interchangeable NPC chatter. 5. Interior monologue during dialogue is welcome when it contrasts with what Felix actually says. Use this for dramatic irony, not to restate the subtext. 6. Clipped lines must still be complete thoughts. 'Not yet.' works. 'Go. Now. Move.' is drumbeat junk unless the situation earns it once. 7. NPCs in the first arc must not name 'mana' directly. They describe sensations, pressure, light, warmth, wrongness, or 'something in the air.' 8. Exposition inside dialogue should answer a question the scene has already raised, not preempt one the reader hasn't asked. 9. Avoid explicit subtext ('she meant that he was weak'). Let the reader do the lift. 10. Cut off a line before it becomes a speech. If a character has three points to make, give them two and let someone interrupt or change the subject.

Rendering Rules

MANA RENDERING RULES (canonical — do not drift): A. Naming convention - Felix is the only character who may name 'mana' in the real-world pre-launch and early-launch chapters. His interior POV should use the word directly when he is sensing, drawing, compressing, or shaping it — do not euphemize his own thoughts. - Other real-world characters must never say 'mana.' If they notice an effect, they describe it indirectly: a chill, a pressure, a static feeling, an unexplained warmth, a smell of ozone, a sense of being watched. - Inside the game world, 'mana' is a normal in-game term. NPCs, system text, tutorials, and other players may name it freely. The secrecy rule applies only to the real world. B. Physical vocabulary (use consistently) - Pre-apocalypse Earth mana is faint, thin, and slow. Render it as: a cool pooled weight, thin as breath on glass, a density in still air, a resistance that yields only to stillness. It does not crackle, spark, or glow in reality. - In-game mana is abundant and responsive. Render it as: a current that can be gathered, a warmth that settles in the lower belly or palms, a shape that holds when shaped. It can have visible signatures (Felix's burns pale blue) but the baseline is still tactile/kinesthetic, not pyrotechnic. - Pick one sensory register per beat (temperature, weight, pressure, taste, sound) and commit. Do not stack metaphors. C. Technique legibility - When Felix works with mana, render the technique in concrete steps: stillness → breath → sensing → gathering → compressing/circulating → shaping → releasing. The reader should be able to track which step he is on. - Overpulling, straining, or mis-shaping has concrete consequences: copper taste, ringing ears, a muscle-adjacent ache that isn't muscle, a cold sweat, a dropped breath. - Real-world and in-game mana are separate systems before integration. In-game gains do not increase his real-world capacity. Techniques transfer; stats and pools do not. Render this separation when both worlds appear in the same chapter. D. Scale discipline - In real-world training scenes, do not let Felix manifest visible effects (glowing hands, lit candles, moved objects) before launch. The ceiling of pre-launch real-world mana use is internal: sensing, gathering into his own body, compressing capacity. External work requires the game's denser field or System assistance. - In game scenes, external effects are fair game but should still be grounded (a candle lights, a forge-hum answers, a signature resonates). Reserve large visible displays for earned moments. E. Avoid - Vague synonyms that obscure what is happening ('the energy,' 'the power,' 'it'). Use 'mana' in Felix's POV. - Mystical filler ('he reached with his soul,' 'the essence of the world flowed through him'). Keep it physical and procedural. - Treating every mana beat as a climax. Most sensing is quiet and repetitive; show the discipline. GENERAL RENDERING RULES: 1. Chapter One opens after the wake-up. No death scene, no pre-death flashback. 2. First three lines of any chapter must establish concrete pressure, wrongness, or stake. 3. Keep Felix's body and location legible at every beat. The reader should never lose the room. 4. Use italics only for short direct thoughts, never for full paragraphs. 5. Numbers and mechanical data (damage, stats, EXP, HP) appear through system UI, not inside narration. 6. Real-world scenes use plain contemporary texture. In-game scenes lean on fantasy specifics, but still plain-voiced. 7. Heightened prose is rationed: one

