Story and writing

Story structure, screenplays, series bibles, characters, dialogue, narrative evaluation

• articleWhat do the Sami Ofelas (Pathfinder) guidelines say about consultation, ownership, script review and who they apply to?
  The Pathfinder (Sámi Film and Culture Advisory Board with the International Sámi Film Institute; version 22 February 2021) asks productions with Sámi content, or shot in Sápmi, to use it as early as possible and in any case before the script is completed. An expert group evaluates the project and ISFI can then confirm that it is culturally sensitive and respectful. Its checklist asks about Sámi ownership through a producer or co-producer, Sámi writers, meaningful consultation, Sámi actors for Sámi characters, Sámi language, community benefit, and whether anyone has said No; consent is mostly obtained in face-to-face consultation. It states Sámi ownership of their culture and stories, says it does not answer every question, and points to a lawyer for legal matters.
• articleWhat is a storylet or quality-based narrative in plain terms, and what did Failbetter's own early write-up and Emily Short say about structures like questicles and the Midnight Staircase?
  A storylet is a unit of content with prerequisites on world-state qualities and effects on those qualities; it can be paper-prototyped on index cards. Failbetter names reusable gating shapes built from qualities (Faust's Tea Party social exchange; Midnight Staircase accumulated preparation cashed in at any time). These are 2010/2019 designer accounts, not measurements.
• articleWhat do first-person storyboard accounts say about shot numbering, camera-move arrows and shot labels, and where do they disagree?
  Practitioner accounts tie board panels to script or breakdown numbering but differ: scene number plus a letter per shot (No Film School), or sequential numbers never renumbered with letter inserts such as 12A (storyboard instructor); camera moves drawn as start and end frames joined by one arrow and one label. A feature artist reported avoiding arrows (producer reading).
• articleWhen a screenplay is imported into a storyboard tool (Storyboarder), which script elements become scene data, how are scenes keyed, and what is dropped or modified?
  Storyboarder keys Fountain scenes by the #...# scene number and, when absent, writes '#<count>-<uid>#' into the user's script; for FDX it writes a generated Number attribute but keys scenes as 'G<n>' (the scene_number assignment is commented out); scene durations are word-count estimates, not authored timings. A pipeline that diffs or locks scripts should expect the file to change on first open.
• articleWhen I send a Fountain or FDX screenplay into a breakdown/scheduling tool, what comes across (scene headings, characters, tagged elements, revisions, scene numbers) and what must be exported another way?
  A plain .fdx import into Movie Magic Scheduling brings only sluglines and speaking characters; breakdown tags need a Final Draft Scheduling Export (.sex). Fountain offers scene numbers, notes, sections and synopses but no tag or revision markup, so a Fountain-only project has no standard carrier for breakdown tags. Revision-mark handling on import is not documented in the pages read.
• articleI have a Fountain or FDX screenplay and need an edit timeline: at which handoffs does a scene number, a clip name or a timecode survive, and where must I carry it myself?
  Across screenplay, breakdown, storyboard, animatic and edit timeline, no single identifier is defined end to end in the sources read: scene numbers survive script-to-storyboard, while reel/clip names and timecode become the keys once a cut exists; EDL drops what it has no slot for.
• articleDoes the Ofcom Broadcasting Code apply to the video or programme I am making, and what does Rule 2.2 mean in plain terms?
  The Broadcasting Code applies to radio and TV content on Ofcom-licensed services (plus BBC licence-fee services and S4C) and binds broadcasters through their licences; notified on-demand providers fall under separate rules; Ofcom regulates accuracy as such only in news (Section Five), and 'materially misleading' depends on context and potential harm or offence. Whether it reaches an independent creator's online video is not stated in the Code read.
• articleWhat changed in the WGA's AI article (Article 72) between the 2023 MOA and the 2026 MOA, according to the two MOA texts?
  The 2026 MOA (April 4, 2026; term May 2, 2026 to May 1, 2030) amends only Paragraph G of Article 72: it keeps semi-annual meetings and adds written notice to the Guild when a company grants a compensated licence to a non-affiliated third party to train a public-facing commercial GAI system, with a meeting on request. Paragraphs A-F (AI not a writer, disclosure, consent) are not amended in Item 15, and the WGA's AI page still describes the 2023 provisions.
