skills/ai-film-pipeline-master/references/phase-01-story-generation/cat-char.md

# Character Design, Desire, Wound and Lie

Category `char`. The construction of people: how a character is built, made distinct, made to want, made to contradict themselves, and made castable.

The Visual Creativity Database has no equivalent category. Character is one of the two axes the camera cannot reach — a lens can photograph a face, a posture and a gesture, but it cannot photograph a want, a wound or a lie. Those have to be built in writing before any shot exists, which is why this category lives only here.

Arc *shape* is not here — it lives in `arcs.md`. Dialogue is not here — it lives in `cat-dial.md`. This file is about the person: what they are made of, what they carry, and what the story can press on.

**Part 1 of 4.** 34 cards across eight sections: entrances and first impressions, desire and the lie, contradiction and dimension, physical texture, backstory and secrets, relationship and status, antagonist construction, and the standing traps.

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## Contents

- [Entrances and First Impressions](#entrances-and-first-impressions)
- [Desire, the Wound and the Lie](#desire-the-wound-and-the-lie)
- [Contradiction and Dimension](#contradiction-and-dimension)
- [The Body, the Habit, the Object, the Gaze](#the-body-the-habit-the-object-the-gaze)
- [Backstory, the Secret and the Name](#backstory-the-secret-and-the-name)
- [Relationships, Status and the Ensemble](#relationships-status-and-the-ensemble)
- [Antagonist Construction](#antagonist-construction)
- [Ages, Real People and the Standing Traps](#ages-real-people-and-the-standing-traps)
- [Coverage](#coverage)
- [Sources](#sources)

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## Entrances and First Impressions

### The Defining Action Entrance

**Also called:** entrance beat, introduce-on-a-verb, first-action reveal, show-don't-tell intro
**What it is:** the first time we meet a character, they are performing an action only they would perform, and that action encodes their want, their competence and their moral setting at once.
**Effect on the audience:** a working model of the person forms in about three seconds, and the reader stops reading description and starts watching behaviour.
**Used for and where it works best:** every named character who will speak more than twice, and non-negotiable for a protagonist. The craft rule is that it must be a verb with an object and a small cost, not a state — "waiting nervously" is a state; "re-taping a cracked phone screen at a red light while the queue behind her leans on their horns" is an action. The character must be doing it for their own reasons, not for ours.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, One-Hour Drama, Novel, Short Film | genres: Crime, Comedy, Family Drama, Social Drama
**Avoid when:** the character is meant to be unreadable — a mole, a suspect in a whodunnit, a narrator you intend to prove unreliable. The real failure mode is the mascot gesture: a quirk performed once on page three that never recurs, which flattens the person into the single thing they did on arrival.
**Example:**
> INT. HOSPITAL CORRIDOR — NIGHT
> MARWA, 40s, scrubs. She walks the corridor peeling the OUT OF ORDER tape off the vending machine, feeds it her own coin, and leaves the crisps on the waiting-room table without looking at who takes them.

**Yields to:** `char.reputation_before_entrance` — Character must stay unreadable: mole, suspect, unreliable narrator.  
`char.defining_action_entrance`

### Entrance Against Type

**Also called:** contrary introduction, wrong-foot entrance, counter-cast intro, against-the-grain reveal
**What it is:** you introduce the character doing the opposite of their function — the debt collector at a school sports day, the saint shoplifting — so the role and the behaviour disagree from the first frame.
**Effect on the audience:** it opens an information gap the viewer wants closed, which buys you patience for a character who would otherwise read as a stock type.
**Used for and where it works best:** characters whose genre function is instantly recognisable and therefore instantly boring — the hitman, the nun, the bent copper, the tyrant father. The craft rule: the contrary behaviour has to be *true*, not a fake-out. Pay it off later as the genuine second half of the person, or you have cheated the audience and they will feel it without being able to name it.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, Limited Series / Drama, Vertical Micro-Drama, Novel | genres: Crime, Thriller, Comedy, Tragedy
**Avoid when:** the audience must identify the character's function immediately — procedural pilots, ensembles with twelve entrances in ten minutes, short form where three seconds decide whether anyone stays. The failure mode is a surprising intro that never connects to anything, which reads as a writer showing off.
**Example:**
> We meet the debt collector at a school sports day, on one knee, re-threading a six-year-old's shoelace with enormous patience. He gets the bow even. Then he stands, checks his phone, and walks to the car park to break a man's fingers.

**Yields to:** `char.defining_action_entrance` — where the audience must identify the character's function immediately: procedural pilots, twelve entrances in ten minutes, short form where three seconds decide whether anyone stays.  
`char.entrance_against_type`

### Competence First

**Also called:** establish the skill, the professional beat, let them be good at something, the expertise intro
**What it is:** before the character is tested by the plot, you show them doing their ordinary work extremely well.
**Effect on the audience:** it buys trust. An audience will follow someone who is genuinely good at something even when they dislike the person, and it makes a later failure read as tragedy rather than as stupidity.
**Used for and where it works best:** protagonists you are about to break, antiheroes, heist and procedural leads, and any character whose eventual defeat must cost the audience something. The craft rule: show the competence in the character's own domain, not in the plot's — the sniper who stops a stranger's nosebleed in nine seconds, not the sniper who shoots. Make it specific enough that a real practitioner would nod, because the specificity is the whole effect.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, One-Hour Drama, Game Narrative, Limited Series / Drama | genres: Crime, Thriller, War, Science Fiction
**Avoid when:** the story is about someone who has no domain yet — coming of age, the first day, the new arrival with no papers. There a competence beat reads as false. The failure mode elsewhere is competence porn with no cost: the character becomes unbeatable and the tension quietly dies.
**Example:**
> "Don't force it." He takes the seized bolt, wraps the nut in a wet rag, holds a lighter under it for nine seconds, and turns it with two fingers. "Heat. Your father taught you force."

