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

# Intents

The effect wanted, and the routes that reach it.

The other entry points route by what a piece **is** — its format, its genre, its defect. This one routes by what it must **do**. Use it when you know the feeling you are after and not yet the means.

Each intent names what the audience must experience, the routes that produce it, and a **preview check** — a test you can run on a draft to find out whether the effect is actually there or only intended.

---

### Attachment

**What the audience must feel:** That this person's outcome matters to them. Attachment is not liking and it is not sympathy — it is investment, and it is built by watching someone *want* and *weigh*, not by being told they are worth caring about. It is blocked by two things: a protagonist who never chooses, and a first act that asks for feeling before it has given anything to feel about.

**Routes:**

1. Show them wanting something concrete and losable, in the first scene they appear in
   Desire Made Physical `char.desire_made_physical`; Give Someone Something to Want `scene.give_a_want`; The Want `arc.the_want`
2. Let the audience watch them weigh a decision where every option is bad
   Reaction, Dilemma, Decision `scene.reaction_dilemma_decision`; Scene and Sequel `scene.scene_and_sequel`
3. Introduce them doing something that decides something, not being described
   The Defining Action Entrance `char.defining_action_entrance`; Competence First `char.competence_first`
4. Give them one contradiction and one thing they are bad at
   The Load-Bearing Contradiction `char.load_bearing_contradiction`; The Incompetence Zone `char.incompetence_zone`

**Preview check:** Ask a reader what the character wants, in one sentence, after the first ten pages. If they describe a situation rather than a want, attachment has not been built — they are tracking a plot with a person in it.

---

### Complicity

**What the audience must feel:** Implicated rather than observing. Complicity arrives when the audience holds information that makes them a participant in a deception before they have decided whether they approve of it. It is broken by a narrator who signals disapproval, and by a reveal that lets the audience off by making the deception someone else's idea.

**Routes:**

1. Give the audience the secret before the victim has it, and give them time to sit with it
   Dramatic Irony `info.dramatic_irony`; The Audience-Only Secret `info.audience_only_secret`; The Half-Truth `dial.half_truth`
2. Let the deceiving character be good company — funny, competent, and right about something
   The Opponent Is Right About Something `anta.right_about_something`; Competence First `char.competence_first`
3. Withhold judgement in the narration and keep the prose level through the worst of it
   The Objective Camera `pov.objective_camera`; The Understating Voice `voice.understating_voice`
4. Make the audience want the deception to succeed by putting a sympathetic cost on failure
   Want Against Need `arc.the_need`; The Corruption Arc `arc.corruption`

**Preview check:** Ask a reader who they were hoping would win at the midpoint. If the answer is the honest character, complicity was never built — the story described a deception instead of enlisting the audience in one.

---

### Dread

**What the audience must feel:** That something is coming and cannot be stopped. Dread is not fear of what is on screen; it is fear of what the next scene will contain. It is destroyed by two things: a threat with no rules, and a jolt used early, which trains the audience to brace rather than to worry.

**Routes:**

1. Tell the audience about the threat and give them the deadline — the threat alone is only half the device
   The Bomb Under the Table `tens.bomb_under_table`; The Countdown `tens.countdown`
2. Demonstrate the threat's rules on someone else first
   The Rule Demonstration `tens.rule_demonstration`; The Threat With Rules `tens.threat_with_rules`
3. Put one small thing wrong in an ordinary scene and let nobody remark on it
   The Wrongness Detail `tens.wrongness_detail`; Corrupting the Mundane `tens.corrupting_the_mundane`
4. Run a low continuous unease under everything rather than spending jolts
   Sustained Low Dread `tens.sustained_low_dread`; Dread Over Shock `tens.dread_over_shock`

**Preview check:** Cut every scare from the draft and read it again. If the unease survives, the dread is structural. If the draft goes flat, you have jolts rather than dread, and the audience will be numb by the third one.

---

### Recognition

**What the audience must feel:** *That is exactly right, and I have never seen it written down.* Recognition is the most durable effect available and the hardest to fake, because it is produced entirely by specificity. Generalities cannot produce it; only a particular true enough to be someone's actual experience can.

**Routes:**

1. Replace the emotion with one precise ordinary detail
   The Specific Detail `emo.specific_detail`; The Physical Register `emo.physical_register`
2. Let the reaction arrive at the wrong time or in the wrong register
   The Delayed Reaction `emo.delayed_reaction`; Emotion Against Type `emo.emotion_against_type`
3. Write the behaviour, not the feeling — especially the hands
   Emotion Through Task `emo.emotion_through_task`; Hands Business `sub.hands_business`
4. Find the observation the audience has had and never articulated
   Observational Truth `comedy.observational_truth`; What They Notice `char.what_they_notice`

**Preview check:** Underline every detail in the passage that could appear in any story about this subject. If most survive, you have written the general case and recognition is not available.

---

### Momentum

**What the audience must feel:** That they cannot stop yet. Momentum is a question kept open, not a pace of events — a fast story with no open question is exhausting rather than gripping.

**Routes:**

1. Keep exactly one question open at all times and answer it only by raising another
   The Scene Question `scene.scene_question`; The Unanswered Line `dial.unanswered_line`
2. Cut into every scene late and out of it early
   Late Entry `scene.late_entry`; Early Exit `scene.early_exit`
3. Chain the causality so no link could be written "and then"
   Because of That `struct.spine_because`; The Dangling Cause `seq.dangling_cause`
4. Make each attempt cost more than the last
   Escalating Cost `scene.escalating_cost`; The Obstacle Ladder `anta.obstacle_ladder`

**Preview check:** Write the question each scene leaves open in one column. Two consecutive scenes leaving the same question means one is redundant; a scene leaving none is where the audience stops.

---

### Trust

**What the audience must feel:** That the writer knows what they are doing and is not going to cheat. Trust is granted early, spent by every unearned moment, and almost never rebuilt.

**Routes:**

1. Plant everything you intend to pay, and pay nothing you did not plant
   The Plant and the Payoff `info.plant_and_payoff`; The Buried Plant `info.buried_plant`; The Fair-Play Contract `info.fair_play_contract`
2. Give the opposing case to someone the audience likes, and let them win one
   The Anti-Theme `theme.anti_theme`; Write the Opponent's Case `anta.write_the_case`
3. Use exact detail rather than claimed authority
   Authority by Specificity `voice.authority_by_specificity`; Heritage Specificity `expo.heritage_specificity`
4. Make the ending cost something
   The Cost Paid `end.cost_paid`; The Earned Ending `end.earned_ending`

**Preview check:** Ask someone who disagrees with the work's argument to describe their own position as the work presents it. If they do not recognise it, trust is gone regardless of how the rest reads.