Micro-Example Bank

<![CDATA[<examples>
  <pair type="fragment_stack_to_flow">
    <bad>Ceiling. White. Wrong. Not his. Not the bunker. Too clean.</bad>
    <good>The ceiling was white and unmarked, which was wrong — the bunker ceiling had been concrete, and before that a water stain he'd stared at for years.</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="inventory_to_perception">
    <bad>The room had a desk, a chair, a monitor, a VR capsule, a window, and a closet.</bad>
    <good>He pushed up on his elbows and the room came back in pieces he didn't want: the desk he'd sold in the panic months, the capsule still sealed in its shipping film, the window with the same crooked blind.</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="exposition_dump_to_embedded">
    <bad>Aetherfall Online was the first full-dive VRMMORPG, launching in three days. It had been developed by Zenith Systems, whose CEO had gone missing. Felix knew it was secretly humanity's tutorial for a System Integration that would arrive 1.5 years later.</bad>
    <good>Three days. The launch banner on the wall told him that much, and his body told him the rest — too light, too young, hands that hadn't yet learned what a rift-claw felt like closing on a wrist. Zenith's logo grinned down from the capsule, the same logo whose CEO would be missing by next month. He hadn't put that together the first time. He did now.</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="overstatement_to_grounded">
    <bad>A searing, world-shattering agony tore through every fiber of his being as the memory of his death burned like a thousand suns.</bad>
    <good>The memory landed the way a bad fall lands: all at once, in the ribs. He sat very still until it passed.</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="repeated_landing_to_single">
    <bad>He was alive. He was really alive. Somehow, impossibly, he was alive again. Back. Breathing.</bad>
    <good>He was breathing, and the breath was his own, and that was going to have to be enough to start with.</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="generic_dialogue_to_character">
    <bad>"Are you okay?" she asked. "You look pale." "I'm fine," he said. "Just tired."</bad>
    <good>"You look like someone stepped on your grave," the delivery kid said, shoving the capsule receipt at him. "Sign, don't die on the porch, capsules are non-refundable after opening."</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="negation_chain_to_affirmative">
    <bad>It wasn't a dream. It wasn't trauma. It wasn't some dying hallucination.</bad>
    <good>Whatever this was, it had weight and edges and a date stamp, and that put it past anything his brain could have invented.</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="emdash_to_clean">
    <bad>He sat up — slowly, carefully, the way you sit up in a hospital — and checked — again — the date on the screen.</bad>
    <good>He sat up slowly, the way he'd learned to sit up in hospitals, and checked the date on the screen a second time.</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="decorative_metaphor_to_embodied">
    <bad>His heart was a caged bird hammering against the brittle cathedral of his ribs.</bad>
    <good>His pulse was loud enough that he could feel it in his teeth.</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="slow_atmosphere_to_hook">
    <bad>Morning light filtered gently through the blinds, painting delicate patterns on the hardwood floor. Dust motes danced in the pale beams. The apartment was quiet, peaceful, and full of the soft hush of an ordinary day.</bad>
    <good>He woke up on a mattress he'd thrown out two years before he died.</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="elevated_to_natural">
    <bad>He endeavored to ascertain the veracity of his temporal circumstance by consulting the chronometric display.</bad>
    <good>He checked the clock, then the date on the clock, then the clock again.</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="definitive_chain_to_calibrated">
    <bad>The capsule would save him. The game would make him strong. Nothing could stop him now.</bad>
    <good>The capsule was the best tool he had, which wasn't the same as saying it was enough. He'd know more in three days.</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="explanatory_afterline_to_clean_stop">
    <bad>He didn't cry. He'd used up crying a long time ago, in another life, in a concrete hallway that no longer existed, and now there was nothing left in him that knew how.</bad>
    <good>He didn't cry. He'd used that up in the other life.</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="clipped_unnatural_to_speakable">
    <bad>"Three days. Prep. Body. Mana. Market. Move."</bad>
    <good>"Three days," he said to the empty room. "Body first, then the market, then whatever's left."</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="connective_tissue_good_1">
    <bad>He stood. His legs held. He walked to the window.</bad>
    <good>He stood, found that his legs held, and walked to the window to see which version of the skyline he was dealing with.</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="connective_tissue_good_2">
    <bad>He needed money. He needed supplies. He needed time. He had three days.</bad>
    <good>He needed money and supplies, in that order, and he had three days to turn one into the other before the game opened and the clock started running for real.</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="plain_without_flat">
    <bad>He was sad. The apartment was empty. He missed them.</bad>
    <good>The apartment was exactly as empty as it had been the first time, which was the part he hadn't been ready for.</good>
  </pair>
  <pair type="trim_exposition_keep_logic">
    <bad>In his first life, the apocalypse had begun eighteen months after the game's launch, when rifts opened across the world and invaders poured through, and Earth's landmass expanded as new territory assimilated, and the old institutions collapsed because governments could not coordinate against a threat they did not understand, and that was why he had to act now.</bad>
    <good>In the first life, the rifts had opened eighteen months after launch and nothing that depended on governments or banks had survived the first week. So: three days, and then a year and a half, and every move he made had to still matter on the other side of that.</good>
  </pair>
</examples>]]>

