# Compositional Style Guide

Narrative voice, imagery, and thematic conventions. The **Developmental** and
**Line Editor** agents consult these. This guidance is qualitative (for the AI
editors); its numeric counterparts live in `style-targets.yml`.

## Voice & Tone
- Overall tone: <e.g. wry, elegiac, hard-boiled>
- Narrative distance: <close / observational>

## Showing vs Telling
- Target: lead with sensory/physical detail before naming emotion.
- See `style-targets.yml` (`showingPercent`) for the measured ratio.

## Sensory & Imagery
- Aim for multiple senses per scene (see `sensesPerChapter`).
- Recurring motifs / image clusters: <...>
- Metaphor/simile sources: <draw from the story's world; avoid clichés>

## Dialogue
- Tag style: prefer action beats and invisible "said"; avoid adverb tags.
- Favour subtext over on-the-nose statements.

## Themes
- Core theme(s): <...>
- Surface themes through action and image, not statement.