---

### Unease

**What the audience must feel:** Discomfort they cannot immediately justify. Unlike dread, unease has no object — nothing has been threatened, and that is what makes it hard to put down.

**Routes:**

1. Run an ordinary routine with exactly one element wrong, unremarked
   The Ordinary Day, Slightly Wrong `open.ordinary_day_slightly_wrong`; The Wrongness Detail `tens.wrongness_detail`
2. Break a social pair — a refused greeting, an unanswered question
   Adjacency Pair Break `dial.adjacency_break`; Silence as Reply `dial.silence_as_reply`
3. Raise the register as the hostility rises
   Politeness as Aggression `dial.polite_aggression`; The Polite Threat `tens.polite_threat`
4. Let the body disagree with the mouth
   Behaviour Contradicts `sub.behaviour_contradicts`; The Unreliable Body `tens.unreliable_body`

**Preview check:** Ask a reader to name what is wrong in the scene. If they can point at it precisely, you have tension. If they are certain something is wrong and cannot say what, you have unease.

---

### Grief

**What the audience must feel:** Loss as a condition rather than an event. The reliable failure is pushing — grief written at volume produces sentimentality, which readers detect and resent.

**Routes:**

1. Let the situation carry it and strip every emotional word
   Earn the Situation First `emo.earn_the_situation`; Sentimentality `emo.sentimentality`
2. Place the response late and somewhere ordinary
   The Delayed Reaction `emo.delayed_reaction`; Grief on the Page `emo.grief`
3. Give the largest moment the plainest language available
   Understate at the Peak `emo.understate_at_peak`; The Quiet Ending `end.quiet_ending`
4. Turn away at the moment of impact and hold on something practical
   Withhold the Reaction `emo.withhold_reaction`; The Held Final Beat `end.held_final_beat`

**Preview check:** Does the grief resolve by the end? If it does, and the work is for adults, the audience who have been bereaved will know the writer has not been near it.

---

### Delight

**What the audience must feel:** Surprised pleasure — the sense that something has been *made*, not merely reported. Delight is what a paid plant, a landed callback and a perfect last line all produce, and it is the effect most often sacrificed to competence.

**Routes:**

1. Pay something planted so long ago the audience had forgotten it
   The Callback `end.callback`; The Deferred Payoff `emo.deferred_payoff`
2. Grant the expectation and make it worse, or refuse it and make it better
   Reversal of Expectation `scene.reversal_of_expectation`; The Granted Wish `scene.granted_wish`
3. Let the structure rhyme with itself
   The Scene Played Twice `end.scene_played_twice`; The Mirror Ending `end.mirror_ending`
4. Put the funniest or heaviest word last
   Funny Word Last `comedy.funny_word_last`; The Last Word Turn `rhythm.last_word_turn`

**Preview check:** Name the three moments in the draft a reader would quote to someone else. If you cannot find three, the work is competent and nobody will mention it.

---

### Clarity

**What the audience must feel:** That they understand and could explain it to someone else. Clarity is the whole deliverable in instructional, explainer and safety work, where ambiguity is a failure rather than a texture.

**Routes:**

1. Say the promise out loud at the start and pay exactly that
   The Stated Promise `open.stated_promise`; Answer the Question That Was Asked `end.answer_the_question_asked`
2. Name the wrong version before giving the right one
   Exposition as Correction `dial.exposition_correction`; The Explainer Scaffold `expo.explainer_scaffold`
3. Demonstrate before explaining, and anchor every abstraction
   Rule by Demonstration `expo.rule_by_demonstration`; The Familiar Anchor `expo.familiar_anchor`
4. One new term at a time, under the threshold
   The Jargon Threshold `expo.jargon_threshold`; The Coined Term in Context `expo.coined_term_in_context`

**Preview check:** Ask someone to state the one thing the piece taught them. If they give you two things, or a summary of the piece, the piece had two ideas.

---

### Retention

**What the audience must feel:** A reason not to leave in the next second. This is a platform effect rather than a craft one, and it is the only intent in this file with an expiry date.

**Routes:**

1. Make a specific promise in the first second and decide its type first
   The First-Second Hook `open.first_second_hook`; The Stated Promise `open.stated_promise`
2. Open after the situation has started
   Open Mid-Situation `open.open_mid_situation`; Enter on the Answer `open.enter_on_the_answer`
3. Establish the threat rather than the world
   First Five Seconds `tens.first_five_seconds`
4. Close on pressure rather than on an answer
   Suspended Ending `tens.suspended_ending`; The Cliffhanger Reveal `info.cliffhanger_reveal`

**Preview check:** Show the first three seconds alone and ask what the piece has promised. If the answer is "I don't know yet", the piece has spent its only second.

**Shelf life:** dated — review 2027-09.

---

### Conviction

**What the audience must feel:** Persuaded, and persuaded by their own reasoning rather than by being told. Advocacy that states its conclusion converts nobody who did not already hold it.

**Routes:**

1. Start from the question, not the answer
   Start From a Question `theme.start_from_a_question`; Theme Decided Before the Story `theme.decided_before_story`
2. Give the strongest opposing case real force and let it win a round
   The Anti-Theme `theme.anti_theme`; The Rigged Argument `theme.rigged_argument`
3. Prove it through a choice that costs, not through a speech
   The Moral Test `theme.moral_test`; Test the Theme on the Protagonist `theme.test_on_protagonist`
4. End on one nameable action rather than on a request to care
   The Handoff Ending `end.handoff_ending`

**Preview check:** Find the line where the work states its conclusion. Delete it and read the ending again. If nothing is lost, the work was persuading; if the argument collapses, it was asserting.

---

### Immersion

**What the audience must feel:** Inside the experience rather than reading about it. Immersion breaks the moment the prose reports instead of delivering.

**Routes:**

1. Order the sentence the way experience arrives — motivation, then sensation, then action, then speech
   The Motivation-Reaction Unit `scene.mru`; The Physical Register `emo.physical_register`
2. Cut the filter words and close the psychic distance
   Filter Word Removal `pov.filter_word_removal`; Sliding the Distance `pov.distance_slide`
3. Give the reader the sensation before the name for it
   Delayed Decoding `info.delayed_decoding`
4. Let the place carry the information
   Environmental Detail `expo.environmental_detail`; Environmental Storytelling `inter.environmental_storytelling`

**Preview check:** Count the instances of *she saw*, *he felt*, *she noticed*, *he realised*. Each one is a pane of glass between the reader and the event.

