skills/ai-film-pipeline-master/references/phase-02-screenplay-dialogue/scenes-2.md

# Scene types — Part 2

Continued from `scenes.md` — read it first; its entries cover the core confrontations between two or three people, the family and institutional set pieces, and the aftermath scenes that follow them. Nothing here repeats them. The format is identical: what must happen in the scene dramatically, not how to shoot it.

**Part 2 of 2.** 25 scene types.

**A correction to Part 1's plan, recorded rather than hidden.** `scenes.md` ends with a **Still to write** list of 25 names, but 14 of them were written into Part 1 before it closed and its own list was never updated — the first meeting, the job interview, the deathbed, the trial testimony (as *The Testimony*), the intervention, the return to a childhood home, the border crossing (as *The Border*), the phone call between two locations, the scene conducted in a second language, the scene with a child present, the crowd scene, the shift handover, the last day at work, and the scene in which nothing is said at all all appear there in full. Repeating them would duplicate entries and gain nothing. This file therefore writes the **11 that are genuinely missing** from that list — the birth, the heist briefing, the chase, the seduction, the proposal, the breakup, the confrontation with a parent, the hospital waiting room, the ceremony, the eviction and the audition — and **14 further scene types the set lacks**, named in Coverage below. The count the plan asked for is met; the duplication it would have caused is not.

**Cross-link to the visual database:** where a scene type here shares a name with one in the visual `scenes.md`, the two are designed to be read as a pair — this file decides what must happen, that one decides how to shoot it.

---

### The Birth

**genres:** Drama, Family Drama, Medical, War, Heritage, Historical
**The scene:** A child is delivered. The trap is writing an *arrival* — the baby is the least dramatic object in the room, and a scene that waits for it is a scene with one event in it. The labouring person is fully occupied by the next ninety seconds of their own body and has no attention left to spend on drama. So the scene belongs to **whoever is in the room with no job**: the partner, the mother, the soldier, the one holding a coat.
**What must turn:** Who is in charge of the room — from the labouring person to the institution, or the reverse. If the only change is that there is now a baby, that is an event with a scene wrapped round it.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. The room mid-procedure, administrative and unhurried `expo.procedural_exposition`
2. The labouring person's whole attention inside their own body `tens.unreliable_body`
3. The one with no job is given a task and performs it badly `char.incompetence_zone`
4. Staff discuss the patient over her, in shorthand `dial.spoken_about_present` · `expo.jargon_threshold`
5. Something routine is done faster than it was done before, and nobody explains it `tens.wrongness_detail`
6. The room reorganises itself without announcement `rel.group_under_pressure`
7. The birth itself, given fewer lines than the waiting was `emo.understate_at_peak`
8. Someone is handed the child who did not expect to be `beat.object_beat`
9. A member of staff returns to paperwork `emo.emotion_through_task`

**Enter:** With labour already established and the room already bored. The audience must not watch anyone arrive at a hospital.
**Exit:** On the person who had no job, because they are the only one free to have had an experience.
**Avoid:** Dialogue during contractions — a labouring person does not make conversation, and writing them articulate is the tell that the writer has not asked anyone. The cut to a clean, silent, minutes-old baby. A husband fainting. Naming the child in the room, which is a later scene and a better one.

---

### The Heist Briefing

**genres:** Heist, Crime, Thriller, Caper, War, Comedy
**The scene:** The crew is told the plan. The trap is that this is an exposition scene wearing a set piece's clothes, and the audience is being asked to memorise a map. It survives only because it does three other jobs at once: it casts the crew by competence, it states a standard the execution will fail to meet, and it deliberately hides one layer so the later reversal is payable. The scene belongs to **whoever objects** — the plan is only as good as the strongest objection it survives.
**What must turn:** The crew's belief in the plan. It should end higher or lower than it started, and the audience should be able to say which.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. The crew assembled, each introduced by what they can do `open.crew_assembly` · `char.competence_first`
2. The plan pitched in its confident version `dial.the_pitch`
3. The rules of the target demonstrated, not described `expo.rule_by_demonstration` · `tens.rule_demonstration`
4. The opposition's countermeasures stated by the opposition's own logic `anta.opponents_plan`
5. The first objection, from the member with the most to lose `scene.tactic_change`
6. The objection is answered — and the answer is a lie of omission the audience is party to `info.audience_only_secret`
7. A detail nobody flags, which will be the whole reversal `info.buried_plant` · `end.heist_reveal`
8. The date named, which starts the clock `tens.countdown` · `anta.time`
9. Someone agrees for a reason that is not the money `scene.give_a_want`

**Enter:** On the second version of the plan, after the first has already been rejected offscreen. It saves a page and it tells the audience these people have done this before.
**Exit:** On whoever did not speak, and is going to sell them.
**Avoid:** Withholding a layer the audience was given no pieces of — a surprise nobody could have assembled reads as a cheat, not a plan. A whiteboard the audience is asked to read. A crew who all agree. Rehearsing the heist in full, which spends the execution's novelty before it happens.

