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## 1.1 Death, Grief, and Continuing-Life Rule A meaningful death, confirmed loss, apparent death, or irreversible separation must continue beyond the event chapter. * Death changes the living character's body, behavior, sleep, appetite, work, touch, risk, intimacy, leadership, objects, routes, and relationships. * A
## 2. Pacing Rules and Couple Entrances * Every new couple, except SwanQueen because they are an ongoing arc, receives 2 focus chapters and then 2 long ensemble chapters for encounter and aftermath. * Do not jump to the next couple before the previous couple has had real time to be absorbed. * After a major arrival th
### 2.1 Day Zero Rule for Couple and Group Entrances Every entrance of a couple, character, or group must include four layers before they reach the convoy or the camp: 1. Who they were before the end, not only that they were together, but work, family, routine, wound, relationship, who manages, who runs, and who hold
### 2.1.1 Living People, Dirty Roads, and Moving Vehicles Rule The world is not empty. Do not write the apocalypse as if the living dead are the only remaining bodies in motion. Survivors still exist across roads, stores, houses, farms, depots, shelters, vehicles, and hidden communities. Required planning checks: 1.
### 2.1.2 Standalone Entry Arc Rule Every entrance block for a couple, major character, or group must be readable as a complete fanfic arc if the reader stops at the meeting point with the main group. The main saga may continue after contact, but the entrance block itself cannot function only as exposition, transport
## Entry Arc Scale Guide This guide controls the expected depth of standalone entrance blocks. It does not create a hard maximum word count. It prevents major arrivals from being compressed into summary and prevents smaller arrivals from stealing the structural weight of the core saga.
### Major standalone entry arcs Major standalone entry arcs may require 10,000 to 15,000 words per chapter when the story weight requires it. Use this scale for: * Lexa / Costia / Anya, * Ronance / Steve, * Clarke / Raven / Octavia / Steve, * Vauseman / Theo, * SwanQueen / Henry, * Avalance, * Steve / Anya / Hawkins
### Medium standalone entry arcs Medium standalone entry arcs may require 7,000 to 12,000 words per chapter when needed. Use this scale for: * Finchel, * Shoni, * Seth / Summer, * Maya / Carina, * Runaways, * Sarah Walker / Chuck, * Callie / Arizona, * Cosima / Delphine, * Bo / Lauren. These arcs still need lived p
### Smaller intake arcs Smaller intake arcs are still real story, but they are more compressed. Use this scale for later city arrivals, support families, minor rescue groups, single-purpose civic arrivals, and survivor cells that change the city without carrying a full independent block. They still need enough old-w
### Scale warning If an entrance block cannot be read with emotional satisfaction up to the meeting point, it is underbuilt. If a smaller entrance block starts pushing the four core couples or the active part engine off the page, it is overbuilt. Forbidden shortcut: Do not write `they survived for a year and a half
### 2.2 Terminology Rule, Living Dead, Not Zombies * The required term in prose and work files is living dead, the dead, they, or a physical description from the point of view. * Do not use the translated generic genre term by default, not in summaries and not in prose, unless a character says it explicitly and consci
### 2.2.1 Terminology Rule for English Writing * In current draft or writing, the locked English term is `living dead`. * `the dead`, `they`, or physical description may also be used, for example teeth, weight, breath, blood, skin, movement, smell, according to the scene point of view. * Do not use `walking dead`, so
### 2.2.2 English Writing Rule * Rewriting into English is a full rewrite according to canon and outline, not sentence-by-sentence translation. * In chapters 1 to 59, if the task is current draft or QA of an English chapter, `research_english_voice.md` must also be used alongside the main and secondary research files.
### 2.3 World Period, Technology, Media, and Available Objects * Day Zero takes place in a world roughly equivalent to 2003. * This is a global world rule, not a local idea for Part 4. Every chapter, plan, QA, or file update must check that objects, communication, media, and music fit this period. * Available in the w
## 2.4 Major Plot Change Rule * A major plot change is not regular QA repair. * Do not add, remove, disable, kill, wound, destroy, lose, break, or change the role of an object, vehicle, animal, child, character, shelter, route sign, relationship, or major event unless it appeared in the reading report, the working can
## 2.5 Work Mode and Protected List Rule Before every significant task, one work mode must be defined: 1. Diagnosis only, reading, mapping, and report without repair and without replacement files. 2. Point repair only, repairing lines that contradict canon, knowledge, time, blocking, gender, objects, injuries, vehicl
## 2.6 Chapter Logic Map Rule `chapters_summaries.md` holds short summaries only. Each part's chapter logic map, `partX_chapter_logic_map.md`, holds the control layer: who knows what, what must not be known, what came before, what passes forward, objects, injuries, children, animals, vehicles, couples, and future line
### Legacy logic-map recovery rule When an older `partX_chapter_logic_map.md` or equivalent detailed logic layer is discovered after the cleaned source package has compressed it, do not ignore it and do not automatically roll back to it. Use this hierarchy: 1. Active canon and current Git-approved planning win on num
## 3. The Clarity Trio Required in Every Chapter
### A. Clear Blocking * It must be clear who stands where and what each person is doing. * There must be a visible and clear transition between scenes. * In every crowded scene, the reader must know where each character's body is in space.