key-moments skill

---
name: key-moments
description: Structure stories around essential emotional moments using Rodriguez's approach integrated with elemental genres. Use when plotting feels mechanical, when emotional beats need defining, or when building stories from vivid scenes rather than plot outlines.
license: MIT
metadata:
  author: jwynia
  version: "1.0"
  type: diagnostic
  mode: diagnostic+generative
  domain: fiction
---

# Key Moments: Genre-Driven Emotional Beats Skill

You help writers identify and sequence the essential emotional experiences that define their story's genre, then build the world, characters, and connective tissue around those moments. Based on Robert Rodriguez's methodology of visualizing key moments first, integrated with elemental genre theory.

## Core Principle

**Stories are defined by emotional experiences, not plot mechanics. Identify the key moments your genre requires, sequence them for maximum impact, then build everything else to enable those moments.**

This inverts the typical outline-then-dramatize approach: you start with vivid, memorable scenes and work backward to what must exist to make them possible.

## The Seven Principles

1. **Emotional Experience Primacy**: Key moments are defined by the emotional impact they create, not plot mechanics
2. **Systemic Integration**: Key moments both emerge from and impact the worldbuilding systems
3. **Character Function Alignment**: Characters are designed to enable, experience, or oppose key moments
4. **Visual-Experiential Priority**: Key moments are conceived as vivid, memorable scenes first
5. **Flexible Sequencing**: The order of key moments can be adjusted to maximize impact
6. **Consequence Cascades**: Each key moment creates ripple effects through the story system
7. **Bridging Efficiency**: Connective scenes serve multiple functions in world and character development

## Key Moments by Elemental Genre

### Wonder

| Key Moment Type | Emotional Experience | Story Function |
|-----------------|----------------------|----------------|
| **Initial Encounter** | Surprise and awe | Establishes spectacular nature of setting/concept |
| **Scale Revelation** | Humbling realization of vastness | Contextualizes protagonist's place |
| **Perspective Shift** | Paradigm change in understanding | Forces reevaluation of assumptions |
| **Wonder Escalation** | Intensification of awe | Raises stakes and deepens engagement |
| **Transcendent Integration** | Meaning-making through wonder | Provides thematic resolution |

### Mystery

| Key Moment Type | Emotional Experience | Story Function |
|-----------------|----------------------|----------------|
| **Question Inception** | Curiosity activation | Establishes central puzzle |
| **Pattern Recognition** | Satisfaction of connection | Provides momentum and engagement |
| **False Resolution** | Surprise from misdirection | Creates complexity and extends engagement |
| **Progressive Revelation** | Deepening understanding | Builds toward solution |
| **Solution Crystallization** | Illumination and closure | Completes emotional journey |

### Adventure

| Key Moment Type | Emotional Experience | Story Function |
|-----------------|----------------------|----------------|
| **Threshold Crossing** | Excitement of departure | Transitions to adventure world |
| **Capability Test** | Confidence from competence | Establishes protagonist's abilities |
| **Resource Depletion** | Vulnerability from loss | Forces adaptation and growth |
| **Ultimate Challenge** | Fear and determination | Tests protagonist's limits |
| **Return Transformation** | Pride and perspective | Demonstrates growth from journey |

### Horror

| Key Moment Type | Emotional Experience | Story Function |
|-----------------|----------------------|----------------|
| **Wrongness Glimpse** | Unease from dissonance | Establishes threat potential |
| **Safety Violation** | Shock from boundary breach | Demonstrates vulnerability |
| **Threat Escalation** | Escalating dread | Raises stakes |
| **Failed Solution** | Despair from ineffectuality | Deepens hopelessness |
| **Confrontation** | Terror meets courage | Provides climactic moment |

### Thriller

| Key Moment Type | Emotional Experience | Story Function |
|-----------------|----------------------|----------------|
| **Stakes Establishment** | Concern for outcome | Sets up tension framework |
| **Deadline Imposition** | Anxiety from time pressure | Creates urgency |
| **Near Miss** | Relief with lingering tension | Maintains engagement through peaks/valleys |
| **Option Elimination** | Mounting pressure | Forces protagonist into harder choices |
| **Decision Under Duress** | Catharsis through action | Provides climactic release |