**Yields to:** `char.audience_surrogate_trap` — Lead has no domain yet: the newcomer, the first day.  
`char.competence_first`

### Reputation Before Entrance

**Also called:** the talked-about entrance, off-screen introduction, the delayed arrival, building the myth
**What it is:** other characters discuss, fear or praise someone for a scene or two before we ever see them, so the entrance becomes an event that either confirms or breaks the portrait.
**Effect on the audience:** the other characters' emotion transfers to us before the actor has done anything, and we watch the entrance actively, checking it against what we were told.
**Used for and where it works best:** antagonists, absent parents, legends, incoming bosses, and any character whose entrance must land in a single shot. The craft rule: the reports must *disagree*. Two people describing the same person in incompatible terms gives the entrance something to resolve, and gives you a scene instead of a trailer. Keep the delay to two scenes in short form, no more.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, Limited Series / Drama, Stage Play, Novel | genres: Crime, Thriller, Historical, Tragedy
**Avoid when:** the character is deliberately ordinary, or the reveal belongs to a later scene you have not yet earned. The real failure mode is overbuild — you write a cheque the entrance cannot cash, and the audience has already imagined someone better than anything you can stage.
**Example:**
> "He doesn't shout."
> "He shouted at me."
> "Then he'd already decided about you."
> Later: the door opens on a small man with a folder, who says, "Sorry — have I come at a bad time?" Everyone stands up.

**Yields to:** `char.defining_action_entrance` — where the character is deliberately ordinary, or the reveal belongs to a later scene you have not yet earned. Overbuild writes a cheque the entrance cannot cash.  
`char.reputation_before_entrance`

### The Casting Line

**Also called:** character description, the intro slug, actor bait, the two-line portrait
**What it is:** the prose line that introduces a character on the page, written to give an actor a way in and a reader an image — not to supply a physical passport description.
**Effect on the audience:** it exists only on the page, but it determines how a reader hears every line that character speaks afterwards, and it is what gets the script cast.
**Used for and where it works best:** every speaking character, once, at first appearance. The craft rule is one physical fact you could photograph, one behavioural fact an actor could play, and no age-plus-adjective lists. In screen formats never describe what cannot be shot; in prose the interior is yours and you should use it. The casting line is the most valuable real estate in a script, because it is the only place you get to direct without directing.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, One-Hour Drama, Short Film, Limited Series / Drama | genres: Crime, Family Drama, Historical, Heritage
**Avoid when:** you are writing prose fiction, where you can go inside and should. The failure mode is "JAMES, 35, handsome but troubled" — a description that casts nobody and gives an actor nothing to do on the day.
**Example:**
> ISHTAR, 60s. Dressed for a wedding she is not going to. Answers questions one beat after everyone else has moved on.

**Yields to:** `char.what_they_notice` — in prose fiction, where you can go inside and should. A casting line casts nobody on the page and gives a reader nothing.  
`char.casting_line`

### The Sympathy Beat

**Also called:** save the cat, the likability beat, the kindness insert, the empathy moment
**What it is:** an early, unprompted act of decency that costs the character something, placed to buy audience allegiance for someone difficult.
**Effect on the audience:** it aligns sympathy early and cheaply, which is exactly why it works and exactly why it is suspected.
**Used for and where it works best:** genuinely useful for antiheroes, criminals and cold professionals in commercial work, and near-essential in short form where you have seconds to make a viewer care. Two craft rules keep it alive: make it *cost* something, and make it *unobserved* — kindness with a witness reads as performance. Better still, make it a by-product of the flaw, so the beat characterises as well as ingratiates: the man who cannot stop fixing things helps because he cannot stop, not because he is nice.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, Vertical Micro-Drama, Reels/Shorts, Animation Feature | genres: Crime, Comedy, Family Drama, Romance
**Avoid when:** the contract with the audience is discomfort — a character study, the tragedy of a monster, anything where liking the lead would defuse the piece. The failure mode is the most visible cliché in commercial screenwriting: a bolt-on kindness the plot never refers to again, which modern audiences read as manipulation and resent.
**Example:**
> He counts the till, pockets the skim, then puts forty back because the new girl will be blamed for the shortfall. Nobody sees him do it. He is annoyed with himself the whole way to the car.

**Yields to:** `char.unlikeable_lead` — where the contract with the audience is discomfort: a character study, the tragedy of a monster, anything where liking the lead would defuse the piece.  
`char.sympathy_beat`

---

## Desire, the Wound and the Lie

### Desire Made Physical

**Also called:** the concrete want, object of desire, giving the want an address, externalising the goal
**What it is:** converting an abstract desire — respect, freedom, forgiveness — into a specific object, place or person the character can be seen pursuing, gaining and losing.
**Effect on the audience:** it lets them score the story. Every scene becomes readable as progress or loss without anyone explaining how anybody feels.
**Used for and where it works best:** any character whose want is emotional, which is most of them. The craft rule: the object must be losable and must be *somewhere*. "He wants respect" becomes "he wants his name on the shop sign" — now you can film it, and you can smash it. This is the character-level companion to `scene.give_a_want`, and the buildable form of `arc.the_want`.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, Novel, Game Narrative, One-Hour Drama | genres: Social Drama, Crime, Family Drama, Coming of Age
**Avoid when:** you are writing literary or psychological work where the vagueness of the longing is the subject, and pinning it to an object would answer the question the book is asking. The failure mode is the reverse: the object hardens into a MacGuffin and the emotional want disappears behind it, so winning it feels like nothing.
**Example:**
> "What is it you actually want?"
> "The parking space with my name painted on it. That one. Not a raise."

`char.desire_made_physical`

### The Wound as a Rule of Conduct

**Also called:** the wound behaviour, the coping rule, the armour, scar logic, the standing order
**What it is:** instead of dramatising the past injury, you write the rule the character now lives by because of it — and then you build a scene that breaks the rule.
**Effect on the audience:** they infer the wound without a flashback, and they feel the break as an event, because they learned the rule by watching it obeyed.
**Used for and where it works best:** any backstory you would otherwise be tempted to flash back to. The craft rule: state the rule as one imperative the character would never say aloud — *never sit with your back to the door*, *never accept food from anyone*, *never be the last to leave* — then write a scene in which obeying it costs them something they want. This is the filmable, playable form of `arc.the_ghost`, and unlike a flashback it can be put under pressure.
**Best in:** formats: One-Hour Drama, Feature Film, Novel, Limited Series / Drama | genres: War, Psychological, Family Drama, Crime
**Avoid when:** the nature of the wound is the story's central mystery and a visible rule would give it away for free. The failure mode is a rule you establish but never test: it becomes a tic, and you have written a quirk with a sad backstory attached.
**Example:**
> She will not let anyone stand behind her chair. At her daughter's wedding the photographer asks the family to gather behind the couple, and she lets them. Her hands shake through the entire photograph.