Voice Exemplar

He woke up on a mattress he'd thrown out two years before he died.

That was the part his brain caught on first — not the ceiling, not the date, not the absence of the bunker's low generator hum, but the specific give of a mattress he remembered dragging to a curb in a city that did not exist in this version of the world. He lay still and let his ribs move. They moved easily. They moved like ribs that had never been broken.

Okay, he thought. Okay, slow down.

The ceiling was white and unmarked. The light through the blind was morning light, thin and indifferent, and the blind itself hung crooked in the way he'd never bothered to fix. On the desk, under a layer of dust he also remembered, the shipping box for the capsule sat unopened, Zenith's logo grinning up at him in the exact shade of blue he'd learned to hate.

He reached for his phone without sitting up. The date on the lock screen was three days before a launch he had already survived and then not survived. He looked at it for a long time. Then he checked it again, because that was the kind of thing a dying brain would fake and the kind of thing a sane one would verify.

Three days.

"Okay," he said to the empty room, and his voice came out younger than he expected, which was somehow the worst part. "Body first, then the market, then whatever's left."

He sat up slowly, the way he'd learned to sit up in hospitals. His legs held. His hands were steady in a way they hadn't been at the end. He pressed two fingers to the hollow under his sternum and went looking, quietly, for the thing nobody else on this street would know to look for yet.

It was there. Faint, like a thread of cold water under warm skin. Faint, but there.

He almost laughed. He didn't, because laughing alone in an apartment at seven in the morning was the kind of thing that got a second chance wasted, and he had exactly three days to not waste this one.