---

### Complexity

**What the audience must feel:** That the situation cannot be resolved by anyone being better. This is what separates drama from melodrama, and it is produced structurally rather than by nuanced dialogue.

**Routes:**

1. Give the opposition the same want, so only one can have it
   The Opponent Who Shares the Want `anta.shared_want`; The Shared-Want Opponent `arc.shared_want_opponent`
2. Put opposition inside the support system
   Opposition Inside the Ally `anta.opposition_in_ally`; The Beloved Antagonist `anta.beloved`
3. Spread the argument across the cast so each holds a different position
   Theme Through the Ensemble `theme.through_the_ensemble`; The Ensemble as a System `rel.ensemble_as_system`
4. Let two characters conduct two different conversations at once
   Talking Past Each Other `dial.talking_past`

**Preview check:** Ask a reader who is right. If they answer immediately and confidently, the work has a position rather than a question — which may be what you want, but it is not complexity.

---

### Anticipation

**What the audience must feel:** A specific wanted thing, not yet arrived. Anticipation is distinct from suspense: suspense fears an outcome, anticipation desires one, and a story usually needs both running at once.

**Routes:**

1. Attach hope to something concrete and nameable — a date, a letter, a reunion
   Hope as a Structural Instrument `emo.hope`; The Serial Clock `time.serial_clock`
2. Promise it early and make the audience wait
   The Promise of Violence `tens.promise_of_violence`; Waiting as a Weapon `tens.waiting_as_weapon`
3. Delay by digression, so the delay is enjoyable rather than annoying
   Delay by Digression `tens.delay_by_digression`; The Preparation Sequence `seq.preparation_sequence`
4. Let the audience see the destination and not the route
   Known Outcome Dread `tens.known_outcome_dread`

**Preview check:** Ask a reader what they are waiting for. If they name an event, anticipation is live. If they name a feeling, it is not — feelings cannot arrive.

---

### Belonging

**What the audience must feel:** Part of a group they are not in. This is the engine of every found-family story, every heritage piece, and most successful serials.

**Routes:**

1. Give the group a shared secret and a shared shorthand
   The Group Secret `rel.group_secret`; The Unspoken Agreement `rel.unspoken_agreement`
2. Enter through an outsider who is gradually admitted
   The Outsider in the Group `rel.outsider_in_the_group`; The Newcomer's Eye `expo.newcomer_eye`
3. Build the group as a system of differences, not a crowd
   The Ensemble as a System `rel.ensemble_as_system`; Chosen Family `rel.chosen_family`
4. Show who defends whom under pressure
   Who Defends Whom `rel.who_defends_whom`; The Group Under Pressure `rel.group_under_pressure`

**Preview check:** Ask a reader which member of the group they would sit next to. If they cannot choose, the members are not differentiated enough for anyone to belong to anything.

---

### Amusement

**What the audience must feel:** Actual laughter, which is an involuntary response and therefore cannot be argued into existence. Comedy is engineering; check the machine before blaming the material.

**Routes:**

1. Setup, then punchline, and nothing after it
   Setup and Punchline `comedy.setup_punchline`; Timing on the Page `comedy.timing_on_the_page`
2. Put the funny word last and the turn where it is not expected
   Funny Word Last `comedy.funny_word_last`; Misdirection `comedy.misdirection`
3. Run it on status rather than on jokes
   The Status Engine `comedy.status_engine`; The Straight Man `comedy.straight_man`
4. Escalate in a spiral and top the topper
   The Escalation Spiral `comedy.escalation_spiral`; The Topper `comedy.topper`

**Preview check:** Read it to one person. Comedy is the only intent in this file with a binary test, and the test is not whether they say it is funny.

---

### Suspicion

**What the audience must feel:** That they are being shown something incomplete, and that working it out is possible. This is the mystery contract, and it is broken by information the audience could never have reached.

**Routes:**

1. Keep them one step behind the protagonist, not two
   Mystery and the Audience Behind `info.mystery_audience_behind`; The Knowledge Ledger `info.knowledge_ledger`
2. Misdirect by attention, never by lying
   Attention Misdirection `info.attention_misdirection`; The Red Herring `info.red_herring`
3. Give them a smaller guilt to find so they stop looking for the larger one
   The Lesser Guilt `info.lesser_guilt`; The Double-Meaning Clue `info.double_meaning_clue`
4. Keep the contract, and check it
   The Fair-Play Contract `info.fair_play_contract`; The Cheat `info.the_cheat`

**Preview check:** On a second read, can every clue be found and does every scene still play honestly? If one scene requires a character to behave in a way that made no sense at the time, it is a cheat.

---

### Commemoration

**What the audience must feel:** That something is being placed on the record and handed over. This is the native intent of heritage and testimony work, and it is not the same as either sadness or celebration.

**Routes:**

1. Be exact. Specificity is the entire credibility budget in heritage work
   Heritage Specificity `expo.heritage_specificity`; The Specific Detail `emo.specific_detail`
2. Let the place and the object carry it rather than narration
   Voice of a Place `voice.voice_of_a_place`; The Object That Carries It `emo.object_carrier`
3. Use the ceremonial register where the material calls for it, and not otherwise
   The Incantatory Register `voice.incantatory_register`; The Collective We `voice.collective_we`
4. Keep the nostalgia honest by including what was bad and is not missed
   Nostalgia Without Sentimentality `emo.nostalgia`
5. Turn away from real suffering at the point of impact — it is a statement about the work's relationship to its subject
   Withhold the Reaction `emo.withhold_reaction`

**Preview check:** Would someone who lived it recognise their own life, including the parts that were not good? If the piece is uniformly golden, it is a brochure.

---

### Disorientation

**What the audience must feel:** Unsteady in a controlled way — unsure of what is true, when they are, or whose account this is. It must be a designed effect; the same sensation produced by accident is simply confusion.

**Routes:**

1. Establish unreliability by a rule, early
   The Unreliable Narrator `info.unreliable_narrator`; The Naive Narrator `info.naive_narrator`
2. Make the structure itself the claim
   Theme in the Structure `theme.theme_in_structure`; Non-Linear Assembly `time.nonlinear_assembly`
3. Withhold the viewpoint rather than the facts
   The Withheld POV `info.withheld_pov`; Restricted Narration `info.restricted_narration`
4. Let memory be wrong, visibly
   Unreliable Memory `time.unreliable_memory`; The Recurring Fragment `time.recurring_fragment`

**Preview check:** Ask a reader whether they think the confusion is deliberate. If they are not sure, it is not working — disorientation requires the audience to trust that someone is steering.