---

### The Chase

**genres:** Thriller, Crime, Action, War, Noir, Migration
**The scene:** One party pursues another. The trap is writing velocity: pace on the page is not produced by describing speed, it is produced by a countable series of **decisions**, each of which changes either the distance or the price of being caught. A chase in which nobody chooses anything is a transition with stunts in it.
**What must turn:** The distance, and with it the pursued party's remaining options — which should end fewer than they began.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. The geography established before the running starts — exits, the height, the one locked door `tens.terrain_pressure`
2. The recognition beat: the pursued understands they are being pursued `beat.beat_change`
3. The first decision, made using the character's ordinary problem-solving under speed `char.what_they_notice`
4. An obstacle that costs something to pass — a bag, a coat, a witness, a lie `tens.costly_obstacle`
5. The distance closes for a measurable reason `tens.closing_pursuit`
6. The pursued does something that changes the chase's question — from *will they escape* to *what will they do to escape* `tens.chase_turn`
7. A near miss that is paid for, not free `tens.near_miss_economy`
8. The option set shrinks to one `tens.shrinking_options`
9. The chase ends on a choice rather than a collision `scene.reaction_dilemma_decision`

**Enter:** On the recognition, never on the first footstep. The audience needs to know who is ahead and what happens if the gap closes before anyone moves.
**Exit:** At the moment the outcome becomes inevitable, one beat before it is delivered. `scene.early_exit`
**Avoid:** Geography the reader cannot hold — if they cannot say who is ahead, the sequence is noise `beat.choreography_list`. Long sentences; the action lines should shorten as the gap does `rhythm.action_line_rhythm`. A chase that changes nothing, which is the most expensive way in any medium to stay in the same place. Bystanders who are only obstacles.

---

### The Seduction

**genres:** Romance, Noir, Drama, Thriller, Crime, Period
**The scene:** One person works to move another somewhere they have not agreed to go. It fails in exactly two directions: explicit, which ends the tension in a line, and vague, where the writer asserts chemistry the page has not produced. The scene is a **negotiation with an unnamed subject**, and it belongs to whoever is deciding — not whoever is talking.
**What must turn:** The power gradient between them, which is rarely where either expected it at the start.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. A legitimate reason for both to be there, unconnected to this `sub.second_subject`
2. An offer that can be read two ways, and is `sub.power_gradient`
3. It is taken the safer way, deliberately `dial.deflection`
4. A true thing given away, disproportionate to the small talk `sub.want_statement_gap`
5. Physical business does what the dialogue will not — a glass, a sleeve, a door held `char.desire_made_physical` · `sub.hands_business`
6. A pause of the wrong length, and both notice `sub.graded_pause`
7. The status between them inverts: the pursuer is now the one being decided about `char.status_transaction`
8. A joke that lets either of them retreat, which one of them declines to take `dial.undercut`
9. The scene resolves on a small permission, not a declaration `emo.love_without_declaration`

**Enter:** After the pretext is established, on the first ambiguous line.
**Exit:** On the permission or its refusal — and before any consequence. What happens next is a different scene and usually a worse one.
**Avoid:** Anyone naming desire. A character who is simply irresistible, which removes the other's agency and therefore the drama. Writing charm into the dialogue rather than into the response to it. Forgetting that the person being seduced is also running a strategy.

---

### The Proposal

**genres:** Romance, Drama, Family Drama, Comedy, Period, Social Drama
**The scene:** One person asks another to marry them. The trap is believing the answer is the drama — a yes and a no are both single words, and neither is a scene. What is actually being exchanged is two incompatible pictures of a future, and the scene's job is to make both audible in the same room.
**What must turn:** What each of them thought the relationship already was. A proposal that only confirms what both believed is a ceremony, not a scene.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. An ordinary evening, with only one of them knowing what it is `info.dramatic_irony`
2. The proposer's rehearsed opening, which fails on delivery `dial.on_the_nose`
3. The question asked earlier and worse than planned `scene.reversal_of_expectation`
4. The other's first response is a practical question, not an answer `emo.emotion_against_type`
5. The practical question exposes the gap between two futures `rel.asymmetric_investment`
6. The proposer answers it as though it were an objection, which it is `scene.tactic_change`
7. The answer given, and it is not the scene's turn `dial.unanswered_line`
8. What each of them does with their hands in the next ten seconds `sub.behaviour_contradicts`
9. One of them says something ordinary to end it `end.quiet_ending`

**Enter:** Late in the evening, after the intention is fixed and the moment has already been missed once.
**Exit:** On the ordinary line, not the embrace. A yes held one beat too long is what makes an audience uneasy in the right way. `scene.granted_wish`
**Avoid:** Suspense about the answer, which is the weakest question the scene can ask. A public proposal unless the publicness is the coercion, and the scene knows it is. A refusal followed by an explanation. Applause.