**Yields to:** `char.the_secret` — where the nature of the wound is the story's central mystery and a visible rule would give it away for free.  
`char.wound_as_rule`

### The Lie in One Line

**Also called:** the false belief, the misbelief, the governing sentence, the operating assumption
**What it is:** the character's self-deception written as a single first-person sentence they believe to be simply true, kept in front of you while you draft.
**Effect on the audience:** indirect but enormous — every scene acquires a second meaning, because they can watch a belief operating inside a decision.
**Used for and where it works best:** development, before the first draft, for the protagonist and for at least one opponent. The craft rule is the phrasing: first person, present tense, and generous to the character. "If I stop being useful, they will see there is nothing else" is a lie. "He's insecure" is a diagnosis, and a diagnosis will not generate a single line of dialogue. This feeds `arc.the_lie`; the arc file governs what happens to the belief, this card is about phrasing it so it is usable at the desk.
**Best in:** formats: Novel, Feature Film, Limited Series / Drama, One-Hour Drama | genres: Psychological, Family Drama, Social Drama, Tragedy
**Avoid when:** you are writing formats whose characters are fixed by design — broad procedural, sketch, most ensemble comedy. Forcing a lie onto a static character strains the format. The failure mode everywhere else is that the character starts *articulating* the lie in dialogue, which is `dial.on_the_nose` in its purest form. The lie is a tool for the writer, never a line for the actor.
**Example:**
> On the wall: "If I am useful, nobody leaves."
> On the page: "I can drive you." / "It's four hours." / "I'll drive you." / "Sam. It's four hours." / "Then I'll wait in the car."

**Yields to:** `arc.flat` — in formats whose characters are fixed by design: broad procedural, sketch, most ensemble comedy. Forcing a lie onto a static character strains the format.  
`char.lie_in_one_line`

### The Never List

**Also called:** the refusal set, the moral floor, what they will not trade, the character's red lines
**What it is:** a short list of things the character would never do, written before drafting, with a price written beside each one.
**Effect on the audience:** they experience the character's decisions as inevitable-in-hindsight — surprising in the moment, right on reflection — which is the whole sensation of good characterisation.
**Used for and where it works best:** making hard choices fast and consistently, and indispensable in a long series where several writers must stay in character across a season. The craft rule: three entries maximum, and at least one must carry a price the story can actually afford to pay — that is the one the plot will eventually attack, and it is where `arc.moral_line` gets its teeth. A refusal nobody can afford to break is decoration.
**Best in:** formats: Limited Series / Drama, One-Hour Drama, Game Narrative, Novel | genres: Crime, War, Thriller, Social Drama
**Avoid when:** you are writing comedy of manners or farce, where the character's inconsistency is the joke and a code of conduct kills the engine. The failure mode is the list becoming a code of honour, which turns the person into a paladin — so include one shabby, unheroic refusal that has no good reason behind it at all.
**Example:**
> Never hit anyone smaller. Never ask his brother for money. Never eat in front of a man who has none.
> The price of the second one is his daughter's surgery. The story intends to collect.

**Yields to:** `comedy.comic_character_engine` — Farce and comedy of manners: inconsistency is the joke.  
`char.never_list`

### Curing the Passive Protagonist

**Also called:** activation pass, the agency rewrite, who-wants-what, driving the lead
**What it is:** a repair technique — going through a draft and converting every scene where the protagonist is informed, rescued or transported into a scene where they choose, ask, take or refuse.
**Effect on the audience:** attention follows whoever is pushing. A passive lead silently hands the story's engine to a supporting character, and audiences report it as "slow" without knowing why.
**Used for and where it works best:** second-draft diagnosis, and the real problem behind most "we're not connecting with her" notes. The craft rule is grammatical: in every scene write the sentence "X wants Y from Z". If your protagonist is the Z in most of them, they are furniture. At least one decision in the film must be made *against advice*. Reaction is legitimate — see `scene.reaction_dilemma_decision` — provided it ends in a decision.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, One-Hour Drama, Novel, Game Narrative | genres: Crime, Thriller, Social Drama, Family Drama
**Avoid when:** the subject genuinely is powerlessness — prison, occupation, terminal illness, a child inside an adult system. There the fix is to shrink the arena until a small choice is enormous, not to invent agency the world would not allow. The failure mode is writers "activating" by adding physical action and producing a lead who does a great deal and wants nothing.
**Example:**
> Before: "You should tell her." / "Maybe." He looks at the phone. Cut.
> After: "You should tell her." / "I'm not going to." He takes the battery out of the phone and puts it in the drawer with the other three.

`char.passive_protagonist_fix`

---

## Contradiction and Dimension

### The Load-Bearing Contradiction

**Also called:** the dimension, the two-fact character, productive inconsistency, the internal fault line
**What it is:** two true statements about the character that cannot both be comfortable, chosen so the plot will eventually force him to pick one.
**Effect on the audience:** the sense of a person rather than a function; behaviour becomes unpredictable while staying legible.
**Used for and where it works best:** every principal, decided in development. The craft rule: the contradiction must be *causal*, not random. Brave in a firefight, mute with his daughter — both grow from the same root, that he trusts procedure and not people. Test it in three rooms: home, work, under threat. If he behaves identically in all three you have a trait, not a person; if he behaves unrecognisably in all three you have three people.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, Limited Series / Drama, Novel, Stage Play | genres: Crime, War, Family Drama, Psychological
**Avoid when:** broad animation or short-form comedy, where legibility beats depth and the audience needs one readable line per character. The failure mode is contradiction as decoration — "a tough guy who loves cats" — which is a quirk, because nothing in the plot ever makes him choose between the toughness and the cats.
**Example:**
> He goes into the burning stairwell twice. That evening: "Dad, are you all right?" / "Ask your mother what time dinner is." Then he checks the smoke alarm in her room, twice, after she is asleep.