---

### Relief

**What the audience must feel:** A breath released. Relief is a real effect with a real cost: it resets the audience, which is a gift and a spend at once.

**Routes:**

1. Place the release deliberately rather than where the pressure happens to drop
   The Release Valve `tens.release_valve`; Comic Relief as Tension `tens.comic_relief_as_tension`
2. Give the aftermath more room than feels necessary
   Relief and Its Cost `emo.relief`; The Held Final Beat `end.held_final_beat`
3. Let it arrive somewhere ordinary, after the danger, not during it
   The Delayed Reaction `emo.delayed_reaction`; The Quiet Ending `end.quiet_ending`
4. Put a breather between sequences
   The Breather Sequence `seq.breather_sequence`

**Preview check:** Map the intensity of the whole work. If there is no flat stretch anywhere, the peaks have nothing to rise from and the audience is numb rather than moved.

---

### Admiration

**What the audience must feel:** That someone is very good at something, and that being good at it costs. Competence is one of the most reliable pleasures in narrative and one of the least deliberately used.

**Routes:**

1. Show the skill in use before anyone comments on it
   Competence First `char.competence_first`; The Competent Walkthrough `expo.competent_walkthrough`
2. Charge for it — skill that costs nothing is decoration
   The Competence Cost `char.competence_cost`
3. Let them be beaten by someone better at one thing
   The Opponent's Better Version `anta.better_version`
4. Let the expert explain badly first, then be asked again
   The Expert Who Explains Badly `dial.expert_explains_badly`

**Preview check:** Could a practitioner of this craft watch the scene without wincing? Admiration is the one intent that fails completely if the specifics are wrong, because the audience who would most enjoy it are the ones who know.

---

### Indignation

**What the audience must feel:** That something is unjust and that the injustice is structural rather than personal. Aimed badly it produces a villain the audience can dismiss; aimed well it produces a system they recognise.

**Routes:**

1. Give the institution a human face who is not a hypocrite
   The Institutional Antagonist `anta.institutional`; Politeness as Aggression `dial.polite_aggression`
2. Show the pressure acting on someone else first, so it reads as the world and not as plot
   Ambient Pressure `anta.ambient_pressure`
3. Let an innocent be condemned while the guilty party is present and silent
   Erroneous Judgment `sit.polti_33_erroneous_judgment`; Supplication `sit.polti_01_supplication`
4. Refuse the outside rescue
   Deus Ex Machina `end.deus_ex_machina`; The Reversed Arc `end.reversed_arc`

**Preview check:** Remove the most unsympathetic character and see whether the injustice survives. If it disappears with them, the work has written a bad person rather than a bad system.

---

### Wonder

**What the audience must feel:** Scale, or strangeness, or the sense that the world is larger than they had been holding. It is undone by explanation — a thing fully accounted for stops being wondrous.

**Routes:**

1. Begin partial and correct the frame
   The Scale Reveal Opening `open.scale_reveal`; Delayed Decoding `info.delayed_decoding`
2. Demonstrate one rule and let the system be inferred
   Rule by Demonstration `expo.rule_by_demonstration`; Worldbuilding by Implication `expo.implication_worldbuilding`
3. Keep more out of the frame than in it
   The Iceberg Principle `expo.iceberg_principle`; The Off-Screen World `expo.offscreen_world`
4. Develop without conflict where the subject does not want a contest
   Kishōtenketsu `struct.kishotenketsu`; The Turn (Ten) `struct.kishoten_ten`

**Preview check:** Count how much of the invented world is explained. If the audience could draw the map, the wonder has been spent on the explaining.

---

### Envy

**What the audience must feel:** The unflattering wish to have what a specific other person has — and their own recognition of that wish. Envy is not admiration and it is not ambition: admiration wants the other person to keep it, ambition wants the thing, and envy wants the gap closed and is ashamed of wanting that. It dies at distance — nobody envies a king — and it dies again the moment the narration disapproves, because the audience is then watching a small person rather than sitting inside a calculation they recognise.

**Routes:**

1. Put the envied person one rung up and no further, and let the two have started level
   Envy `emo.envy`; Rivalry of Superior versus Inferior `sit.polti_24_rivalry_superior_inferior`
2. Write the arithmetic rather than the feeling — the sum this character keeps redoing is the characterisation
   What They Think They Deserve `char.deserving_setting`; Money on the Page `char.money_specifics`
3. Keep it inside the viewpoint, or it reads as villainy
   Close Third Person `pov.close_third`; Free Indirect Style `pov.free_indirect_style`
4. Make the possession visible and ordinary rather than grand
   What They Eat, Wear and Buy `sub.consumption_tell`; The Carried Object `char.carried_object`
5. Give the envied person a real advantage, honestly held
   The Opponent's Better Version `anta.better_version`; Rivalry `sit.tobias_rivalry`

**Preview check:** Ask a reader whether they like the envious character. A clean no means the envy has been written as a fault; an uncomfortable answer means it has been written as an emotion.

**Not to be confused with:** Admiration — admiration wants the person to keep what they have, envy wants the gap closed.

---

### Loneliness

**What the audience must feel:** A surplus with nowhere to go. Loneliness is not solitude and it is not sadness: solitude is a location, sadness is a response, and loneliness is unspent behaviour — care, habit and talk produced at a scale no one present can absorb. Two things block it. A character alone for plot reasons is writing fear with a logistics problem, not loneliness; and a character with no plan to end it turns the work into a mood rather than a story.

**Routes:**

1. Write the surplus, not the absence — food for more people than are there, the rehearsed anecdote, the routine with no witness
   Loneliness as a Written State `emo.loneliness`; What They Do Alone `char.alone_behaviour`
2. Give them a plan to end it and let them sabotage it
   The Relationship With No Want `rel.relationship_with_no_want`; Give Someone Something to Want `scene.give_a_want`
3. Make the isolation something they are carrying rather than something they lack
   The Secret That Isolates `info.isolating_secret`; Isolation by Doubt `tens.isolation_by_doubt`
4. Put them in a full room
   The Public Scene `scene.public_scene`; Who Is Silent `dial.who_is_silent`
5. Use the half-conversation — the call with one side missing
   The One-Sided Call `scene.one_sided_call`; The Voice Note `dial.voice_note`
6. Let the room do it: what a space does when only one person uses it
   The Waiting Room Scene `scene.waiting_room`; The Voice of a Place or an Object `voice.voice_of_a_place`

**Preview check:** List everything the character produces that nobody receives. If the list is empty, the piece has written a person who is by themselves, which is a setting and not a feeling.