---

### The Breakup

**genres:** Romance, Drama, Family Drama, Social Drama, Tragedy
**The scene:** One person ends a relationship. Nearly every weak version fails the same way: both characters arrive already at the same destination, both are articulate, and neither has a tactical objective — so nothing is contested and the scene is a pair of speeches. It works only when the two of them want different things *within the scene*: one wants it over, the other wants an account.
**What must turn:** Whose version of the relationship will be the one that stands. The leaving is settled; the history is not.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. The ending stated flatly and too early, in the middle of something domestic `dial.enter_late_leave_early`
2. It is received as a negotiating position rather than a fact `dial.talking_past`
3. One reaches for logic, the other for memory — and they stop sharing a vocabulary `scene.tactic_change`
4. The ledger opened: what was given, what was owed `rel.the_debt` · `sub.shared_history`
5. Anger that arrives quiet rather than loud `emo.cold_anger`
6. The real reason approached and stepped around, because saying it would be worse `sub.circled_word`
7. A practical question about an object or an address, which nobody can answer `scene.transaction_scene`
8. One of them concedes the argument to end the conversation, and loses nothing by it `dial.concession_that_wins`
9. The leaving is performed as logistics `emo.emotion_through_task`

**Enter:** On the flat statement. Everything before it belongs to an earlier scene.
**Exit:** On whoever stays in the room, doing something small. `end.held_final_beat`
**Avoid:** Two eloquent people — under this pressure one of them should get *worse* at speaking, not better. A revealed betrayal doing the work, which converts the scene into a discovery. A mutual decision, which is a conversation, not a scene. Crying as the turn.

---

### The Confrontation With a Parent

**genres:** Family Drama, Drama, Heritage, Migration, Tragedy, Coming of Age
**The scene:** An adult child brings a grievance to a parent. The trap is that the adult child has rehearsed it for twenty years and the parent has not thought about it once — they are not having the same conversation, and writing them as evenly matched opponents is false. The scene belongs to **the child's own regression**: the instrument is watching a competent adult lose ten years of composure in eight lines.
**What must turn:** The child's account of their own childhood, which the parent's answer either confirms, disturbs, or — worst and most common — fails to recognise at all.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. Ordinary domestic business, with the child performing adulthood slightly too hard `char.relationship_self`
2. The grievance raised sideways, inside an unrelated subject `dial.topic_change`
3. The parent's reply is practical and mild, and lands as dismissal `dial.talking_past`
4. The child's register drops — younger vocabulary, older grammar `rel.register_change`
5. The parent remembers the event differently, and without defensiveness `time.unreliable_memory`
6. The parent says one true thing the child cannot answer `anta.right_about_something`
7. The child refuses the frame, which is the closest thing to a win available `dial.refusing_the_frame`
8. The parent offers care in the only currency they have — food, money, a lift `rel.parent_and_adult_child`
9. It is accepted `arc.the_ghost`

**Enter:** Inside the domestic business, not on the doorstep.
**Exit:** On the accepted offer, which is worse than a refusal and reads as one. `dial.unanswered_line`
**Avoid:** A parent who apologises, which ends the arc in one scene and cheaply. A parent written as a villain rather than as a person with a different and equally complete record. Both of them at the same volume. A younger sibling arriving to referee.

---

### The Hospital Waiting Room

**genres:** Medical, Family Drama, Drama, War, Social Drama, Crime
**The scene:** People wait for news about someone who is not in the room. The trap is treating waiting as a gap between scenes. It is a scene type in its own right because it strips every character of the ability to act on the only thing that matters, which forces them to act on each other instead.
**What must turn:** The alliances in the room. Information, proximity to the patient and the right to make decisions all get redistributed before the news arrives.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. The room's own rules established — the chairs, the machine, the door nobody may use `scene.waiting_room`
2. Everyone doing something small and useless with their hands `emo.emotion_through_task`
3. Two of them pair off and a third is excluded `rel.pair_off_the_room`
4. A staff member passes through without stopping `tens.waiting_as_weapon`
5. Someone has a piece of information the others do not `info.character_asymmetry`
6. The old argument surfaces, in a register the room forces them to keep quiet `sub.social_prohibition`
7. A decision is required from someone who cannot be reached `anta.institutional` · `tens.shrinking_options`
8. The coalition re-forms around whoever can now sign `rel.shifting_coalition`
9. The door opens and the scene ends before the sentence does `scene.early_exit`

**Enter:** Deep into the wait, hours in. The arrival at the hospital is a different scene and it is the ambulance's.
**Exit:** On the door, or on whoever is not looking at it. Never on the news itself. `emo.delayed_reaction`
**Avoid:** A doctor delivering the outcome in the room, which converts the scene into a diagnosis and wastes it. Characters explaining the medical situation to each other. Vigil-length dialogue — people who have waited four hours talk about parking `dial.trivial_surface`. A chaplain.

---

### The Ceremony

**genres:** Heritage, Family Drama, Historical, Faith, Social Drama, Political
**The scene:** A formal rite that **completes** — a wedding, a funeral, a naturalisation, a graduation, a swearing-in. This is not *The Interrupted Ritual* in `scenes.md`: nothing breaks, and that is the difficulty. The protagonist has no action available, because the form is doing all the acting. The scene survives only if the public layer and a private war are running at the same time, and the audience is watching the second one.
**What must turn:** Someone's membership. A ceremony admits a person to a category, and the scene's real subject is whoever it quietly excludes by doing so.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. The form opens correctly and the room performs it correctly `voice.liturgical_register`
2. The seating, the order of precedence, who was not asked to speak `rel.group_hierarchy_display`
3. The formal speech, which is accurate and false `dial.the_toast` · `dial.the_eulogy`
4. One person is watching a different person than everyone else is `pov.scene_ownership`
5. A response given at the wrong volume, or half a beat late `char.stress_tell`
6. The prohibition holds — what cannot be said here is enormous and the form prevents all of it `sub.social_prohibition`
7. The rite completes exactly as designed `emo.contrast_sets_level`
8. Congratulation or condolence performed at the door, in pairs `rel.pair_off_the_room`
9. Whoever is now outside the category is left holding the order of service `end.final_image`

**Enter:** After the rite has begun, on the first response from the room.
**Exit:** In the corridor or the car park, on the person the ceremony cost something. The ritual's completion is not the ending; its aftermath is.
**Avoid:** An objection, which is the interrupted-ritual scene and a different and easier one. Cutting away from the ceremony every time it becomes boring — the boredom is the pressure. Writing the celebrant as a character. A montage of the reception, which has no turn in it `scene.montage_as_avoidance`.