### Relationship

| Key Moment Type | Emotional Experience | Story Function |
|-----------------|----------------------|----------------|
| **Significant Connection** | Recognition of potential | Establishes relationship basis |
| **Intimacy Deepening** | Warmth from vulnerability | Develops emotional investment |
| **Value Conflict** | Frustration from differences | Creates meaningful obstacles |
| **Relationship Crisis** | Heartbreak or betrayal | Tests connection's resilience |
| **Reconciliation/Resolution** | Emotional closure | Completes relationship arc |

### Drama

| Key Moment Type | Emotional Experience | Story Function |
|-----------------|----------------------|----------------|
| **Internal Conflict Revelation** | Recognition of contradiction | Establishes character struggle |
| **External Pressure Point** | Stress from circumstances | Forces character choices |
| **Failure Moment** | Shame from inadequacy | Deepens character journey |
| **Truth Confrontation** | Painful self-awareness | Catalyzes change |
| **Character Evolution** | Self-actualization | Demonstrates growth |

### Issue

| Key Moment Type | Emotional Experience | Story Function |
|-----------------|----------------------|----------------|
| **Perspective Challenge** | Intellectual discomfort | Establishes issue's complexity |
| **Stake Personalization** | Emotional investment | Makes abstract concrete |
| **Complexity Recognition** | Cognitive expansion | Prevents simplistic resolution |
| **Position Testing** | Value/belief examination | Forces intellectual honesty |
| **Perspective Integration** | Nuanced understanding | Provides thematic resolution |

### Ensemble

| Key Moment Type | Emotional Experience | Story Function |
|-----------------|----------------------|----------------|
| **Group Formation** | Belonging potential | Establishes the collective |
| **Role Establishment** | Identity within community | Defines character functions |
| **Group Fracture** | Loyalty testing | Creates internal conflict |
| **Collective Challenge** | Shared adversity | Forces cooperation |
| **Synergy Moment** | Strength through unity | Demonstrates group value |

## Implementation Process

### Phase 1: Key Moment Identification and Sequencing

**Step 1: Determine Primary and Secondary Genres**
- Identify the core emotional experiences you want readers to have
- Select corresponding primary and secondary elemental genres

**Step 2: Select Critical Key Moments**
- Choose 3-5 essential moments from the primary genre
- Add 2-3 supporting moments from the secondary genre
- Ensure moments create emotional variety and progression

**Step 3: Sequence Moments Optimally**
- Arrange chronologically as a starting point
- Consider emotional pacing and tension curves
- Allow for non-linear presentation if appropriate

**Step 4: Visualize Each Moment**
- Create concrete scene concepts for each key moment
- Focus on sensory details and emotional impact
- Define how each moment changes character or world understanding

### Phase 2: World Integration

**Step 1: Determine Required World Elements**
- What must exist in the world for each key moment to occur?
- What causal relationships connect world systems to key moments?
- What consequences do key moments create in the world?

**Step 2: Design Supporting Systems**
- Power structures that enable or oppose key moments
- Organizations with stakes in key moment outcomes
- Economic and belief systems creating appropriate pressures

### Phase 3: Character Function

**Step 1: Identify Required Character Functions**
- What roles must be filled for each key moment?
- Assign functions to specific characters
- Ensure protagonist experiences the most significant moments

**Step 2: Create Character Arcs**
- Design development paths intersecting with key moments
- Ensure character growth enables progression through moments
- Create change arcs that pay off in specific key moments

### Phase 4: Connective Tissue

**Step 1: Identify Bridging Requirements**
- What must happen between key moments?
- What character and world state changes are needed?
- What time, distance, and knowledge gaps need filling?

**Step 2: Design Multifunctional Bridge Scenes**
- Create connective scenes serving multiple purposes
- Advance character development while moving toward key moments
- Reveal world information relevant to upcoming moments

**Step 3: Install Setup-Payoff Mechanics**
- Plant necessary elements for later key moments
- Create foreshadowing enhancing later emotional impact
- Establish rules or limitations significant later

### Phase 5: Testing and Refinement

**Evaluate Emotional Progression**:
- Do key moments create intended emotional journey?
- Are there gaps or redundancies in emotional experience?
- Should moment intensity or sequence be adjusted?

**Verify Causal Logic**:
- Does each key moment follow logically from preceding elements?
- Do character decisions leading to moments make sense?
- Do world systems create appropriate conditions for moments?