Full Style Sheet

AETHERFALL ONLINE — TARGET STYLE PACK POV: Third-person limited, anchored tight to Felix. Drift to other characters only for scene-scale purposes (public reaction cutaways, faction POV, forum/chat inserts). Never omniscient. TENSE: Past tense throughout. System UI text reads as present-tense notification copy. VOCABULARY: Accessible, direct, a touch cynical. Game jargon used without hand-holding once a term is introduced. Financial terms used cleanly when relevant. Avoid academic or ceremonial register. Avoid the forbidden-words list. PROSE PRIORITIES (in order): 1. Readability on first pass. 2. Scene clarity — physical grounding, who is where, what is happening. 3. Paragraph flow — sentences connect. 4. Precision — the right word, not the flashy one. 5. Restraint — one heightened line per scene, not ten. PRIMARY VOICE TONE: pragmatic, analytical, dryly humorous, selectively shameless. Felix thinks fast and cuts corners. His interior voice sounds like a tired survivor planning, not a narrator admiring him. SENTENCE MODEL: - Default to medium-length sentences that actually connect clauses with 'and', 'but', 'because', 'so'. Light connective tissue is good; it is not padding. - Vary length deliberately. After three medium sentences, either a short punch or a longer sweep. - Fragments are legal but rationed: one per paragraph at most, and only when the fragment is immediately legible. - Avoid em-dash interruptions when a comma or period works. Reserve em-dashes for genuine mid-thought breaks. - No negation cascades ('It wasn't X. It wasn't Y. It wasn't Z.'). Use one clear affirmative statement instead. - No stacked metaphors. One image per observation. Follow it with concrete detail. - When intensity rises, simplify syntax. Don't decorate. PARAGRAPH MODEL: - Paragraphs are units of perception or thought, not grab-bags. Start with an anchor (action, observation, or thought) and build. - Accumulative paragraphs for description and planning. Short paragraphs for beats, reactions, and dialogue. - Avoid inventory description. If Felix scans a room, thread the details into what he's doing or deciding. - One heightened sentence per paragraph max. Return to plain narration after. - Openings: first 1–3 lines must establish a concrete discomfort, pressure, or problem. No weather-first paragraphs. DIALOGUE: See dialogueRules. INTERIORITY: - Direct thought in plain prose or italics for sharp beats. Do not italicize paragraphs. - Felix's interior is calibrated to what he actually knows. When uncertain, he hedges ('probably', 'had to be', 'he'd remember if…'). When certain, he states it flat. - Don't explain the emotional meaning of an image the scene already delivered. ACTION: - Action-threaded description. The room reveals itself as Felix moves. Geography stays legible: reader should always know where hands, weapons, and threats are. - Combat uses shorter sentences but not fragment chains. Mix a clear sequencing verb into each exchange so the reader can follow who did what. - Numbers (damage, HP, levels) appear through system UI, not narration. EXPOSITION: - Integrate into scene whenever possible. A character remembers while doing. A system prompt answers a world question. - If a pure exposition paragraph is unavoidable, keep it under six sentences and tie it to an immediate stake. - Do not restate the apocalypse premise repeatedly. Once per arc, and only when it sharpens a decision. MANA & SECRECY IN EARLY CHAPTERS: - Only Felix thinks or says the word 'mana' in the first arc. - Other characters describe sensations indirectly: 'the air felt heavier', 'a hum under the skin', 'something off'. - Felix's pre-launch mana work is shown in physical, bodily terms — breathing, pressure in the chest, a cold thread along the spine — not mystical language. OPENING HOOK RULES: - Chapter One starts after Felix has woken up in the past. No death scene, no flashback. - First three lines: concrete discomfort or dissonance. A wrong ceiling. A date he can't believe. A body that feels too light. - He tests reality in specific, physical ways before accepting it. Brief shock, then recalibration. FAILURE MODES TO AVOID: see styleFailuresJson. HEIGHTENED vs PLAIN vs FLAT vs OVERWEIGHT: - PLAIN: clean, grounded, unornamented. The default. - HEIGHTENED: one sharper image or rhythm, earned by the scene. Used sparingly. - FLAT: plain stripped of voice and specificity. Avoid. - OVERWEIGHT: decorative, metaphor-stacked, ceremonious. Avoid. The prose should read mostly plain with occasional heightened beats. Never flat. Never overweight.

Forbidden Words

  • • delve
  • • tapestry
  • • testament to
  • • couldn't help but
  • • a symphony of
  • • sent shivers down
  • • the weight of
  • • piercing gaze
  • • steely resolve
  • • palpable
  • • tangible
  • • visceral
  • • interplay
  • • nuanced
  • • multifaceted
  • • landscape
  • • realm
  • • underpinned
  • • navigate
  • • intricacies
  • • holistic
  • • pivotal
  • • robust
  • • comprehensive
  • • paradigm
  • • synergy
  • • moreover
  • • furthermore
  • • epitomize
  • • embody
  • • juxtaposition
  • • resonance
  • • catalyze
  • • forge ahead
  • • endeavor
  • • uncharted territory
  • • spearhead
  • • groundbreaking
  • • cutting-edge
  • • leverage
  • • foster
  • • facilitate
  • • empower
  • • in the realm of
  • • it's worth noting
  • • a testament to
  • • serves as a reminder
  • • shed light on
  • • at the end of the day
  • • a myriad of
  • • take a deep breath
  • • let out a breath
  • • release a breath
  • • breath he didn't know he was holding
  • • a shiver ran down
  • • eyes widened
  • • heart pounded in chest
  • • knot formed in stomach
  • • electricity coursed through
  • • time seemed to slow
  • • the world fell away
  • • darkness claimed him
  • • crimson
  • • azure
  • • obsidian
  • • gossamer
  • • ethereal
  • • cerulean
  • • luminous
  • • iridescent
  • • resplendent
  • • mellifluous