---

### The Eviction

**genres:** Social Drama, Drama, Migration, Crime, Family Drama, Historical
**The scene:** A household is removed from a dwelling by someone carrying a document. The real texture is bureaucratic and fast: the officer is time-limited, has other addresses that day, and is permitted to give almost no grace. That indifference is the whole engine — the scene is ruined the moment the official becomes cruel, because cruelty gives the audience someone to blame and lets the system off.
**What must turn:** Belonging, from a right to a trespass, in the space of about four minutes.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. The knock, and the document held up before any greeting `expo.procedural_exposition`
2. The occupant argues with the document rather than the person `anta.institutional`
3. The officer restates the time, politely, and does not move `dial.polite_aggression` · `tens.waiting_as_weapon`
4. A negotiation about minutes, which is the only negotiation available `tens.shrinking_options`
5. The occupant chooses what to carry, which is the characterisation `emo.object_carrier` · `char.cannot_afford`
6. Something worthless is taken and something valuable is left `emo.specific_detail`
7. A neighbour watches and does or does not come out `rel.who_defends_whom` · `emo.shame`
8. The locks changed on the spot, in under a minute `beat.physical_beat`
9. The family stands on the pavement with the door behind them `end.quiet_ending`

**Enter:** On the knock. There is no version of this scene that benefits from a run-up.
**Exit:** On the pavement, or on the officer already at the next address — either is honest, and the second is colder.
**Avoid:** A sadistic bailiff. A speech about rights, which no one delivers at their own door. A reprieve. Slow motion or rain. Showing the interior of the emptied flat afterwards, which is a separate scene — *The Room After* in `scenes.md` — and is weaker if it is welded onto this one.

---

### The Audition

**genres:** Drama, Artist, Comedy, Coming of Age, Social Drama, Workplace
**The scene:** Someone performs a prepared piece in front of people with the power to reject them. The modern reality has changed the scene's mechanics and most scripts have not noticed: the great majority of auditions are now self-tapes, read against a bored friend or a phone on a tripod, judged by a person who is not in the room and may never reply. The in-person version is now the exception, and the difference is dramatically useful — one has an audience that can be played, the other has no audience at all.
**What must turn:** The performer's private estimate of their own talent, which moves independently of whether they get the part.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. The waiting, and everyone in the corridor performing being relaxed `char.stress_tell`
2. The slate — name, height, agent — delivered in a voice that is not theirs `voice.register_setting`
3. The first run, technically competent and completely safe `char.incompetence_zone`
4. A redirection that changes one small thing and implies everything `dial.exposition_correction`
5. The second run, which is worse in a more interesting way `scene.played_twice`
6. Something real leaks in, briefly, and the room's attention changes `beat.beat_change`
7. The reader gives them nothing back, because the reader is not acting `scene.before_a_stranger`
8. "Thank you," which is the entire verdict `dial.unanswered_line`
9. They are already re-running it in the corridor `emo.delayed_reaction`

**Enter:** On the slate, not on the arrival.
**Exit:** Outside, mid-recalculation, or — for the self-tape version — on the empty room after the camera stops, which is the loneliest available exit.
**Avoid:** A triumphant audition, which is a fantasy and kills the scene's only real subject. Casting people who whisper to each other on camera. Telling the audience the outcome. Writing the performed piece at length — what the audition is *of* matters far less than what it costs.

---

### The Ultimatum

**genres:** Crime, Political, Thriller, Drama, Family Drama, War
**The scene:** One party gives another a deadline and a condition. The trap is writing it as a threat scene, in which case the deliverer has all the power and nothing is contested. The interesting version is that issuing an ultimatum **spends** something — it removes the deliverer's own options too, and both of them know it.
**What must turn:** Who is actually cornered. It should not be the person who was cornered at the top.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. Business conducted normally, with the ultimatum not yet on the table `sub.second_subject`
2. The condition stated once, quietly, without a deadline attached `tens.polite_threat`
3. The receiver treats it as an opening position and counters `dial.concession_that_wins`
4. The deadline named, which converts a preference into a commitment `anta.time` · `tens.countdown`
5. The receiver asks what happens if they refuse, and the answer is expensive to give `dial.question_control`
6. The deliverer names it, and in naming it loses the ability to bluff `scene.reversal_of_power`
7. A silence in which the receiver calculates in front of them `dial.silence_as_reply`
8. The receiver accepts a smaller version, or refuses and accepts the cost `theme.moral_test`
9. Somebody leaves with less than they came in with `scene.value_turn`

**Enter:** On the normal business, one line before the condition.
**Exit:** On whichever of them is now counting days. `arc.moral_line`
**Avoid:** A deadline with no consequence attached, which is a request. A deliverer who enjoys it. An ultimatum the story then quietly forgets — once the clock is named, every subsequent scene inherits it.