**Not to be confused with:** Belonging — belonging is written from inside a group looking out, loneliness from outside with the group still in view.

---

### Nostalgia

**What the audience must feel:** That a specific past was theirs and is gone. Nostalgia is not commemoration and it is not grief: commemoration hands something over to be kept, grief is about a person, and nostalgia is about a texture — what the kitchen smelled of, what was on at that hour. It is destroyed by a past with nothing bad in it, which reads as a brochure, and by the general past: nobody is nostalgic for a decade, only for their own Tuesday inside it.

**Routes:**

1. Write the habit rather than the event — the iterative is the native grammar of the mode
   Iterative Time `time.iterative_habit`; Nostalgia Without Sentimentality `emo.nostalgia`
2. Put it in one object and let somebody handle the object
   Object Writing `lyric.object_writing`; The Carried Object `char.carried_object`
3. Include what was bad and is not missed
   Sentimentality `emo.sentimentality`; Cold Memory `time.cold_memory`
4. Make the remembering voice visible, and slightly wrong
   The Retrospective Narrator `voice.retrospective_narrator`; Unreliable Memory `time.unreliable_memory`
5. Open on the last ordinary day, before anyone knew it was the last
   The Last Ordinary Day `open.last_ordinary_day`; Anniversary Structure `time.anniversary_structure`

**Preview check:** Delete every period proper noun — brands, song titles, prices. If the feeling goes with them, the piece was running on recognition, and it will not work on anyone ten years younger.

**Not to be confused with:** Commemoration — commemoration places something on the record for other people, nostalgia returns the audience to their own.

---

### Catharsis

**What the audience must feel:** Lighter leaving than arriving, having carried something the length of the work and finally put it down. Catharsis is not sadness and it is not relief: sadness is the material, relief resets a scene mid-work, and catharsis discharges an accumulation that had to be built from the first act. Surprise blocks it outright — nothing was carried, so nothing can be released — and so does a loss that no character's decision caused.

**Routes:**

1. Meet the entry conditions in the first act, not the last: a morally mixed protagonist, a foreseen outcome, a recognition
   What Catharsis Actually Requires `emo.catharsis_requirements`; The Need `arc.the_need`
2. Let the audience see it coming and hope against it
   Dread of the Known Outcome `tens.known_outcome_dread`; Structuring a Known Ending `info.known_ending_structure`
3. Give the recognition to the character once, briefly, in the plainest words available
   Understate at the Peak `emo.understate_at_peak`; Catharsis and What It Requires `end.catharsis`
4. Proportion the destruction to the error, then leave a beat in which the world continues
   The Tragic Ending `end.tragic_ending`; The Held Final Beat `end.held_final_beat`
5. Check that a decision, not an accident, produced the loss
   Sad Is Not Tragic `end.sad_not_tragic`; The Cost Paid `end.cost_paid`
6. Consider refusing it — but only with the machinery visible and something substituted
   The Withheld Catharsis `emo.withheld_catharsis`; The Open Ending `end.open_ending`

**Preview check:** Ask a reader whether they feel heavier or lighter at the end. Heavier means the work administered pain. This is the counterintuitive one: a working tragedy sends people out lighter than it found them.

**Not to be confused with:** Relief — relief can be spent many times so the next pressure registers, catharsis can be spent once.

---

### Moral Discomfort

**What the audience must feel:** Unable to settle on a verdict, and aware that the failure to settle is theirs. Moral discomfort is not shock and it is not complicity: shock is a reaction to content, complicity makes them a participant in something, and this makes them a judge who cannot rule. It is destroyed by a narrator who rules on their behalf, and by any choice where one option is plainly the right one.

**Routes:**

1. Make both options cost something the audience values
   The Moral Test `theme.moral_test`; The Choice With No Good Option `inter.no_good_option`
2. Keep the narration describing rather than sentencing
   Descriptive, Not Prescriptive `theme.descriptive_not_prescriptive`; Objective Camera-Eye `pov.objective_camera`
3. Let the audience like someone doing something indefensible, and do not withdraw the liking afterwards
   Holding the Unlikeable Lead `char.unlikeable_lead`; The Sympathetic Villain and Its Limit `anta.sympathetic_limit`
4. Make the protagonist wrong, and let the work know before they do
   The Protagonist Who Is Wrong `char.protagonist_who_is_wrong`; The Moral Line `arc.moral_line`
5. Put the joke where laughing costs the audience something
   The Joke That Costs the Audience's Sympathy `comedy.sympathy_cost_joke`; Dark Comedy and Its Rules `comedy.dark_comedy`
6. Earn the ambiguity instead of leaving the question open by default
   Earned Ambiguity `theme.earned_ambiguity`; Remorse `sit.polti_34_remorse`

**Preview check:** Ask two readers what the work thinks. If they answer in opposite directions and each can quote the scene that convinced them, it is working. If one says the work has no position, the ambiguity is unearned and reads as evasion.

**Not to be confused with:** Complicity — complicity enlists the audience inside a deception, moral discomfort leaves them outside it and unable to rule.

---

### Absurdity

**What the audience must feel:** That the rules are being followed exactly and the rules are insane. Absurdity is not randomness and it is not whimsy: randomness has no rules, whimsy softens them, and absurdity is rigorous — impeccable logic running on a premise nobody in the piece will name. It collapses the instant any character remarks that this is strange, because the remark restores the sane world the piece had abolished.

**Routes:**

1. Fix one impossible premise and then never question it again
   The Maintained Delusion `comedy.maintained_delusion`; Airtight Logic, Wrong Premise `comedy.airtight_wrong_logic`
2. Play it straight — the register must not know what it is inside
   The Deadpan Contract `voice.deadpan_register`; The Faux-Naive Voice `voice.faux_naive`
3. Let a procedure do the cruelty, with nobody in the sentence to appeal to
   The Bureaucratic Register `voice.bureaucratic_register`; The Decision With No Author `anta.no_author`
4. Collide two registers and hold both at full strength
   Register Collision `comedy.register_collision`; The Wrong Place `comedy.wrong_place`
5. Find the first unusual thing and heighten only that one
   Finding the First Unusual Thing `comedy.first_unusual_thing`; Heighten and Explore `comedy.heighten_and_explore`
6. Present it; never argue it, and never account for it
   The Explained Joke `comedy.explained_joke`; The Non Sequitur `comedy.non_sequitur`

**Preview check:** Find every line where a character acknowledges the strangeness. Each one is the piece apologising. If you cannot delete all of them, the premise is not carrying its own weight and the work is a sketch about an idea rather than a world running on it.