**Yields to:** `comedy.comic_character_engine` — in broad animation and short-form comedy, where legibility beats depth and the audience needs one readable line per character.  
`char.load_bearing_contradiction`

### The Exception

**Also called:** the one person, the soft spot, selective behaviour, the unexplained mercy
**What it is:** one person, animal, place or object to which the character's normal rules simply do not apply.
**Effect on the audience:** it proves the rule and humanises without softening, and it hands the antagonist a lever the audience can see coming.
**Used for and where it works best:** cold characters, monsters, professionals, and any antagonist you want frightening rather than cartoonish. The craft rule: dramatise the exception at least twice — once to establish it, once when the plot puts it on the table — and never explain it. The moment you explain it, it stops being a mystery inside a person and becomes a piece of backstory.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, Limited Series / Drama, Animation Feature, Novel | genres: Crime, Thriller, Tragedy, Horror
**Avoid when:** the character's terror depends on having no interior at all — the slasher, the machine, the faceless system. The failure mode is using the exception only as a hostage in act three, which converts a character trait into a plot device and cheapens both.
**Example:**
> He fires the whole night shift by text.
> "Not Nazar."
> "Nazar's the worst of them."
> "Not Nazar."
> He never says why. Nazar never finds out.

**Yields to:** `tens.indifferent_force` — where the character's terror depends on having no interior at all: the slasher, the machine, the faceless system.  
`char.the_exception`

### The Incompetence Zone

**Also called:** the blind spot, designed weakness, the thing they are bad at, the unglamorous limit
**What it is:** one specific, ordinary domain in which the character is genuinely and unheroically bad — not a tragic flaw, a limitation.
**Effect on the audience:** it converts admiration into affection, and supplies comedy and plausible failure without making the character stupid.
**Used for and where it works best:** any highly competent lead, and essential in long form, where competence otherwise accumulates until nothing can be at risk. The craft rule: put the weakness in a low-status domain — money, paperwork, driving, sleep, spelling, telephones — so it can never be mistaken for a heroic flaw, and make it cost the plot something real at least once.
**Best in:** formats: One-Hour Drama, Feature Film, Limited Series / Drama, Game Narrative | genres: Crime, Comedy, Thriller, Science Fiction
**Avoid when:** the piece is short enough that the weakness will be read as the subject of the film. The failure mode is the job-interview flaw — "she works too hard", "he cares too much" — a virtue in costume. Audiences spot it instantly and stop believing the rest of the portrait.
**Example:**
> She can read a balance sheet upside down across a table. There are three unopened letters from her own bank in the glovebox, and the car is still registered to her ex-husband.

**Yields to:** `char.ten_second_person` — Too short; the weakness would read as the subject.  
`char.incompetence_zone`

### Competence Has a Price

**Also called:** the cost of the skill, earned expertise, the scar behind the talent, what it took
**What it is:** every conspicuous ability is paired with what its acquisition cost, and the cost is visible in behaviour rather than stated.
**Effect on the audience:** talent reads as a history instead of a gift, and the character gains vulnerability without losing authority.
**Used for and where it works best:** surgeons, soldiers, musicians, athletes, anyone the audience will otherwise simply envy — and it is the honest way to give a strong character a soft place. The craft rule: the cost is usually a relationship, a body part or a fear, and it should surface in a domestic scene, never a professional one. Let another character notice it; if the expert explains it, you have written a monologue about a wound instead of a wound.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, One-Hour Drama, Novel, Limited Series / Drama | genres: War, Crime, Social Drama, Coming of Age
**Avoid when:** the piece is celebratory by design — a heritage portrait, a tribute, a brand film — and the cost would sour the commission. The failure mode is the act-two confession scene, which is exposition wearing a wound as a costume.
**Example:**
> "You've got beautiful hands."
> She doesn't answer. She is holding the coffee with both of them, because at this hour one is not enough.

**Yields to:** `char.competence_first` — Celebratory commission: tribute, brand film, heritage portrait.  
`char.competence_cost`

---

## The Body, the Habit, the Object, the Gaze

### The Physical Signature

**Also called:** the silhouette, the body fact, the standing tell, blocking signature
**What it is:** one repeatable physical fact — posture, gait, how they fill a doorway, what they do with their hands — that belongs to this character alone within this cast.
**Effect on the audience:** instant identification at distance, in silhouette, in a crowd, or on a phone screen where faces are four millimetres wide.
**Used for and where it works best:** ensembles, animation, anything with more than five recurring characters, and everything destined for vertical viewing. The craft rule: it must survive a costume change and it must be something the body *does*, not something it wears. A scar is not a signature; standing while everyone else sits is. In animation, design it before the model sheet, because the whole silhouette is built from it.
**Best in:** formats: Animation Feature, Feature Film, Vertical Micro-Drama, Stage Play | genres: Comedy, Crime, Heritage, Historical
**Avoid when:** you are writing realist chamber drama, where a strong signature reads as theatre and pulls focus from the text. The failure mode is attaching the signature to a costume item, so the day the coat comes off the character disappears.
**Example:**
> Everyone in that office sits down to take a call. He stands, always, and puts one hand flat on the desk as if he is holding it down.

**Yields to:** `char.stress_tell` — in realist chamber drama, where a strong signature reads as theatre and pulls focus from the text. A tell that appears only under pressure does the same work without the costume.  
`char.physical_signature`

### The Stress Tell

**Also called:** the pressure habit, the giveaway, the poker tell, behaviour under load
**What it is:** a small involuntary behaviour that appears only when the character is lying, frightened or close to breaking — planted in calm, cashed under pressure.
**Effect on the audience:** it lets them read the interior with no dialogue at all, and turns a later scene into a private message from the writer to the viewer over the heads of the other characters.
**Used for and where it works best:** thrillers, poker-faced professionals, and any scene where the audience must know more than the people in the room. The craft rule: plant it once in a low-stakes scene and let somebody who knows him name its meaning, then never explain it again. Two uses before the payoff, maximum. Pairs naturally with `dial.deflection`, because the tell is what contradicts the deflection.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, One-Hour Drama, Novel, Limited Series / Drama | genres: Thriller, Crime, Psychological, Horror
**Avoid when:** the character's opacity is the point, or you are writing a whodunnit in which the tell would solve the case forty minutes early. The failure mode is using it every time the character feels anything, at which point the audience stops reading it and starts counting it.
**Example:**
> "He turns his ring when he's about to lie. Always has."
> Ninety minutes later, at the border desk: "Just the two bags." His thumb goes to the ring. He stops it.

