Non-fiction books

MechaSquid was built for novels, but it holds a non-fiction book well: chapters, a wiki of what the book talks about, revisions, comments, the author's voice. The words on the website stay novel words (scene, character, lore). This guide says what they mean here. Talk to the author in their terms: say "section", not "scene".

How you know

The author tells you, the book's rules in get_writing_brief say so, or the book's plan (get_outline, get_node on the book page) describes it. If you only suspect it, ask.

Set it up once

Put it in the brief. If no rule in get_writing_brief says what kind of book this is, offer one with propose_rule (scope book), in the author's words, for example: "This is a non-fiction self-help book. Speak to the reader directly and explain; tell, don't show. Stories are short illustrations of a point, not scenes." The author accepts it on the Voice page, and from then on every agent reads it before writing. Until then, follow what they told you.
Guides. plotting is about story shape. Tell the author they can switch it off on the Voice page, or use it only for the argument's arc (below).
Samples. Suggest they paste two or three passages they are happy with on the Voice page. Samples outrank every rule.

The manuscript

Chapters are chapters. A scene is a section: one unit of text the author works on. A scene's title is a working title and is not exported, so a heading the reader should see goes in the text as ### Heading. Never write #, ## or --- inside a section: those are boundaries and are refused (see structure).
The export puts a break line between sections. If the author wants a chapter to read as one flow, keep it as one section with ### headings inside.
Diagrams, charts and photographs go in the text on a line of their own (![caption](loom-image:ID), see structure), with a caption that says what the reader should take from them.
Leave story_time and pov empty. intensity and beat are the author's own marks; beat works well for the role a section plays ("story", "principle", "exercise", "summary") if they want that.

The wiki

The wiki holds what the book talks about, so an idea explained in chapter 2 and used in chapter 9 is one page both link to.

In the book	Page type	Note
A concept, principle, framework, model	`note`	The author's definition, in their words.
An exercise, worksheet, checklist	`note`	Link it from the sections that use it.
A source: book, study, article, talk	`item`	Title, author, year, what the book takes from it.
A real person quoted or discussed	`character`	Only people the book returns to.
An organisation, school of thought	`faction`
A case study, a client story, an experiment	`event`	Anonymised as the author wrote it.
A theme or argument running through chapters	`plot`	Tie sections to it (below).

place, map, rule (shown as Lore) and travel rarely fit; do not create them unless asked.

Do not make a page for everyone in an anecdote. "My neighbour Tom" in one story is part of the sentence, not a page. Make pages for what recurs or what the author wants to find again, and when unsure, ask. The same goes for linking during intake: link concepts, sources and recurring people, not every capitalised word. The worker's link suggestions are the author's to accept.

Themes (the argument's arc)

A theme is a plot page. Tie a section to it with create_edge from the section, kind appears_in, and a few words on what the section does with it ("introduces", "the exercise", "answers the objection"). get_plot then shows which chapters carry which theme and where a theme goes quiet for too long, which is the non-fiction version of a dropped thread. Offer this; do not impose a structure.

Writing and editing

Tell. Explain plainly, in the author's person (often "you" to the reader, "I" for their own stories). A story illustrates a point and then the point is made. Do not turn explanations into dramatised scenes.
Invent nothing, above all facts. Never write a statistic, study, quote, date, name or citation the author has not given you. Where a claim needs a source, write the claim as the author made it and comment (action add) on it: "Needs a source." A made-up source in a published self-help book is worse than none.
Consistency is the continuity check here. Three steps in chapter 2 and four in chapter 7, a term defined two ways, advice that contradicts earlier advice: raise these with raise_flag or a comment. Timeline checks (get_timeline, time conflicts) do not apply; ignore health findings about characters sharing scenes.
Revisions, comments and the review rules are the same as for a novel (review, voice).

Quick checks

Is there a book rule saying what this book is? If not, have you offered one?
Did you put a reader-visible heading in the text as ###, not in the title?
Did every fact you wrote come from the author?
Did you create a page only for something that recurs?