**Not to be confused with:** Amusement — amusement is measured by laughter, absurdity works on a reader who never laughs once.

---

### Reassurance

**What the audience must feel:** That the world has rules and the rules hold. Reassurance is not comfort and it is not happiness: comfort soothes a feeling that has already arrived, and reassurance is structural — a promise made early and kept, that this story will not hurt you in a way it did not warn you about. It breaks on an unbounded threat, and on an ending that resolves by luck rather than by something the character did.

**Routes:**

1. Bound the threat out loud, before it arrives — say what it can and cannot do
   Bounded Threat `anta.bounded_threat`; The Rule of the World `open.rule_of_the_world`
2. Make the problem the opponent rather than a person
   The Problem as Opponent in Preschool and Kids' Song `anta.preschool_problem`; The Opponent Who Can Be Befriended `anta.befriendable`
3. Build a repetition contract and then honour it exactly
   Say It, See It, Ask For It `expo.kids_repetition_ladder`; The Kids' Song Repetition Contract `lyric.kids_repetition_contract`
4. Let the audience be able to do what the character did
   The Ending a Child Can Carry `end.child_carry_ending`; The Resolvable Problem `end.resolvable_problem`
5. Return the world to its shape at the end, visibly
   The Comedy Restoration `end.comedy_restoration`; The Lullaby `lyric.lullaby`
6. Hold the register steady — no tonal drop the piece has not prepared
   The Kids' Register `voice.kids_register`; Tonal Whiplash `voice.tonal_whiplash`

**Preview check:** After the scene in which the frightening thing first appears, ask what it can and cannot do. If the answer is "anything", the piece is producing dread and calling it jeopardy.

**Not to be confused with:** Relief — relief releases pressure the piece has already built, reassurance promises the pressure has a ceiling.

---

### Curiosity

**What the audience must feel:** An itch to know, with no suspicion that they are being played. Curiosity is not suspicion and it is not suspense: suspicion assumes concealment, suspense fears an outcome, and curiosity is pleasurable — the audience wants the answer and is content to wait for it. It is killed by an answer that arrives before the question was asked, and by a gap so large that working on it feels hopeless rather than inviting.

**Routes:**

1. Plant the question before supplying any part of the answer
   The Question Planted First `open.question_planted_first`; The Opening Question `open.opening_question_line`
2. Give them the sensation and withhold the name for it
   Delayed Decoding `info.delayed_decoding`; Deferred Explanation `expo.deferred_explanation`
3. Convert statements into questions the piece then owes
   Turn the Statement Into a Question `expo.statement_into_question`; Start From a Question `theme.start_from_a_question`
4. Show the edge of a larger system and refuse to map it
   Worldbuilding by Implication `expo.implication_worldbuilding`; The Iceberg Principle `expo.iceberg_principle`
5. Pay in small frequent instalments so waiting is rewarded rather than endured
   The Micro-Reveal Ladder `info.micro_reveal_ladder`; Need-to-Know Ladder `expo.need_to_know_ladder`
6. Make sure something turns on the answer
   The Mystery With No Stakes `info.mystery_without_stakes`; The Situation Hook `open.situation_hook`

**Preview check:** Ask a reader to write down the question they want answered. If they write one and it is yours, curiosity is live. If they write "what happens next", you have pace and not curiosity, and pace runs out.

**Not to be confused with:** Suspicion — suspicion is curiosity plus the belief that someone is withholding the answer on purpose.

---

### Urgency

**What the audience must feel:** That there is not enough time. Urgency is not momentum and it is not tension: momentum is an open question, tension is a threat, and urgency is a quantity — the audience should be able to say roughly how much is left. It is faked more often than any other effect here, and asserted urgency, characters announcing that they must hurry, reads instantly as its absence.

**Routes:**

1. Name the deadline and let the audience keep count
   The Countdown `tens.countdown`; Beats Under a Clock `beat.clock_compression`
2. Remove options rather than adding threats
   The Shrinking Option Set `tens.shrinking_options`; The Interruption Clock `tens.interruption_clock`
3. Run the scene at the speed the event actually runs
   Real Time `time.real_time`; The Ticking Scene `scene.ticking_scene`
4. Shorten the unit — sentence, scene, exit
   Sentence Length as Tempo `rhythm.length_as_tempo`; Early Exit `scene.early_exit`
5. Cut between strands and shorten the intervals as you go
   Establish, Then Accelerate `scene.crosscut_acceleration`; The Crosscut Sequence `seq.crosscut_sequence`
6. Check you have built it rather than announced it
   Tension Asserted, Not Built `tens.asserted_tension`; The Near-Miss Economy `tens.near_miss_economy`

**Preview check:** Stop a reader mid-scene and ask how long the characters have left. If they cannot give a number, even a rough one, there is no clock, and everything the prose is doing to feel fast is decoration.

**Not to be confused with:** Momentum — momentum keeps a question open, urgency caps the time available to answer it.

---

### Intimacy

**What the audience must feel:** Let into something that was not performed for them. Intimacy is not romance and it is not attachment: romance is a plot, attachment is investment, and intimacy is access — the sense of overhearing two people who long ago stopped explaining themselves. It is destroyed by dialogue that fills in the shared history for the audience's benefit, which is precisely the thing intimate people never do.

**Routes:**

1. Let them talk about nothing, fluently
   The Trivial Surface `dial.trivial_surface`; Dropped First Words `dial.dropped_first_words`
2. Use the shared history as a generator and never as exposition
   Shared History as Generator `sub.shared_history`; Information the Listener Already Has `dial.known_information`
3. Give them a private naming system and an agreement neither states
   What They Call Each Other `sub.address_form`; The Unspoken Agreement `rel.unspoken_agreement`
4. Close the psychic distance, and slide it rather than jumping it
   Close Third Person `pov.close_third`; Sliding the Distance Within a Scene `pov.distance_slide`
5. Put the feeling in the hands and in the gaps, not in the lines
   What the Hands Are Doing `sub.hands_business`; Grading the Gap `sub.graded_pause`
6. Keep desire in code
   Sexual Subtext and Its Codes `sub.erotic_code`; Love Without Declaration `emo.love_without_declaration`

**Preview check:** Delete every line a stranger would need in order to follow the scene. If it survives at half length and still plays, it is intimate. If it stops making sense, the pair were performing for the audience all along.

