skills/ai-film-pipeline-master/references/phase-01-story-generation/symptoms-time-and-chronology.md

# Time and chronology complaints

Part of the symptom router. Open this file when the complaint is about time and chronology. Each complaint below is followed by the cards that repair it, best first; `LOOKUP.md` says which file holds each card.

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### "The flashback stops the story"

1. Most flashbacks answer a question nobody asked. Check yours does not
   `time.unasked_flashback` · `time.chapter_two_dump`
2. Trigger it from something in the present scene
   `time.flashback_trigger` · `time.double_anchor`
3. Consider the cold memory instead of the dramatised one — a line of recall rather than a scene
   `time.cold_memory` · `time.dramatised_flashback`
4. Or withhold it until it can pay
   `time.withheld_flashback` · `time.recurring_fragment`

### "The dual timeline isn't working"

1. One strand is dead. That is nearly always the diagnosis
   `time.dead_strand` · `time.dual_timeline`
2. Both strands need their own want and their own turn
   `time.parallel_now` · `scene.value_turn`
3. Give the frame a reason to exist
   `time.frame_narrative` · `time.anniversary_structure`

### "The reader loses track of when we are"

1. Signal the jump. The unsignalled one is a named failure
   `time.unsignalled_jump` · `time.time_jump` · `time.passage_marker`
2. Non-linear structure must be making a claim, or it is just harder to follow
   `time.nonlinear_assembly` · `time.reverse_chronology` · `theme.theme_in_structure`
3. If in doubt, the linear spine is not a failure of ambition
   `time.linear_spine` · `time.in_medias_res`

### "The pacing is wrong but the scenes are fine"

This is duration, not structure. Four settings, and most drafts use one.

1. Scene, summary, ellipsis, dilation — decide which each passage is
   `time.scene_duration` · `time.summary_duration` · `time.ellipsis` · `time.dilation`
2. The habitual tense compresses months into a paragraph
   `time.iterative_habit`
3. A montage summarises a gap between pivotal scenes; it must not carry plot facts
   `time.montage` · `seq.montage_sequence`
4. Real time is a choice with a cost
   `time.real_time`

### "The memory may not be true"

`time.unreliable_memory` · `info.unreliable_narrator` · `time.flashforward` · `time.interactive_rewind`


### "I don't know what tense to write this in"

Tense is not a preference. It sets a floor and a ceiling on how far the reader can stand from the telling, before person or diction get a vote — so choose it once, deliberately, and know what you have bought.

1. Read what each tense does to distance before choosing anything else
   `pov.tense_as_distance`
2. Present tense buys immediacy and gives up the vantage — nobody inside it can look back and know what it meant
   `time.present_tense`
3. If two strands need telling apart, let the grammar do it instead of a caption
   `time.tense_shift`
4. For one passage only — a testimony, the decisive scene — drop into the present inside an otherwise past-tense work
   `time.historical_present`

### "The same stretch of time keeps coming round"

1. The loop: the interval repeats, the character keeps their memory, the world does not, and something has to release them
   `time.time_loop`
2. If characters move between times instead, declare the physics once — fixed, branching or mutable — and then never make an exception
   `time.time_travel_rules`
3. That is `time.unruled_time_travel`; the repair is the rules card above, applied retroactively to every scene you have already written
4. A stated prediction delivered early will organise everything after it around whether it comes true
   `time.prophecy_structure`

### "I don't know what shape to give a whole life"

1. One day, waking to sleeping, with everything else reaching in through memory and anticipation
   `time.single_day`
2. Or the year's own divisions, each carrying what its season already means without you arguing for it
   `time.seasonal_cycle`
3. Or hand the protagonist role forward as people are born, age and die
   `time.generational_span`
4. Or run the whole thing as one survey from the end — a frame lasting hours over material spanning decades
   `time.life_review`

### "It's told in letters and I've lost the order"

1. Let the dates on the documents be the chronology, and let the gaps between them be readable
   `time.document_dating`
2. A diary is a different instrument: kept forward, by someone who does not know the ending
   `time.log_time`
3. If these people do not use the reader's calendar, decide what the page actually prints before the first heading
   `time.calendar_translation`
4. In factual work the order is itself a claim — as it happened, as you found out, or arranged by theme
   `time.documentary_chronology`

### "The flashback has a flashback inside it"

1. Two layers below the present is a structure, not an accident; build it as one
   `time.nested_flashback`
2. If the viewpoint character was not there, it is a different card with different rules — the memory is inherited, and the inheriting is the point
   `time.borrowed_memory`
3. And a dream is not a flashback. It runs on emotional logic, and that is precisely what separates them
   `time.dream_sequence`

### "Pages go by and no time passes"

1. First name it: story time has stopped and narrative time is still running. That is a legitimate gear, not a fault, once you know you are in it
   `time.descriptive_pause`
2. Control pace at the break rather than in the sentence — how much text sits between one chapter end and the next
   `time.chapter_length_clock`
3. Label the units by their distance from a fixed future moment and the heading carries the pressure for you
   `time.countdown_chapter`
4. Put the jump itself at the break, so the movement in time is the hook rather than the thing after it
   `time.temporal_cliffhanger`

### "Two things happen at the same moment and I can only write one"

1. The named problem and its full set of solutions. Prose delivers one thing at a time; stories routinely do not
   `time.simultaneity_handling`
2. With a large cast the prior job is keeping the separate clocks straight — who is where, on what day, having heard what
   `time.ensemble_chronology`

### "Someone has worked out that my dates don't add up"

1. That is `time.calendar_drift`, and readers do this arithmetic whether or not you did
2. The repair is a pass of its own: reduce the whole draft to a dated list of events and check it for travel time, seasons, ages and knowledge order
   `time.timeline_audit`
3. If the fix was to change something already established, know what that costs before you do it again
   `time.timeline_retcon`

### "The reader needs a family tree to follow this"

1. Reader-facing apparatus is legitimate, and the card says what each kind is actually for
   `time.reader_timeline_aid`
2. But if the chart is *required*, that is the failure — the narrative never made the sequence clear and the genealogy is an apology for it
   `time.timeline_aid_apology`

### "He's the same person at seventy as he was at thirty"

1. Ageing is rendered, not stated — and the test is whether the reader accepts the two as one continuous human being
   `time.ageing_on_page`
2. If the piece is told aloud to a present audience, duration stops being yours: the teller controls it live and may reorder on the spot
   `time.performed_time`

### "The time jump is a caption and nothing else"

1. That is `time.datestamp_crutch` — the card does the work and the scene does none
2. The repair is one concrete thing whose changed state encodes the gap, established before you need it
   `time.passage_marker`
3. Across installments, decide the interval as a convention and hold it, rather than deciding it fresh each episode
   `time.serial_clock`

### "The glimpse of the future never actually happens"

1. That is `time.false_flashforward`: the image was a dream, a fantasy, a different character, or a framing whose true context reverses it
2. Compare the legitimate version, which pays the image off exactly as shown and gets its tension from the wait
   `time.flashforward`

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