skills/ai-film-pipeline-master/references/phase-02-screenplay-dialogue/symptoms-prose-and-rhythm.md

# Prose and rhythm complaints

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

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### "The prose is flat / everything sounds the same"

Almost always one cause: every sentence is the same length. The ear stops registering a rhythm it can predict.

1. Vary sentence length deliberately, as tempo
   `rhythm.length_as_tempo` · `rhythm.monotone_length`
1b. If the flatness belongs to one narrator rather than to the page, it is a voice property: this voice's characteristic length, and more importantly its pattern of variation — where it runs long, where it stops dead
   `voice.sentence_rhythm`
2. The single most reliable move in prose: a short sentence after two long ones
   `rhythm.short_after_long` · `rhythm.short_short_long`
3. Put the weight at the end of the sentence, where the ear expects it
   `rhythm.end_weight` · `rhythm.last_word_turn`
4. Read it aloud. This is the only real test and there is no substitute
   `rhythm.read_aloud_test`

### "The writing is overwritten / purple"

1. Diagnose it by name, then cut
   `rhythm.overwritten_sentence` · `rhythm.audible_technique`
2. Strengthen the verbs and the adverbs become unnecessary
   `rhythm.verb_load` · `rhythm.adverb_discipline`
3. Swap Latinate abstractions for Saxon concretes
   `rhythm.saxon_vs_latinate` · `rhythm.concrete_nouns`
4. If the technique is audible, it is failing — the reader should feel the effect, not see the device
   `rhythm.audible_technique`

### "The page looks like a wall"

1. White space is pacing, not formatting
   `rhythm.white_space` · `rhythm.paragraph_break_cut`
2. A one-line paragraph is the strongest emphasis in prose. Spend it rarely
   `rhythm.one_line_paragraph`
3. For a long sustained effect, commit to the long breath rather than half-doing it
   `rhythm.long_breath` · `rhythm.fragment`

### "I need rhythm for something that will be heard, not read"

1. Voiceover runs at roughly 140–160 words a minute — write to breath, not to the page
   `rhythm.vo_breath_line` · `voice.write_for_the_ear`
2. Subtitles have a hard character budget and a reading rate
   `rhythm.subtitle_beat`
3. Screenplay action blocks have their own rhythm and a three-line ceiling
   `rhythm.action_line_rhythm`
4. If it will be translated, check what the rhythm survives
   `rhythm.translated_rhythm`

### "The sentences are all built the same way"

1. Learn the two shapes and alternate them deliberately
   `rhythm.periodic_sentence` · `rhythm.loose_sentence`
2. Build cumulatively, adding clauses that each earn their place
   `rhythm.cumulative_build` · `rhythm.subordination_delay`
3. Withhold the subject to delay the point of the sentence
   `rhythm.withheld_subject`
4. Watch the embedding load — a reader can only hold so much before the clause closes
   `rhythm.embedding_load`
5. The named failure: every sentence starting the same way
   `rhythm.same_sentence_opener`

### "More punctuation than I know what to do with"

`rhythm.semicolon_balance` · `rhythm.ellipsis_trail` · `rhythm.parenthesis_aside` · `rhythm.question_rhythm` · `rhythm.quotation_weight` · `rhythm.conjunction_control`

And the failure: `rhythm.unintended_splice`

### "I want a figure, not just a rhythm"

`rhythm.chiasmus` · `rhythm.epistrophe` · `rhythm.antithesis_balance` · `rhythm.tricolon_crescens`

### "The pace is wrong across the whole book"

1. The paragraph is a breath; the chapter is a unit of rhythm
   `rhythm.paragraph_breath` · `rhythm.chapter_as_unit`
2. Section breaks do the same work at a larger scale
   `rhythm.section_break_scale` · `rhythm.book_level_pace`

### "The register needs its own rhythm"

`rhythm.legal_sentence` · `rhythm.instruction_step` · `rhythm.transcript_clean` · `rhythm.found_document_rhythm` · `rhythm.lyric_adjacent_prose`

### "Writing to be read aloud"

1. A narrator needs a paragraph shape they can perform
   `rhythm.narrator_paragraph` · `rhythm.performed_breath`
2. A listener cannot re-read; the sentence has to land the first time
   `rhythm.listener_no_rewind`
3. The harder case is prose someone will perform *cold, once, without rehearsal* — a parent with a picture book, a teacher in front of a class, a narrator handed a script. Write it so the unprepared reader cannot land the emphasis in the wrong place
   `rhythm.read_aloud_line`
4. The failure mode there is over-correction: prose so rhythmically locked that the reader cannot put emphasis anywhere the metre did not allow. It performs itself while the reader recites, and in a screenplay it removes the actor's choices entirely
   `rhythm.audible_technique`
5. The boxed version — a passage in a published adventure set apart to be read out at a table by a non-actor seeing it for the first time — has its own rules, and the main one is that it must not sit at the head of a conversation or a negotiation, where it pre-empts the performance of the person about to play that character
   `inter.boxed_read_aloud`

### "The rhythm doesn't survive translation"

1. Know what actually survives and what does not
   `rhythm.translation_survivors` · `rhythm.write_for_translator`
2. Arabic and other right-to-left rhythm has its own constraints
   `rhythm.arabic_rtl_rhythm`
3. And the named failure in the other direction: prose that reads as translated when it was not
   `rhythm.translationese_scan`

### "How do I hear my own writing?"

1. Audit sentence length mechanically before trusting your ear
   `rhythm.length_audit` · `rhythm.tic_audit`
2. The first draft has a default cadence that is yours, not the book's
   `rhythm.first_draft_cadence`
3. A borrowed rhythm is recognisable to any editor
   `rhythm.borrowed_rhythm`
4. The fragment is a voice choice, not a default
   `rhythm.fragment_voice`
5. And the last named failure: a sentence that scans beautifully and means nothing
   `rhythm.empty_music`

### "I want emphasis without shouting"

1. Repetition at the head of successive clauses
   `rhythm.anaphora` · `rhythm.parallel_construction`
2. Three items, with the weight on the third
   `rhythm.triad` · `rhythm.list_accumulation`
3. Punctuation is timing: the full stop, the dash, the colon, and the splice used on purpose
   `rhythm.full_stop_tempo` · `rhythm.dash_interrupt` · `rhythm.colon_drop` · `rhythm.comma_splice_tool`
4. Sound carries meaning — hard consonants and soft ones do different work
   `rhythm.stress_pattern` · `rhythm.consonant_texture`

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