**Yields to:** `char.silence_as_trait` — Opacity is the point, or a whodunnit the tell would solve.  
`char.stress_tell`

### The Carried Object

**Also called:** the totem, the character prop, the object with history, the pocket item
**What it is:** one object the character keeps, maintains or hides, whose meaning the audience learns from how it is handled rather than from being told.
**Effect on the audience:** it gives a silent scene a subject, and gives the story a physical thing that can be lost, destroyed, returned or handed on.
**Used for and where it works best:** characters with a past you have decided not to dramatise, and as the physical carrier of a relationship across a long story. The craft rule of three: handle it three times, and change the handling each time — kept, opened, given away. The owner must never state what it means. Make the object banal if you can: a comb, a phone charger, a spare key that no longer fits anything.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, Short Film, Novel, Animation Feature | genres: Heritage, Historical, War, Family Drama
**Avoid when:** the object would be the only characterisation a person receives — a prop cannot carry a role, and an audience knows the difference between a character and a character's souvenir. The failure mode is the locket that opens onto a photograph in act three, which is a plot delivery mechanism pretending to be an emotion.
**Example:**
> p.14 — He takes the tobacco tin out of his pocket, doesn't open it, puts it back.
> p.61 — He opens it, looks, closes it.
> p.98 — He gives it to the boy without a word. It is empty.

`char.carried_object`

### What They Notice

**Also called:** attention as characterisation, the selective eye, perceptual signature, eyeline logic
**What it is:** you characterise by writing what the person sees first on entering a room, and what they are blind to.
**Effect on the audience:** in prose it is the cheapest and deepest characterisation available; on screen it becomes eyelines, inserts and cutting order, and it works below the level the viewer can articulate.
**Used for and where it works best:** first-person prose, voice-over, first-person games, and any scene where two characters must be differentiated while doing exactly the same thing. The craft rule: assign each principal a category of attention — exits, prices, hands, damage, status, smells — and be ruthless, because what they fail to notice is as loaded as what they see. Change the category after the story changes them; that is an arc made visible without a word of dialogue.
**Best in:** formats: Novel, Game Narrative, Podcast, Feature Film | genres: Crime, Psychological, Social Drama, Coming of Age
**Avoid when:** you are writing wide multi-POV work and cannot sustain a distinct perceptual grammar for eleven viewpoints — half-built, it just reads as inconsistent prose. The failure mode is that the noticing becomes the author's: every character notices beautiful things beautifully, in the same voice.
**Example:**
> They walk into the same flat.
> She sees: the second lock, new, and the chain hanging cut.
> He sees: that they have painted over the good tiles.

**Yields to:** `char.ensemble_grid` — in wide multi-POV work, where you cannot sustain a distinct perceptual grammar for eleven viewpoints. Half-built it reads as inconsistent prose; differentiate structurally instead.  
`char.what_they_notice`

### What They Do Alone

**Also called:** the unobserved scene, private behaviour, the empty-room test, the true self beat
**What it is:** a scene of the character with no audience *inside* the story, doing something they would never do in company.
**Effect on the audience:** they feel they have seen the truth of the person, and from then on they read every social scene as performance — which doubles the value of all the character's other scenes.
**Used for and where it works best:** once per principal in a feature, more in long form, and placed immediately before or after that character's most controlled public scene so the two rub against each other. The craft rule: the private behaviour must contradict the public one in *kind*, not degree — not "he is tired", but "the hard foreman irons one shirt for eleven minutes". No dialogue, no phone call, nobody arriving halfway.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, Limited Series / Drama, Novel, Stage Play | genres: Psychological, Family Drama, Tragedy, Social Drama
**Avoid when:** you are holding a strict single-POV discipline and this is not the POV character — breaking your own rule for one flourish costs more than the scene gains. The failure mode is smuggling exposition into the empty room: talking to a photograph, reading a letter aloud, rehearsing the backstory to a mirror. Cut all three.
**Example:**
> The sergeant closes the office door. He takes his boots off, puts on the reading glasses he denies owning, and practises, silently, into the window: "I'm sorry for your loss." Four different ways.

**Yields to:** `char.stress_tell` — under a strict single-POV discipline where this is not the POV character. Breaking your own rule for one flourish costs more than the scene gains.  
`char.alone_behaviour`

---

## Backstory, the Secret and the Name

### Backstory Economy

**Also called:** the iceberg, the one-eighth rule, need-to-know backstory, the withheld past
**What it is:** you build the whole history for yourself and put on the page only the fraction that changes a present-tense decision.
**Effect on the audience:** depth is felt as pressure rather than received as information, and the character seems to have existed before page one.
**Used for and where it works best:** everything, but especially anywhere you are tempted by a flashback. The craft rule: a piece of backstory earns its place only when a character in the *present* scene is trying to use it, hide it or force it out of somebody. If it merely explains, cut it. Release order matters more than volume — show the behaviour first and the fact that explains it later, never the reverse, because explanation before behaviour disarms the scene it was meant to charge. This is the operating discipline behind `arc.the_ghost`.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, Novel, Limited Series / Drama, One-Hour Drama | genres: Crime, Psychological, War, Family Drama
**Avoid when:** the format needs its rules up front — a heist briefing, a fantasy world, a procedural whose pleasure is the method. The failure mode is the act-two flashback that answers a question nobody in the present scene is asking: if you can delete it and the following scene still plays, it was decoration.
**Example:**
> Cut: "After the fire, I promised myself I'd never rent again."
> Keep: "Sign here." / "I'll buy it." / "You can't afford to buy it." / "Then I'll wait."

**Yields to:** `expo.rule_by_demonstration` — where the format needs its rules up front: a heist briefing, a fantasy world, a procedural whose pleasure is the method.  
`char.backstory_economy`

### The Secret

**Also called:** the withheld fact, the held card, the concealment, the dramatic-irony engine
**What it is:** a fact the character is actively keeping from at least one other character, chosen so that it must eventually surface in a scene the plot needs anyway.
**Effect on the audience:** every scene between those two people acquires a floor of tension with nobody raising their voice.
**Used for and where it works best:** family drama, ensembles, romance, and all long form. The craft rule: a secret is only dramatic while the character is doing *labour* to keep it — a monthly payment, a phone answered in another room, a street that has to be avoided. Decide early who knows: audience ahead of the cast is suspense, and `dial.strategic_withholding` and `dial.deflection` are the scene-level tools for playing it; audience learning with the cast is surprise, which is louder and spends faster.
**Best in:** formats: Limited Series / Drama, One-Hour Drama, Novel, Stage Play | genres: Family Drama, Crime, Romance, Social Drama
**Avoid when:** the character has no relationship worth losing — a secret without a stake is just a fact. The failure mode is the secret nobody is hunting: if no character in the story wants it, only the writer is keeping it, and the reveal lands on an empty room.
**Example:**
> "Where were you Thursday?"
> "Clinic. Routine."
> She was at the clinic. She was not the patient. He would know by now if he had ever looked in the bin where the parking ticket went, which is why it went in the one at the petrol station.