**Not to be confused with:** Attachment — attachment makes the audience want an outcome, intimacy makes them feel they should not be in the room.

---

### Awe

**What the audience must feel:** Small, and content to be small. Awe is not wonder and it is not fear: wonder enlarges the world, fear puts the audience at risk, and awe puts them in their place inside something that does not need them. In the religious register it carries a second demand — that the words predate everyone in the room — and that is what separates devotion from spectacle. It is undone by superlatives; a narrator supplying adjectives of size supplies nothing.

**Routes:**

1. Write the failure of the category, not the size — a mind reaching for a comparison and not finding one
   Awe and the Sublime `emo.awe`; The Scale Reveal Opening `open.scale_reveal`
2. Keep a human-sized measuring stick in the frame: a hand on the stone, a person on the steps
   The Specific Detail `emo.specific_detail`; Anglo-Saxon Against Latinate `rhythm.saxon_vs_latinate`
3. Use words the room already knows and expects to answer
   The Liturgical Register `voice.liturgical_register`; The Congregational Lyric `lyric.congregational_lyric`
4. Let repetition do what description cannot
   Anaphora `rhythm.anaphora`; The Incantatory Register `voice.incantatory_register`
5. Write the believer from inside their own logic rather than as an anthropologist
   Writing the Believer `char.writing_the_believer`; Sacred Material and the Limits of Argument `theme.sacred_material`
6. Put the drama in the one person not saying it, or saying it a half-beat late
   The Collective We `voice.collective_we`; Conflict with a God `sit.polti_31_conflict_with_a_god`

**Preview check:** Delete every adjective of scale — vast, immense, endless, towering. If the awe goes with them, the piece described something large instead of showing a mind failing to contain it.

**Not to be confused with:** Wonder — wonder makes the world bigger, awe makes the audience smaller inside it.

---

### Communal Feeling

**What the audience must feel:** Part of a *we* that preceded them and will outlast them — the pull of a flag, a hymn, a village, a diaspora. This is a real commissioned intent with real craft behind it, and it has one named failure: the piece that constitutes the group by naming who is outside it, at which point it stops being a communal work and becomes propaganda with a good tune. It is also broken by generality — a *we* that could belong to anyone belongs to no one.

**Routes:**

1. Choose the pronoun deliberately and hold it
   The Collective We `voice.collective_we`; First Person Plural `pov.collective_we`
2. Be exact about what this group does and no other, and refuse the version where the culture is a lesson rather than a life
   Heritage Specificity `expo.heritage_specificity`; The Culture as Lesson `theme.culture_as_lesson`; Specificity, Not Representation `char.specificity_not_representation`
3. Give the group a founding event it retells rather than a virtue it claims
   The Founding Event `rel.founding_event`; The Community's Version of a Person `info.communal_version`; Built by a Community, Not a Psychology `char.community_built`
4. Write a line the room can answer
   The Anthem `lyric.anthem`; The Congregational Lyric `lyric.congregational_lyric`
5. Let the cost be paid by one named person rather than by the group in the abstract
   Self-Sacrifice for an Ideal `sit.polti_20_self_sacrifice_for_ideal`; The Diaspora Character `char.diaspora_character`
6. Audit the outside: who does this piece need to be wrong in order to work
   Propaganda `theme.propaganda`; Theme Applied Only to Others `theme.applied_only_to_others`

**Preview check:** Write down who the piece needs the audience to be against. If there is a name in that box, the work is aimed rather than shared, and everyone outside the group will read it exactly as it was written.

**Not to be confused with:** Belonging — belonging admits an individual into a group over the course of a story, communal feeling addresses the group as though the audience were already inside it.

---

### Instruction

**What the audience must feel:** That they could now do it, unsupervised, with the piece no longer in front of them. Instruction is not clarity and it is not explanation: clarity means they understood, explanation means they could repeat it, instruction means they can perform it. It is blocked by anything that makes the reader hold two things at once, and by the writer's own fluency — the step you no longer notice yourself taking is the step that will be missing.

**Routes:**

1. Order by what must be done first, not by what is easiest to explain
   The Instructional Sentence `rhythm.instruction_step`; Need-to-Know Ladder `expo.need_to_know_ladder`
2. Demonstrate the step before naming it
   Rule by Demonstration `expo.rule_by_demonstration`; The Competent-Character Walkthrough `expo.competent_walkthrough`
3. Show the price of getting it wrong, once, and then stop teaching it
   Show the Rule's Price `expo.rule_cost_demo`; The Over-Taught Rule `expo.over_taught_rule`
4. Teach it inside the doing rather than before it
   The Diegetic Tutorial `inter.diegetic_tutorial`; The Tutorial That Is a Scene `open.tutorial_as_scene`
5. Assume no rewind — every sentence must land the first time it is heard
   What a Listener Cannot Re-Read `rhythm.listener_no_rewind`; The First-Hearing Test `expo.first_hearing_test`
6. Promise the outcome at the start and close on that same outcome
   The Explainer's Promise `open.explainer_promise`; The Explainer Close `end.explainer_close`

**Preview check:** Hand the draft to someone who has never done the task and watch them attempt it without speaking to you. Every place they look up is a missing step; every place they guess correctly is a step you can cut.

**Not to be confused with:** Clarity — clarity is measured by what the audience can explain back, instruction by what they can do.

---

### Purchase Intent

**What the audience must feel:** That the thing is for them, and that getting it is the obvious next move. This is a real commissioned intent with real craft behind it, and it has a named failure that the trade itself argues about: agitating a lack the product then fills — the ad that manufactures an inadequacy in order to sell the cure. It converts in the short run and is punished in the brand, because the claim an audience remembers is never the product claim, it is the claim about their life. The other failure is quieter: a film that entertains beautifully and leaves the viewer unable to say what was being sold.

**Routes:**

1. Write the implicit claim down before you write the script, and read what it asserts about the audience's life
   The Ad's Implicit Claim `theme.implicit_ad_claim`; The Advertising Register `voice.advertising_register`
2. Assert a competence the product serves rather than a lack it fills
   The Enemy Is a Problem, Not a Person `anta.problem_as_enemy`; Purpose-Washing `theme.purpose_washing`
3. Make the promise in the first second and put the product inside it, not after it
   The First-Second Hook `open.first_second_hook`; Short-Form Front-Loading `expo.short_form_frontload`
4. Establish a whole person in the seconds available
   A Person in Ten Seconds `char.ten_second_person`; Emotion in Advertising and Brand Work `emo.brand_emotion`
5. Close on one nameable action rather than on a mood
   The Brand Film Close `end.brand_film_close`; The Handoff Ending `end.handoff_ending`
6. Check the feeling was bought rather than borrowed
   The Manipulated Beat `emo.manipulated_beat`; The Emotion Nobody Earned `emo.unearned_attachment`

**Preview check:** Play it to someone and ask two questions: what was it for, and what did it say about you. The first tests the work. The second decides whether the brand survives it.

