skills/ai-film-pipeline-master/references/phase-02-screenplay-dialogue/symptoms-voice.md

# Voice complaints

Part of the symptom router. Open this file when the complaint is about voice. 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 narrator has no personality"

1. Decide the persona before the first line rather than discovering it in chapter four
   `voice.narrating_persona` · `voice.register_setting`
2. Authority comes from specificity — one exact number beats any claim of expertise
   `voice.authority_by_specificity`
3. For intimacy, choose the confiding register deliberately
   `voice.confiding_voice`
4. Build the lexical field: which words this voice would and would not use
   `voice.lexical_field` · `voice.latinate_vs_anglo`
5. Shift the diction at a chosen point rather than letting it wander
   `voice.diction_shift` · `voice.psychic_distance_ladder`
6. A narrator looking back is a different instrument from one living it
   `voice.retrospective_narrator`

### "The voice drifts / sounds like two people"

1. Name the failure and audit for it
   `voice.register_creep` · `voice.tonal_drift` · `voice.tonal_whiplash`
2. Test whether the narrator's voice and the character's have merged
   `voice.narrator_vs_character`
3. For a team or a series, write the voice bible before the second writer starts
   `voice.voice_bible` · `theme.series_consistency`

### "The narrator sounds too certain / not certain enough"

1. Instability of authority is a technique, not a defect — make it deliberate
   `voice.unstable_authority` · `voice.self_correcting_narrator`
2. The hedge is a precise instrument; overused it is a tic
   `voice.the_hedge`
3. For irony without sarcasm, understate or adopt mock formality
   `voice.understating_voice` · `voice.mock_formality`

### "The dialect reads as caricature"

1. Do it through syntax and word choice, not through spelling
   `voice.dialect_by_syntax` · `voice.eye_dialect`
2. Code-switching is characterisation, and it has rules
   `voice.code_switching` · `voice.second_language_voice`

### "It reads like AI wrote it"

The flat, hedged, evenly-balanced, list-prone register a language model produces by default. It is recognisable, and it has specific repairs.

1. Read the card that names it and what each symptom is
   `voice.ai_default_register`
2. Set a register on purpose instead of accepting the default
   `voice.register_setting` · `voice.narrating_persona`
3. Replace the balanced summary with one specific detail
   `emo.specific_detail` · `char.what_they_notice`
4. Check the structure actually turns something rather than satisfying a template
   `scene.value_turn` · `scene.dead_scene_test`
5. And check the dialogue is not on the nose, which a model produces because it optimises for clarity
   `dial.on_the_nose` · `sub.three_conditions`
6. Watch for drift over a long stretch, not a paragraph
   `voice.tonal_drift` · `voice.register_creep`
7. And there is a viewpoint signature to it as well — a narration with no position, which the card names symptom by symptom and tells you how to direct, detect and repair
   `pov.ai_narration`

### "I need an essay or argument voice"

`voice.essayistic_voice` · `voice.argumentative_voice` · `voice.controlled_digression` · `voice.polemic_register`

### "I want to address the reader directly"

`voice.addressing_the_reader` · `voice.second_person_voice` · `voice.implied_listener` · `voice.confessional_to_camera` · `voice.the_letter_voice`

### "I need a specific register"

**Formal and institutional:** `voice.legal_register` · `voice.bureaucratic_register` · `voice.liturgical_register` · `voice.eulogy_register` · `voice.commentary_register` · `voice.advertising_register`

**Comic:** `voice.deadpan_register` · `voice.the_overexplainer` · `voice.mock_heroic_apparatus` · `voice.faux_naive` · `voice.unreliable_enthusiast`

**Borrowed:** `voice.period_voice` · `voice.pastiche_vs_parody` · `voice.real_person_register` · `voice.document_type_voice`

### "I'm writing into someone else's voice"

1. A house style or a brand voice has to be taken in before it can be written
   `voice.house_style` · `voice.brand_voice_intake`
2. Matching an established series, or taking over another writer's character
   `voice.series_voice_match` · `voice.inherited_character_voice`
3. And the transcript, which is a voice you did not choose
   `voice.transcript_voice`

### "Voice in a format that isn't prose"

`voice.action_line_voice` · `voice.caption_voice` · `voice.host_voice` · `voice.interactive_voice`

### "Where does my own voice fit?"

1. Voice and style are not the same thing
   `voice.voice_vs_style` · `voice.finding_your_voice`
2. Sometimes the job is to suppress it
   `voice.suppressing_your_voice`
3. Imitation is training until it becomes a trap
   `voice.imitation_as_training` · `rhythm.borrowed_rhythm`
4. Two named failures at the other end: prose that admires itself, and a narrator who is cleverer than the story
   `voice.purple_prose` · `voice.narrator_outsmarts_story`

### "I need a voice that is not a person"

1. An institution, a place, a document, or a collective
   `voice.institutional_voice` · `voice.voice_of_a_place` · `voice.found_document` · `voice.collective_we`
2. For ritual, ceremony, anthem or prayer
   `voice.incantatory_register`

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