**Yields to:** `char.backstory_economy` — No relationship worth losing; it is backstory, not a secret.  
`char.the_secret`

### The Name as Design

**Also called:** naming, character onomastics, name casting, the cast list pass
**What it is:** choosing names for sound, length, class, era and origin so they do work — differentiating the cast, placing the world, and giving dialogue rhythm.
**Effect on the audience:** they keep twelve people straight without effort, and the world sounds like somewhere that exists.
**Used for and where it works best:** one deliberate pass over the whole cast list before the first draft. The craft rules: no two principals share an initial or a syllable count, because readers track names by shape — twins whose shared name-shape is part of the premise are the one exception, and `char.twins` then carries the difference in tempo and tactics rather than in the name; name people from the world rather than from the writer's taste, since a 1950s Mosul cast is not a current baby-name list; and let other characters use name *variants* — full name, surname, nickname, diminutive — as a live meter of status and intimacy.
**Best in:** formats: Novel, Limited Series / Drama, Feature Film, Game Narrative | genres: Historical, Heritage, Crime, Family Drama
**Avoid when:** the name would carry meaning you did not intend — real people, small communities, a living family with that surname in that town. Check before you ship. The failure mode is two names sharing a rhythm, Marcus and Markos, Dana and Diana, which a reader merges by chapter four and never separates again.
**Example:**
> Cast: Bishop (surname only, four scenes), Halim, Ellie-May, Zayd.
> The mother's escalation, in order: "Zayd." ... "Zayd Yousif." ... "Zaydun. Come here."

**Source:** assumption — the package's working figure, not a published standard; the 1950s Mosul cast is an illustrative era, not a claim; set the names against a period source for the actual setting.  
**Yields to:** `char.real_person_composite` — The name would identify real people or a living family.  
`char.name_as_design`

---

## Relationships, Status and the Ensemble

### A Different Self for Each Person

**Also called:** relational characterisation, the social prism, who they are with whom, the four selves
**What it is:** you build the character out of the four or five distinct versions of themselves they become in front of different people, rather than out of a fixed list of traits.
**Effect on the audience:** the person reads as real, because real people are also inconsistent across relationships — and any two-hander in the piece arrives pre-loaded with tension.
**Used for and where it works best:** family drama, ensembles, workplace stories, and anything with a long middle to fill. The craft rule: write the same request three times to three different people and let only the *tactics* change, never the want — that gap is character. Then find the one person in front of whom there is no version at all, only the person; that scene is your climax candidate.
**Best in:** formats: Limited Series / Drama, One-Hour Drama, Stage Play, Novel | genres: Family Drama, Social Drama, Romance, Comedy
**Avoid when:** the format will only ever see the character in one relationship — a short, a single-location thriller — and you would be building versions nobody meets. The failure mode is versions so different that the spine disappears, so hold one behaviour constant across all of them: the same self-correction, the same unfinished sentence, the same hand on the back of the neck.
**Example:**
> To his manager: "If it's not a problem, sir — about Thursday."
> To his wife: "I've sorted Thursday."
> To his brother: "Thursday's mine. Don't ask me again."

**Yields to:** `char.ten_second_person` — Only one relationship will ever be on screen.  
`char.relationship_self`

### The Status Transaction

**Also called:** Johnstone status, playing high and low, the pecking order, status see-saw
**What it is:** writing behaviour as a continuous negotiation of relative social height — who interrupts, who apologises, who moves first, who takes up space — rather than as fixed rank.
**Effect on the audience:** status is read pre-verbally, so a scene with a live status transaction is watchable with the sound off, and a scene without one is inert however good the lines are.
**Used for and where it works best:** any scene between two people who both want something, and above all the scenes where "nothing happens" — a meal, a waiting room, a lift. The craft rule, straight out of Johnstone: status is behaviour, not rank, so a cleaner can play high to a minister. His physical markers still hold — a still head and steady eye contact play high; jerky movement, hands near the face and taking up less space play low. Give each character a status they are *playing* and a status they actually *hold*, and make those two differ.
**Best in:** formats: Stage Play, One-Hour Drama, Feature Film, Podcast | genres: Comedy, Crime, Social Drama, Historical
**Avoid when:** you are writing pure action or a chase, where status work slows the machine. The failure mode is writing status as rank, so the boss always plays high, the junior always plays low, and the scene is finished before the first line is spoken.
**Example:**
> The minister sits. The cleaner keeps mopping around his feet.
> "You can do that later."
> "I could." She doesn't stop. He lifts his feet.

`char.status_transaction`

### The Status Flip

**Also called:** the reversal of rank, the turn, pulling the chair out, the power switch
**What it is:** a scene built so the character who enters high leaves low, on the strength of one piece of information or one refusal.
**Effect on the audience:** the most reliable way to make a two-hander feel as though it moved, even when nothing physical happened.
**Used for and where it works best:** interrogations, negotiations, job scenes, family confrontations, meeting the parents. The craft rule: the flip must be caused by something present in the room — a document, an arrival, a refusal — and not by an offstage decision, or the characters become spectators at their own turn. One flip per scene; two reads as a game show. See `scene.value_turn` for the value that is actually changing underneath it.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, One-Hour Drama, Stage Play, Vertical Micro-Drama | genres: Crime, Thriller, Comedy, Social Drama
**Avoid when:** the scene's job is to establish a stable hierarchy that you intend to overturn later — flipping it early spends the money twice. The failure mode is the flip arriving by phone call from outside, which is a writer rescuing a scene rather than a character winning one.
**Example:**
> "You've got ten minutes. I've read the file."
> "Then you've read my husband's name in it."
> Beat. He closes the file. "Coffee? I can get coffee."