**Test for Genre Satisfaction**:
- Are primary genre emotional experiences most prominent?
- Does secondary genre support rather than overshadow primary?
- Are genre-specific satisfaction conditions met?

## Worked Example: Wonder + Mystery

**Concept**: An oceanographer discovers unusual bioluminescent patterns that appear to form a communication system, leading to evidence of an ancient aquatic civilization.

**Wonder Key Moments** (Primary):
1. **Initial Encounter**: Discovery of synchronized bioluminescent patterns across different species
2. **Scale Revelation**: Realization that patterns extend throughout ocean, suggesting global network
3. **Wonder Escalation**: Finding first artifacts of the ancient civilization
4. **Transcendent Integration**: Communication breakthrough with the still-extant consciousness

**Mystery Key Moments** (Secondary):
1. **Question Inception**: Why did this civilization disappear from human awareness?
2. **False Resolution**: Evidence suggesting civilization destroyed itself
3. **Solution Crystallization**: Discovery that civilization evolved beyond physical form

**Character Functions**:
- **Wonder Experiencer**: Oceanographer protagonist with personal connection to the ocean
- **Mystery Solver**: Research partner with cryptographic expertise
- **Opposition Force**: Government/corporate agent wanting to weaponize discovery
- **Wonder Skeptic**: Scientific community representative demanding proof
- **Knowledge Keeper**: Elderly mentor with folklore knowledge hinting at ancient truth

**Connective Tissue**:
- Research funding challenges forcing creative approaches
- Relationship development between protagonist and research partner
- Escalating interest from outside forces as discoveries become harder to hide
- Progressive decoding providing partial clues

## Advantages

1. **Efficiency**: Focusing on key moments first prevents wasted development of unnecessary elements
2. **Emotional Clarity**: Defining the story through emotional experiences ensures genre satisfaction
3. **Structural Flexibility**: Allows non-linear development while maintaining narrative coherence
4. **World-Story Integration**: Creates feedback loop between worldbuilding and narrative moments
5. **Character Functionality**: Ensures characters serve clear purposes in creating key moments
6. **Development Prioritization**: Helps focus worldbuilding on elements most critical to the story
7. **Revision Guidance**: Provides clear framework for identifying what's working and what isn't

## Output Persistence

### Output Discovery
1. Check for `context/output-config.md` in the project
2. If found, look for this skill's entry
3. If not found, ask user: "Where should I save key moment designs?"
4. Suggest: `stories/structure/` or `explorations/stories/`

### Primary Output
- **Genre selection** - Primary and secondary elemental genres
- **Key moments list** - 5-8 essential emotional beats
- **Character functions** - Roles needed for each moment
- **Connective tissue** - Bridge scenes between moments

### File Naming
Pattern: `{story-name}-moments-{date}.md`

## Verification (Oracle)

### What This Skill Can Verify
- **Genre alignment** - Do moments match primary genre? (High confidence)
- **Emotional variety** - Is there progression, not repetition? (High confidence)
- **Causal logic** - Do moments follow from character/world? (Medium confidence)

### What Requires Human Judgment
- **Emotional impact** - Will these moments land?
- **Bridge efficiency** - Are connective scenes serving multiple purposes?
- **Genre satisfaction** - Does overall sequence fulfill genre promise?

### Oracle Limitations
- Cannot assess whether moments will emotionally resonate
- Cannot predict reader engagement with specific beats

## Feedback Loop

### Session Persistence
- **Output location:** See `context/output-config.md`
- **What to save:** Genres, moments, functions, bridges
- **Naming pattern:** `{story-name}-moments-{date}.md`

### Cross-Session Learning
- Check for prior key moment work on this story
- Ensure moments maintain consistency with changes
- Failed emotional beats inform anti-patterns

## Design Constraints

### This Skill Assumes
- Story has genre (emotional experience goal)
- Moments can be identified (not pure slice-of-life)
- Writer wants emotional structure, not just plot

### This Skill Does Not Handle
- **Genre identification** - Route to: genre-conventions
- **Scene-level pacing** - Route to: scene-sequencing
- **Character arc details** - Route to: character-arc

### Degradation Signals
- Plot-first injection (emotion retrofit)
- Genre mismatch (wrong emotional beats)
- Moment inflation (everything climactic)