---

### The Drive

**genres:** Drama, Crime, Family Drama, Road, Migration, Thriller
**The scene:** Two people in a moving vehicle. The form does an enormous amount unaided: they cannot leave, they are side by side rather than face to face, so neither has to look at the other, and the destination supplies a deadline for free. It is the cheapest two-hander in any medium and the one most often wasted on exposition.
**What must turn:** What one of them is willing to say without eye contact — and therefore what the relationship can hold.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. Already moving, already some way in `scene.moving_vehicle` · `open.open_mid_situation`
2. A negotiation about something trivial — the radio, the window, the route `dial.trivial_surface`
3. The driver's hands and eyes give them something to do instead of answering `sub.hands_business`
4. The passenger raises the real subject, because neither has to look at the other `sub.power_gradient`
5. It is met with a stretch of nothing, which the road makes bearable `sub.silence_as_content`
6. A sound outside — an indicator, a wiper, a train — measures the gap `tens.repeating_sound`
7. Something true said to the windscreen `emo.understate_at_peak`
8. The subject is changed by an exit sign `dial.topic_change`
9. The car stops and neither gets out `beat.held_beat`

**Enter:** Mid-journey. Getting into a car is never the scene.
**Exit:** On the stationary car with both still in it. `end.held_final_beat`
**Avoid:** Using the drive to deliver plot the audience could have received anywhere. A crash as the turn. Cutting to the exterior of the vehicle, which breaks the enclosure the scene is built on. A radio news bulletin that comments on the story.

---

### The Search of the House

**genres:** Crime, Political, War, Social Drama, Migration, Thriller
**The scene:** Officials search a private dwelling while the household stands in it. The reality is procedural and slow — occupants are detained in one room and told where to sit, the search is methodical, a receipt is left for whatever is taken — and that ordinariness is far worse than violence. The scene belongs to **whoever is watching their own home become evidence**.
**What must turn:** The dwelling, from a private space to a public one. It cannot be turned back, and everything the household does in it afterwards is different.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. The announcement at the door, the paper held up, and entry before consent `expo.procedural_exposition`
2. The household moved into one room and told where to sit `anta.institutional`
3. The search conducted politely and without haste `dial.polite_aggression`
4. An officer handles something intimate with complete indifference `tens.safe_space_violation`
5. The occupant volunteers information nobody asked for `char.stress_tell`
6. Something is found that is innocent and looks terrible `info.physical_proof` · `info.lesser_guilt`
7. A child or an elder in the room asks a practical question `sub.kid_readable_subtext`
8. One member of the household protects the wrong person `rel.who_defends_whom`
9. A receipt is written, signed and handed over `beat.object_beat`

**Enter:** After entry, with the household already seated. The door being forced is less frightening than the sitting.
**Exit:** On the receipt, or on the first thing someone puts back. `tens.corrupting_the_mundane`
**Avoid:** Shouting officers, which converts institutional power into personal aggression. A planted item, unless the story is about the planting. Resistance — almost nobody resists, and writing it loses the scene's real horror, which is compliance. Making the search fruitless without a cost.

---

### The Offer

**genres:** Crime, Political, Drama, Gangster, Workplace, Faith
**The scene:** Someone is offered what they want by someone they should not take it from. This is the temptation scene, and it fails when the offer is bad — a tempter who has nothing real to give is not an antagonist, he is a formality. The scene only works if the audience can feel the pull themselves.
**What must turn:** The recipient's picture of who they are. Whether they accept is secondary; that they now know the price of themselves is the scene.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. A meeting on neutral ground that the recipient did not arrange `scene.arrival_scene`
2. The offerer demonstrates that he knows exactly what is wanted `anta.shared_want` · `arc.the_want`
3. The offer made once, plainly, and not repeated `dial.the_pitch`
4. The recipient refuses on principle, fast — too fast `dial.on_the_nose`
5. The offerer agrees with the principle, and improves the offer `dial.concession_that_wins`
6. He names something true about the recipient's life that the story has been avoiding `anta.right_about_something`
7. The recipient asks a practical question, which is the moment they are lost `sub.want_statement_gap`
8. The offerer notices, and gives them time instead of an answer `tens.negotiable_threat`
9. A card, a number, a key — left behind rather than handed over `info.buried_plant`

**Enter:** After the pleasantries, on the first line of the offer.
**Exit:** On the recipient alone with the thing that was left. `emo.object_carrier`
**Avoid:** A menacing offerer, which makes refusal easy and costs the scene everything. An offer of money only; the good ones offer belonging, or an end to a specific exhaustion `arc.the_need`. An immediate acceptance. A moral speech from either party.