**Yields to:** `char.status_transaction` — where the scene's job is to establish a stable hierarchy you intend to overturn later. Flipping it early spends the money twice.  
`char.status_flip`

### The Ensemble Grid

**Also called:** cast differentiation, the axis pass, the name-off test, the character matrix
**What it is:** a development pass in which each principal is given a different value on a small set of axes — what they want, how they get it, what they fear, what they find funny, and what they do when they are proved wrong.
**Effect on the audience:** they hold eight people apart with no effort, and the cast feels like a society rather than a chorus.
**Used for and where it works best:** any cast above five, and mandatory for a series or a game with companions. The craft rule is the name-off test: strip the character names from six pages and hand them to someone who has not read the script. If they cannot allocate the lines, you do not have an ensemble. Differentiate on *tactics* before backstory — tactics are what is on screen — and make sure two characters never solve a problem the same way twice.
**Best in:** formats: Limited Series / Drama, One-Hour Drama, Game Narrative, Animation Feature | genres: Comedy, Crime, Science Fiction, Social Drama
**Avoid when:** you are writing a three-hander chamber piece, where the grid is over-engineering and the relationships do the work. The failure mode is differentiating by decoration — accents, hats, catchphrases — while all eight characters approach every obstacle identically.
**Example:**
> The bomb is in the building.
> Amal starts the evacuation. Sargon films it. Karim calls his lawyer. Dina walks towards it, asking who signed off the concrete.

**Yields to:** `char.relationship_self` — Three-hander chamber piece; relationships do the work.  
`char.ensemble_grid`

### Give the Supporting Character One Want

**Also called:** the minor character's agenda, the waiter with a life, the functionary's day, third-party want
**What it is:** every non-principal with lines gets one want that has nothing to do with the protagonist's plot, and pursues it during the scene.
**Effect on the audience:** the world stops being a set. Scenes gain resistance, texture and free comedy, and the protagonist has to negotiate with a person instead of opening a door.
**Used for and where it works best:** every functional role — the nurse, the border guard, the landlord, the shop girl. The craft rule: the want should be small, legitimate and inconvenient. He wants to go home. She wants the form filled in correctly. He wants to tell you about his son. State it once, never explain it, and let the protagonist work around it.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, One-Hour Drama, Novel, Game Narrative | genres: Crime, Comedy, Social Drama, Thriller
**Avoid when:** pace is the whole point — a chase, a countdown, the last ten minutes. There the minor character's want is friction you cannot afford. The failure mode is that the writer falls in love and the waiter gets an arc. Give him a want, not a story.
**Example:**
> "I need the tapes from Tuesday."
> "The machine takes eleven minutes to spool and I finish at six."
> "It's ten to."
> "Yes."

`char.supporting_character_want`

---

## Antagonist Construction

### The Antagonist With a Case

**Also called:** the villain's argument, the opponent's truth, the steelmanned antagonist, the honourable enemy
**What it is:** constructing the opponent so that his position would win the argument if the protagonist's counter-argument were slightly weaker — he is right about something the story is willing to concede.
**Effect on the audience:** it raises the protagonist by exactly the height of the opponent, and converts an action plot into a moral one.
**Used for and where it works best:** anything with a theme, and everything historical or political. The craft rule: write his case as a page in his own voice, as if he were the protagonist of a version of this story — then hand one of his arguments to a *sympathetic* character, so the audience cannot file it under villain-talk. He must want something that overlaps with the hero's want; that overlap, `arc.shared_want_opponent`, is why the two of them collide instead of merely disagreeing.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, Limited Series / Drama, Novel, Stage Play | genres: Crime, Historical, Social Drama, Science Fiction
**Avoid when:** you are writing horror, where explanation reduces threat, or broad family animation where the argument will not land and the villain needs to be legible in one gesture. The failure mode is "sympathetic villain" written as backstory sympathy: a sad childhood is not a case. The case has to be about the question the story is asking now.
**Example:**
> "You want the dam finished. So do I. The difference is that I have read the compensation list and you have not."
> "I don't need to read it."
> "Four hundred and six names. You should need to."

**Yields to:** `tens.refusing_to_name` — in horror, where explanation reduces the threat. A sad childhood is not a case in any register, but in horror even a real case costs you the fear.  
`char.antagonist_case`

### The Tailored Opponent

**Also called:** the custom antagonist, the keyed opponent, the attack on the lie, purpose-built opposition
**What it is:** designing the antagonist's *method* so it presses on precisely this protagonist's weakness — the opponent is built out of the hero's lie rather than out of a genre template.
**Effect on the audience:** the conflict feels inevitable and personal, and every attack doubles as characterisation of the hero, because we learn what he is by watching what hurts.
**Used for and where it works best:** thrillers, crime, and any drama where the antagonist is chosen rather than inherited. The craft rule: put the hero's lie, never list and exception on one page, and require the antagonist's method to use at least two of the three. If you can lift your antagonist unchanged into a different script, he is not tailored. This works alongside `arc.mirror_character` but is not the same thing: a mirror shows the hero an alternative, a tailored opponent applies force to a specific joint.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, Limited Series / Drama, Game Narrative, Novel | genres: Thriller, Crime, Psychological, Horror
**Avoid when:** the antagonist is a system, a disease or the weather. Then tailor the *situation* instead — design circumstances that attack the same weakness — and do not give a hurricane a grudge. The failure mode is tailoring by relation: making them long-lost brothers, which is a plot device standing where a designed pressure should be.
**Example:**
> Her lie: "If I am useful, nobody leaves."
> So he never threatens her. He gives her a team of twelve, removes her from the roster on medical grounds, and lets her watch them cope beautifully without her.