**Not to be confused with:** Conviction — conviction changes what someone believes, purchase intent changes what they do in the next five minutes and may leave the belief untouched.

---

### Permission

**What the audience must feel:** That the thing they already feel is allowed, and that they are not the only one carrying it. Permission is not reassurance and it is not comfort: reassurance promises the situation will hold, comfort soothes, and permission does neither — it says *this is a normal shape for a person to be*. It is blocked by resolving the feeling, because resolution implies the feeling was a problem, and by any piece that instructs the audience how to feel instead of showing someone already feeling it.

**Routes:**

1. Put the feeling in a character who states it plainly and is not punished for it
   Envy `emo.envy`; Shame and Humiliation `emo.shame`
2. Give the reaction to a witness so the audience has somewhere to take their cue from
   Let Someone Else Feel It `emo.someone_else_feels_it`; The Confessional to Camera `voice.confessional_to_camera`
3. Describe rather than prescribe, and cut the moral off the end
   Descriptive, Not Prescriptive `theme.descriptive_not_prescriptive`; The Tacked-On Moral `theme.tacked_on_moral`
4. Be exact enough that someone recognises their own version of it
   The Specific Detail `emo.specific_detail`; Funny Because True `comedy.observational_truth`
5. Speak to one listener rather than to an audience
   The Confiding Voice `voice.confiding_voice`; The Implied Listener `voice.implied_listener`
6. Let the unresolved thing stay unresolved
   Grief That Resolves `emo.grief_that_resolves`; Numbness and Dissociation `emo.numbness`

**Preview check:** Ask a reader what the piece thinks about the feeling. If they say it thinks the feeling is a problem to be fixed, permission has not been given — it has been withdrawn politely.

**Not to be confused with:** Reassurance — reassurance makes a promise about the situation, permission makes no claim about the situation at all and one about the person instead.

---

### Agency

**What the audience must feel:** That what they did changed something, and that it was them who did it. Agency is not interactivity and it is not freedom: interactivity is input, freedom is branch count, and agency is the memory of having decided — which a piece can produce on almost no branching and fail to produce on a great deal of it. It is destroyed the moment the audience catches the work faking the *whether* rather than the *how*.

**Routes:**

1. Give the choice the approach, the tone, the words and the aftermath — never fake the outcome
   The Illusion of Agency `inter.illusion_of_agency`; The Meaningful Choice Test `inter.meaningful_choice_test`
2. Store the interpretation rather than the click, and pay it back later
   The State Flag `inter.state_flag`; Delayed Consequence `inter.delayed_consequence`
3. Make at least one choice cost something, with no right answer available
   The Choice With No Good Option `inter.no_good_option`; The Player's Choice as the Argument `theme.choice_as_argument`
4. Let the ending accumulate rather than branch
   The Accumulated-Choice Ending `end.accumulated_choice_ending`; The Ending the Player Earns `end.player_earned_ending`
5. Keep what the piece says and what it lets the audience do in agreement
   Ludonarrative Dissonance `inter.ludonarrative_dissonance`; The False Branch `inter.false_branch`
6. Hand over the pace: let the beat be held by the person playing
   The Player-Held Beat `beat.player_held_beat`; Tension Under Player Control `tens.interactive_tension`

**Preview check:** Ask a player to describe their playthrough to someone who has not played. If they describe events, agency failed. If they describe a decision and defend it, it worked — even where the branch was an inch wide.

**Not to be confused with:** Immersion — immersion is about being inside the experience, agency about having altered it.

---

## Coverage

**Still missing, and worth writing next:** shame as distinct from guilt (the database has the material and this file does not use it); vindication, the satisfaction of a revenge that lands; resolve, the mobilising effect an advocacy piece wants after conviction has been produced; sexual desire as an intent separate from intimacy; and the pitch intent — what a document must make a commissioner feel — which the database covers in its working-method material but which no entry here routes.

**Card-shaped gaps found while routing the sixteen new entries:**

- **Reassurance** is routed almost entirely through preschool and kids' material, because that is where the database keeps it. Reassurance written for adults — medical, safety and crisis communication, where the audience is frightened and literate — has nothing of its own, and the preschool cards do not transfer cleanly.
- **Instruction** has the explainer and tutorial material but nothing on the numbered step list as a form, nothing on the warning or caution notice, and nothing on instruction read under stress, which is the case that matters most.
- **Purchase Intent** has the claim, the register and the close, but nothing on the call to action as a written line, nothing on the product demonstration as a scene, and nothing on the cut-down — the same film at sixty, thirty, fifteen and six seconds.
- **Communal Feeling** borrows the liturgical and anthem material for a civic use. There is no card for the national or civic register as such, and no card for the commemorative address — the speech given at a monument — which is the commonest commissioned form of this intent.
- **Permission** has no card that names the intent; every route here is assembled from emotion and voice material written for other purposes. A card for the piece whose entire job is to legitimise a feeling would be the single most useful addition to this file.
- **Agency** has rich interactive material and nothing on participation outside interactive work — the reader's felt involvement in prose, the audience's in immersive theatre.
- **Urgency** has no card for the soft deadline, the pressure with no stated number, which is the form most drama actually uses.

*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

The routes in this file are assembled from cards whose own sources are listed in their category files. The intent structure mirrors `intents.md` in the Visual Creativity Database.

Consulted for the 2026-09-17 pass, where an intent has a craft literature the database does not itself cite:

- Martin Esslin, *The Theatre of the Absurd* (1960 essay text) — for the distinction used in the **Absurdity** entry between presenting the absurd and arguing about it. https://monoskop.org/images/5/59/Esslin_Martin_1960_The_Theatre_of_the_Absurd.pdf ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_the_absurd
- Contemporary copywriting practice on the Problem–Agitate–Solve structure and the ethical objection to its agitation step — for the named failure in the **Purchase Intent** entry. https://megbrunson.com/copywriting-frameworks/ ; https://www.crazyegg.com/blog/pas-framework/