---

### The Performance

**genres:** Drama, Sports, Artist, Coming of Age, Comedy, Heritage
**The scene:** The thing rehearsed earlier is now done for real, in front of people who did not watch it being built. It is the payoff to *The Rehearsal* in `scenes.md` and it must not be a repeat of it — the audience already knows the material, so the only new information available is **who is watching and what it costs them**.
**What must turn:** Belief, in whoever was weakest at the rehearsal. Whether the performance is good is a much smaller question and should be settled early.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. The last thirty seconds before, backstage, silent `tens.first_five_seconds`
2. The opening goes correctly, and the correctness is unsettling `char.competence_first`
3. Cut to one specific face in the audience who has something at stake `emo.someone_else_feels_it`
4. The weak passage from the rehearsal arrives `beat.beat_rhyme`
5. It is covered by someone other than the person who fails it `rel.who_defends_whom`
6. A deviation from what was rehearsed, chosen in the moment `scene.tactic_change`
7. The group holds, and knows it is holding `rel.group_under_pressure`
8. The reaction is not the size anyone expected `comedy.wrong_reaction` · `tens.false_victory`
9. Backstage, the first thing said is about something practical `emo.emotion_through_task`

**Enter:** On the last silence before it starts.
**Exit:** Backstage or in the corridor, on the person who was covered for. `end.held_final_beat`
**Avoid:** Performing the whole piece — cut into it and out of it, and stay on faces. A standing ovation. A hostile audience converted mid-performance. Repeating the rehearsal's beats in the same order, which tells the audience nothing they did not already have.

---

### The Wake

**genres:** Family Drama, Heritage, Drama, Comedy, Social Drama, Migration
**The scene:** The gathering after a funeral. Food, too many people, and a house that is not built to hold them. Its peculiar property is that it is the one grief scene where laughter is permitted and expected, so it can carry comedy and bereavement in the same beat — which is why it is the most efficient ensemble scene available.
**What must turn:** The dead person's public version. A wake is where the community settles what the deceased was, and someone always loses an argument about it.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. Logistics — chairs, plates, who is in the kitchen and who is not `emo.emotion_through_task`
2. The room divides into the pairs it was always going to divide into `rel.pair_off_the_room`
3. A story told about the dead that flatters the teller `info.communal_version`
4. Someone laughs, and it is allowed `comedy.comedy_in_tragedy`
5. A second version of the same story, from someone with a better claim `rel.shifting_coalition`
6. The subject that may not be raised here is raised at the edge of the room `sub.social_prohibition`
7. A stranger is present whom nobody can place `scene.third_party_arrival`
8. The chief mourner is left alone for the first time all day `emo.grief`
9. Someone begins washing up `end.quiet_ending`

**Enter:** An hour in, when the food is half gone and the formality has worn off.
**Exit:** On the person washing up, or on the one who cannot go home yet. `char.the_missed_one`
**Avoid:** The reading of a will, which is a different scene and a plot device. A fight, unless the fight is about the version of the dead. A eulogy — that belonged to the funeral. Anyone summarising the deceased's character for the audience's benefit.

---

### The Overheard Conversation

**genres:** Thriller, Crime, Family Drama, Social Drama, Comedy, Noir
**The scene:** One character hears something not addressed to them. The trap is convenience — a conversation held at exactly the volume and specificity the plot needs is the cheapest device in drama. It earns its place only when what is overheard is **incomplete**, and the listener's wrong reconstruction of it drives the next three scenes.
**What must turn:** The listener's model of someone else, from one wrong version to a differently wrong version.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. The listener present for an unrelated and legitimate reason `scene.give_a_want`
2. The speakers behave as people do when they believe they are alone `char.alone_behaviour`
3. The first fragment, which means nothing yet `info.delayed_decoding`
4. The listener stays, and staying costs them something — a risk, a lie, a missed appointment `scene.unaware_participant`
5. A name, used in a way that reframes it `dial.name_weapon`
6. A half-sentence with the operative clause missing `dial.half_truth`
7. The physical risk of discovery closes in `tens.closing_space`
8. They get out, or are caught — and either way they have less than the audience does `info.character_asymmetry`
9. They act on it immediately and wrongly `emo.delayed_reaction`

**Enter:** After the conversation has started, mid-sentence, so the listener never has the frame.
**Exit:** On the listener's face, before they move. `beat.held_beat`
**Avoid:** A complete and unambiguous overheard exchange, which is exposition wearing a disguise. Speakers who name their own scheme aloud for no reason. A listener with no risk. Letting the audience hear more than the listener does, unless the story is built on that gap `info.audience_only_secret`.

---

### The Escape

**genres:** War, Thriller, Crime, Prison, Migration, Historical
**The scene:** Getting out of a place designed to hold people. Unlike the chase, it is slow, and its tension comes from **rules** rather than speed: the audience must know the guard's round, the lock, the count, the hour. Every rule established in advance becomes a lever later, and a rule that was not established cannot be broken satisfyingly.
**What must turn:** Who is coming and who is not. The escape's real content is the abandonment inside it.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. The system demonstrated working, so the audience can time it `tens.rule_demonstration`
2. The plan begun mid-execution, with no briefing `open.open_mid_situation`
3. A margin consumed early by something trivial `tens.interruption_clock`
4. The first competence failure — the skill that always worked does not `char.competence_fails`
5. A choice between speed and a person `scene.reaction_dilemma_decision`
6. Someone is left, and the leaving is not discussed `char.who_pays_most`
7. The remaining options fall to one `tens.shrinking_options`
8. They are outside, and it is not relief `tens.false_victory` · `emo.relief`
9. A look back at the place, which one of them does not take `end.final_image`

**Enter:** With the attempt already in progress.
**Exit:** Outside, on whoever is counting the group and getting the wrong number.
**Avoid:** Improvised solutions using rules the audience was never given. An escape with no cost, which is a montage. Guards who are stupid — the system should be defeated by patience, not by incompetence. Celebrating.