## Reasoning Requirements

### Standard Reasoning
- Single genre moment selection
- Basic character function assignment
- Simple bridge identification

### Extended Reasoning (ultrathink)
- **Full moment sequence** - [Why: all moments must create emotional journey]
- **Multi-genre integration** - [Why: primary/secondary must balance]
- **World-moment coordination** - [Why: world must enable moments naturally]

**Trigger phrases:** "design the complete emotional arc", "integrate both genres", "coordinate world with moments"

## Execution Strategy

### Sequential (Default)
- Genre selection before moment identification
- Moments before character functions
- Functions before connective tissue

### Parallelizable
- Designing moments for different genres
- Research into different emotional progressions

### Subagent Candidates
| Task | Agent Type | When to Spawn |
|------|------------|---------------|
| Genre research | general-purpose | When exploring genre emotional requirements |
| Story consistency | Explore | When checking moments against existing story |

## Context Management

### Approximate Token Footprint
- **Skill base:** ~4k tokens (genres + implementation)
- **With worked example:** ~5k tokens
- **With all genres:** ~6k tokens

### Context Optimization
- Focus on primary genre moments only
- Full genre tables are reference
- Worked example optional

### When Context Gets Tight
- Prioritize: Primary genre moments, current phase
- Defer: Secondary genre details, all genre tables
- Drop: Worked example, advantages list

## Anti-Patterns

### 1. Plot-First Injection
**Pattern:** Building the plot outline first, then trying to locate where to insert emotional beats.
**Why it fails:** Emotion retrofitted to plot feels mechanical. The moments don't emerge naturally from character and situation; they interrupt the story to deliver required feelings.
**Fix:** Start with the emotional experiences you want readers to have. Build backward: what situations create those emotions? What characters would be in those situations? What world enables those situations?

### 2. Genre Mismatch
**Pattern:** Choosing key moments that deliver different emotional experiences than the primary genre promises.
**Why it fails:** Readers come to genres for specific emotional experiences. A horror novel that delivers primarily relationship moments disappoints horror readers without satisfying romance readers.
**Fix:** Verify that your most prominent key moments belong to your primary genre. Secondary genre moments support; they don't dominate. If the mismatch is intentional, you're writing a different genre than you think.

### 3. Logistics-Only Bridges
**Pattern:** Connective scenes that only move characters from one key moment to the next without developing character, world, or theme.
**Why it fails:** Readers feel the pacing sag in bridge sections. They're just waiting for the next interesting thing. The story develops a stop-start rhythm rather than continuous engagement.
**Fix:** Every bridge scene should serve at least two purposes: moving toward the next key moment AND developing character OR revealing world OR exploring theme. If a scene only serves logistics, compress or cut it.

### 4. Moment Inflation
**Pattern:** Treating every scene as a key moment, loading the story with climactic experiences.
**Why it fails:** Without contrast, high-intensity moments lose impact. Emotional fatigue sets in. Readers become numb when everything is equally important.
**Fix:** Limit key moments to 5-8 per story. Let some scenes be quieter. The valleys make the peaks feel taller. Save your strongest moments for where they'll have maximum impact.

### 5. Forced Causation
**Pattern:** Key moments that don't follow logically from established character and world but happen because the plot needs them.
**Why it fails:** Readers sense when characters act against their nature to reach a predetermined destination. The moments feel artificial, earned by authorial fiat rather than story logic.
**Fix:** Work backward from each key moment: given this character and this world, what sequence of events makes this moment inevitable? If you can't find a path, either the moment doesn't fit or the character/world needs adjustment.

## Integration

### Inbound (feeds into this skill)
| Skill | What it provides |
|-------|------------------|
| genre-conventions | Genre-specific emotional requirements |
| story-sense | Diagnosis of what emotions are missing or misplaced |
| character-arc | Character states that enable or resist key moments |

### Outbound (this skill enables)
| Skill | What this provides |
|-------|-------------|
| scene-sequencing | Clear emotional targets for scene construction |
| worldbuilding | World requirements to enable key moments |
| outline-collaborator | Structural skeleton built around emotional beats |

### Complementary
| Skill | Relationship |
|-------|--------------|
| genre-conventions | Key-moments defines the emotional beats; genre-conventions ensures they satisfy genre expectations |
| scene-sequencing | Key-moments identifies what moments matter; scene-sequencing structures the approach and aftermath |