**Yields to:** `tens.indifferent_force` — where the antagonist is a system, a disease or the weather. Tailor the *situation* instead and do not give a hurricane a grudge.  
`char.tailored_opponent`

---

## Ages, Real People and the Standing Traps

### Age-Specific Logic: Children and Elders

**Also called:** writing kids, writing old people, age-true behaviour, avoiding the wise child
**What it is:** giving the very young and the very old the reasoning of their actual stage of life — local, self-centred and inconsistent in children; specific, unsentimental and time-aware in elders — instead of using them as dispensers of wisdom or cuteness.
**Effect on the audience:** an immediate authenticity spike. Viewers recognise true child and true old-age behaviour instantly, even when they cannot say what convinced them.
**Used for and where it works best:** family drama, heritage, coming of age and animation. For children the craft rule is that they reason from what is directly in front of them, jump categories without warning, lie badly, and misunderstand usefully — never let a child's line summarise the film's theme, and never misspell their dialogue phonetically to signal youth. For elders the rule is that age is not a personality: give them a want in the present tense, something they are trying to get *this week*, and let the past appear only as competence and impatience.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, Animation Feature, Novel, One-Hour Drama | genres: Family Drama, Coming of Age, Heritage, Comedy
**Avoid when:** you are writing a deliberate fable or a religious story, where archetypes are the form and a naturalistic child would break the register. The failure mode is the twin cliché of the wise child and the twinkling grandparent — both are adults' fantasies of an age, and both stop a scene dead, because neither is allowed to want anything.
**Example:**
> Child: "Is Grandpa in heaven or in Sweden?" / "Heaven." / "Does Rana know? Because she said Sweden and she's older than me."
> Elder: "Don't tell me about the hospital. Tell me who's driving. If it's your husband, I'll take the bus."

**Yields to:** `theme.fable_contract` — in a deliberate fable or a religious story, where archetypes are the form and a naturalistic child would break the register.  
`char.age_specific_logic`

### Interesting Beats Likeable

**Also called:** the likability trap, rootable versus nice, compelling over pleasant, the Mary Sue problem
**What it is:** designing for the audience's interest — competence, contradiction, active desire, specificity — rather than for their approval.
**Effect on the audience:** they will stay with people they would never have dinner with, provided they cannot predict them and can see them wanting something.
**Used for and where it works best:** protagonist design, and triaging the note "I just didn't like her", which is almost always a misdiagnosis. The craft rule: when a note says *likeable*, the real defect is usually passivity or vagueness. Three things actually buy allegiance — they want something badly, they are demonstrably good at one thing, and somebody is treating them unjustly. Install those and delete the kindness insert — the bolt-on one the plot never refers to again; a kindness that costs, goes unwitnessed and grows out of the flaw is `char.sympathy_beat`, and in short form, where there are seconds to make a viewer care, that card keeps its place.
**Best in:** formats: Limited Series / Drama, Feature Film, Novel, One-Hour Drama | genres: Crime, Tragedy, Psychological, Social Drama
**Avoid when:** you are working in kids' content, broad family or brand work, where likability is a hard commercial requirement — there you must be likeable *and* interesting, which is simply twice the work, not a licence to skip one. The failure mode is over-correcting into the unwatchable: difficult, passive and vague at the same time. Unpleasant plus passive is where scripts die.
**Example:**
> Note: "I don't like her."
> Fix attempted: she rescues a dog. Nobody likes her.
> Fix that worked: her rent goes up, she tells the landlord "Then take me to court," and she turns out to be the only person in the building who knows how the meter has been rigged.

**Yields to:** `char.sympathy_beat` — Kids, family and brand work require likability.  
`char.likeable_vs_interesting`

### The Audience Surrogate Trap

**Also called:** the newcomer, the audience proxy, the everyman, the Watson, the tour guide
**What it is:** a character whose function is to be asked the audience's questions — and the trap of letting the function eat the person.
**Effect on the audience:** used well, a world's rules arrive without exposition; used badly, you have a lead with no want whose entire job is to say "wait, what's a chiton?"
**Used for and where it works best:** worlds with rules — heritage, historical, science fiction, institutions, procedurals. The craft rule has two halves. First, the newcomer must want something the world can deny them, so their questions are *tactics* rather than curiosity: they ask because they need the answer to get something in the next five minutes. Second, retire the function early — by the midpoint they should be the one explaining things to somebody else.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, Limited Series / Drama, Game Narrative, Documentary | genres: Science Fiction, Historical, Crime, Heritage
**Avoid when:** the audience already knows the world — sequels, famous adaptations, season three — where the surrogate reads as a tour guide and the cast has to pretend to explain things they all know. The deeper failure mode is the surrogate quietly becoming the writer's self-portrait, at which point the world starts bending to admire them and the whole piece tilts.
**Example:**
> Weak: "So what exactly is a levirate marriage?"
> Strong: "If I sign this, am I marrying him or inheriting him?" / "Both." / "Then I want the field as well."

**Yields to:** `expo.assumed_canon` — where the audience already knows the world, in sequels, famous adaptations and season three. A surrogate there reads as a tour guide and the cast has to pretend to explain things they all know.  
`char.audience_surrogate_trap`

### Real People and the Composite

**Also called:** based on a true story, the composite character, life rights, roman à clef, fictionalising the source
**What it is:** building a character from real people by merging two or more real figures into one, changing the identifying particulars, and keeping only documented behaviour.
**Effect on the audience:** it lets a true story be dramatic instead of dutiful, while keeping the living subjects and the production out of court.
**Used for and where it works best:** biopics, heritage films, documentary reconstruction, and any story drawn from the writer's own family or workplace. The craft rules, in order: compress minor real figures into composites so that no single living individual is identifiable from the context; keep negative characterisation only where it is documented and you can produce the source; and annotate the script line by line with what is fact, what is composite and what is invented. That annotation is a story tool, because it shows you exactly where you have been lazy, and it travels with the handoff for whoever delivers. Where the brief itself raises life rights, note it there; it is not a step in this pipeline.
**Best in:** formats: Feature Film, Limited Series / Drama, Documentary, Novel | genres: Historical, Heritage, Crime, Social Drama
**Avoid when:** the subject is living, identifiable and the portrayal is defamatory. No amount of fictional dressing cures that, and a "names have been changed" card does not cure identifiability. The artistic failure mode is the opposite one: fidelity so tight that the character has no want, and you have filmed an encyclopaedia entry with actors in it. The real person did things; your character has to want things.
**Example:**
> Three real ministers become one: DR. HANNA.
> Margin note on the page — *Documented, Commission transcript p.212*: "We were told the wells were dry. I signed what I was given."
> Margin note, next scene — *Invented*: the daughter who drives him home afterwards and says nothing the whole way.

**Yields to:** `char.specificity_not_representation` — A character only inspired by real people, with no real person identifiable in it.  
`char.real_person_composite`

---

## Coverage

*Build notes from when this file was drafted — targets, running totals and what remained to be written — are kept verbatim in the [coverage history](../tools/history/coverage-history.md). They were true of the draft, not of the file, so they no longer sit here as if they were measurements.*

## Sources

Researched 17 September 2026.

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