---

### The Identification

**genres:** Crime, Drama, War, Family Drama, Medical, Social Drama
**The scene:** A relative is asked to confirm that a body is who it is thought to be. The procedure is quieter than screen convention suggests — a small viewing room furnished like a sitting room, curtains or a pane of glass, one person only, a single question asked and answered. That mildness is the instrument. The scene belongs to **whoever is conducting it**, because the identifier has almost nothing to do but say a word.
**What must turn:** A possibility into a fact. Until the word is said, hope is structurally available; after it, it is not.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. A corridor, a form, a question about who else should be told `expo.procedural_exposition`
2. The officer explains what will happen, kindly and by rote `anta.institutional`
3. The wait outside the room, which is longer than the room `tens.waiting_as_weapon`
4. The curtain, and the identifier looks at something adjacent — a hand, an ear, a scar `emo.specific_detail`
5. They say yes, in one syllable `emo.understate_at_peak`
6. They ask a practical question about the body that nobody expected `emo.emotion_against_type`
7. It is answered seriously, which is the kindness `char.competence_cost`
8. They are given back a bag of belongings `beat.object_beat`
9. The signing of a form `emo.emotion_through_task`

**Enter:** In the corridor, on the procedure.
**Exit:** Outside the building, holding the bag. `emo.delayed_reaction`
**Avoid:** Showing the body `tens.implication_over_depiction`. Collapse in the viewing room. A refusal to look, unless the refusal is the scene. Music. Any variant where the identifier is wrong and the audience is meant to enjoy the twist.

---

### The Verdict

**genres:** Legal, Courtroom, Social Drama, Political, Historical, Drama
**The scene:** A decision is announced by an institution to the people it concerns. The trap is thinking the verdict is the content — it is a single word, and the audience has usually guessed it. The content is the **choreography of a room that must not react**, and the scene is really about who each person looks at in the second before it is said.
**What must turn:** Not the outcome, which the scene may not even change — but the room's arrangement into winners and losers, which is instantaneous and public.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. The room reassembles, and the seating has changed slightly `rel.group_hierarchy_display`
2. Procedure: the standing, the form of words, the instruction not to react `expo.procedural_exposition`
3. The defendant told to stand, and what their hands do `char.stress_tell`
4. A long formal preamble nobody hears `tens.waiting_as_weapon`
5. The viewpoint stays on one person who is not the defendant `pov.scene_ownership`
6. The word `tens.known_outcome_dread`
7. The room holds itself still, which is louder than a reaction `emo.withhold_reaction`
8. One small sound from the wrong part of the room `emo.emotion_against_type`
9. Officials begin gathering papers before it has landed `anta.institutional`

**Enter:** On the reassembling, not on the deliberation.
**Exit:** On the still face, one beat past comfort. `end.held_final_beat`
**Avoid:** A jury foreman's dramatic pause. Cutting to a reaction shot on the word itself — hold instead. A courtroom that erupts, which is a genre gesture, not an observation. Explaining the sentence's meaning through a lawyer.

---

### The First Day

**genres:** Workplace, Drama, Social Drama, Migration, Comedy, Coming of Age
**The scene:** Someone begins in a place where everyone else already knows the rules. It is the most efficient orientation scene in existence — a newcomer makes every piece of exposition legitimately askable — and the trap is using it *only* for that, which produces a tour instead of a scene.
**What must turn:** The group, from one arrangement to another. The newcomer is a solvent: their arrival moves somebody's position, usually the person who was most recently the newest.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. The newcomer arrives early and is not expected `expo.newcomer_eye`
2. A tour conducted by someone with no authority to give it `rel.group_hierarchy_display`
3. Shorthand used in front of them that nobody translates `expo.jargon_threshold`
4. They do one small thing competently and one thing wrong `char.incompetence_zone`
5. Someone corrects the wrong thing — the harmless one, not the dangerous one `dial.exposition_correction`
6. The unwritten rule demonstrated by a violation `tens.rule_demonstration`
7. One person is unaccountably kind to them, and it costs that person something `char.the_exception`
8. The newcomer is told something about an absent colleague `info.buried_plant`
9. They are left alone at a desk with nothing to do `rel.outsider_in_the_group`

**Enter:** On the arrival, which is the one scene type where arriving is correct.
**Exit:** On the newcomer alone, or on whoever has just been demoted by their existence.
**Avoid:** A tour that is only a tour. A newcomer who asks the audience's questions rather than their own `char.audience_surrogate_trap`. Everyone being friendly. A first-day disaster, which is a comedy premise and should be chosen deliberately rather than by default.

---

### The Bribe

**genres:** Crime, Political, Social Drama, Migration, Historical, Gangster
**The scene:** Money is offered to obtain something that money is not supposed to obtain. In most of the world this is not a dramatic event, it is an administrative one, and writing it as a moral crisis is usually a cultural error. The scene's real subject is **the language it is conducted in** — the euphemism both parties agree to use, and which of them breaks it.
**What must turn:** The fiction they are jointly maintaining. Whoever names the transaction plainly loses standing, whatever the outcome.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. Legitimate business, correctly conducted, going nowhere `sub.second_subject`
2. An obstacle described as regrettable and immovable `anta.institutional`
3. A phrase offered that means two things — a fee, a favour, a delay that could be shortened `dial.polite_aggression`
4. It is taken the innocent way, once, as a test `dial.half_truth`
5. The amount arrived at without a number being said aloud `sub.high_context_indirection`
6. The exact sum, and where it physically goes `char.money_specifics` · `scene.transaction_scene`
7. One of them names it plainly, and the temperature drops `sub.subtext_announced`
8. The service is rendered immediately, which is the humiliation `scene.reversal_of_power`
9. Both resume the legitimate business `emo.shame`

**Enter:** On the obstacle, already stated once.
**Exit:** On the resumed paperwork. `dial.silence_as_reply`
**Avoid:** A briefcase. Any character having a crisis of conscience on the page. A refusal that ends the scene, unless the refusal costs more than the bribe would have. An official who asks outright, which almost never happens and throws away the euphemism the scene runs on.

---

### The Packing

**genres:** Migration, Family Drama, War, Drama, Heritage, Social Drama
**The scene:** One person decides what to take. It is a decision scene with the decision made visible in objects, and it will carry more exposition about a life than any dialogue scene, without a word being spoken about the past.
**What must turn:** What the character believes they are coming back to. The bag's contents state that belief precisely, and the scene should change it once.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. The container, and its size stated by how it is treated `emo.object_carrier`
2. The obvious, practical things packed fast and correctly `time.iterative_habit`
3. A first object picked up and put down `sub.hands_business`
4. Something useless packed without hesitation `emo.specific_detail`
5. Something valuable weighed against the space it takes `char.cannot_afford`
6. An object belonging to someone else, considered `char.the_missed_one`
7. The bag closes and does not close `emo.emotion_in_the_gap`
8. One thing is removed to make it close, and it is not the useless one `beat.physical_beat`
9. The room is left as though they were coming back `end.final_image`

**Enter:** With the bag already half full.
**Exit:** On the room, not on the bag. `scene.early_exit`
**Avoid:** A photograph held up and studied, which is the single most exhausted gesture in the form. A flashback triggered by an object. Anyone entering to explain why they are leaving. Sobbing over folded clothes.

---

### The Arrival of the Stranger

**genres:** Drama, Western, Heritage, Thriller, Social Drama, Historical
**The scene:** Someone unknown enters a closed group. It is one of the two oldest plots in existence and its craft problem is patience: writers reveal the stranger too early because the stranger is the interesting one. But this scene is not about them. It is about **the group**, and what their reaction to a new variable exposes about the arrangement they had before.
**What must turn:** The group's internal alliances, which reorganise around the newcomer before anybody has decided anything about them.

**Beat skeleton:**
1. The group in its settled arrangement, established first `rel.ensemble_as_system`
2. The stranger enters and does something that does not fit the register `char.entrance_against_type`
3. The group's first response is procedural — a seat, a price, a question of business `scene.arrival_scene`
4. Someone has heard of them, or claims to `char.reputation_before_entrance`
5. The stranger asks the questions, which nobody notices `dial.question_control`
6. One member of the group is unaccountably welcoming and another unaccountably hostile `rel.shifting_coalition`
7. A small detail about the stranger does not add up, and only one person clocks it `tens.wrongness_detail` · `tens.suspect_ally`
8. They are given a place to stay, or refused one `scene.threshold_scene`
9. The group discusses them after they have gone, and disagrees `info.character_asymmetry`

**Enter:** On the group, before the door. The audience needs the arrangement in order to see it break.
**Exit:** On the group talking, not on the stranger. `pov.scene_ownership`
**Avoid:** Telling the audience who the stranger is. A silence falling as they enter, which is the cliché this scene is made of. Making the hostile member right, which turns the story into a warning. Giving the stranger a monologue.

---

## Coverage

**Still missing across both files, found during the research for this one:**

- **The medical or legal consultation the client cannot afford** — distinct from *The Diagnosis*; the turn is on money, not on the future.
- **The translated scene with an interpreter present**, where a third person controls what each of the other two hears. `dial.interpreter_scene` exists as a card; no beat plan routes to it.
- **The scene conducted entirely on a screen** — video call, chat, comments. `dial.video_call`, `dial.text_on_screen` and `dial.voice_note` exist; the scene type does not.
- **The reconciliation that holds**, as the counterpart to *The Apology That Fails*. Harder to write and much rarer, which is why it is missing.
- **The betrayal enacted** — the moment of informing, as distinct from *The Lie Discovered*, which is its aftermath.
- **The scene in which a character is told they are wrong and is right** — the reverse of the intervention.
- **The queue**, as a social space distinct from *The Waiting Room* and *The Border*.
- **The long marriage's ordinary morning** — a two-hander with no event in it, which `rel.marriage_on_the_page` supports and no scene type covers.

Three of the entries in this file also lacked a card to cite at one or more beats and are written in plain prose there instead: the self-tape as a performance to an absent judge, the ceremony that completes without being interrupted, and the euphemism contract inside a bribe. Those are card-shaped gaps, not scene-shaped ones, and belong in `cat-scene-*.md` and `cat-sub.md` rather than here.

*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

Verified 2026-09-17.

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