• articleWhat do designers' first-person accounts (Emily Short, Failbetter) say about how quality-based narrative works and where it strains?
  Emily Short describes quality-based narrative (Failbetter's term) as storylets unlocked by numeric qualities for inventory, skills and progress, contrasts it with salience-based selection, and notes from experience that it feels thin until many storylets exist, long option lists overwhelm players, and mid-sized modular additions are safe; Failbetter describes qualities driving branches and 'questicle' chains. Practitioner accounts.
• articleWhat process norms for delivering and managing script notes do guild or industry bodies state (who gives notes, how they are delivered, who may see assessments)?
  Under the WGA's MBA-linked consultation rule, producers consult the writer on each set of requested revisions so notes are not sent unexplained, with a strong preference for one consolidated set of notes and, for long-form TV, network notes delivered to writer and producer together. New Zealand's SPADA guide asks collaborators to agree in advance who gives notes to whom, separates script consultants (feedback only) from editors (who modify), and keeps assessments confidential without the writer's permission. Different jurisdictions and contract regimes.
• articleWhat does a screenwriters' guild tell a writer to do when receiving script notes, in plain terms?
  The WGA West Screenwriters Handbook (Nov 2025) advises writers taking notes not to be defensive or feel obliged to accept or solve every note in the meeting, to ask for clarification, respond in writing (separating clear from unclear notes), explain respectfully why a note does not work, take time to design comprehensive solutions, and not become a rubber stamp for someone else's agenda. Union advice to writers, not a neutral standard.
• articleWhat structural vocabulary do Korean institutional and Korean-language scholarly sources use for film screenplays, and do they use gi-seung-jeon-gyeol?
  The Korean-language scholarly abstracts read analyse screenplays with three-act vocabulary (Field's five focal points and three-act structure, Seger, Gulino's eight sequences; feature scripts divided into three acts), KOFIC's 2025 contest notice sets eligibility and formatting but no structure, and a Korean Wikipedia stub says scripts mainly use three-act composition. None frames screenplays as gi-seung-jeon-gyeol.
• articleWhat does Zeami's Shudosho say about jo-ha-kyu, as read in a public translation, and how does the translator frame it?
  In Bohner's 1961 German translation of Zeami's Shudosho, jo-ha-kyu allocates a day's programme: the waki noh is jo, pieces two to four are ha and the fifth is kyu; when more pieces are ordered, the troupe should stretch jo-ha-kyu across the whole performance. Bohner's own introduction glosses all noh as a three- or five-part unfolding (translator's interpretation, not Zeami's text).
• articleWhat Korean institutional or scholarly sources describe Korean screenplay structure (including gi-seung-jeon-gyeol), and how do they differ from Anglo-American teaching?
  No Korean institutional source on screenplay structure was found; an open article on four Korean cult films uses Western narrative theory and never names gi-seung-jeon-gyeol, and a K-drama thesis abstract says published analysis of K-drama structure is limited. Thin, television-skewed evidence.
• articleHow do English-language scholarly and practitioner sources describe qi-cheng-zhuan-he as a screenplay structure and how does it differ from Anglo-American three-act teaching?
  English-language sources describe qi-cheng-zhuan-he as a four-part model built on a turn: Zhang et al. (CC BY; three Chinese animated films; inter-rater alpha .87) contrast it with three-act and Vogler models; a screenwriting trainer contrasts a future-facing Hollywood second act with a more retrospective Chinese one and says early Chinese screenwriters learned from Hollywood (no counts); scholarship on Xia Yan describes Chinese literary tradition combined with Hollywood narration. No Chinese-language teaching text was read.
• articleHow does Miyazaki describe developing story through storyboards while production runs, and what risks does he give?
  Miyazaki (Paris press debate reported by Midnight Eye, translated) says his films start without a finished script, the story develops as he draws storyboards while production is already under way, and calls this a dangerous way to make an animated film; Spirited Away grew to 1,415 shots from about 1,200 envisioned. AWN (2010) quotes him saying the world grows more complex as he storyboards.
• articleHow do story supervisors and directors describe building and iterating story reels, and what limits do they name?
  Pixar story supervisor Jason Katz says Pixar screens its story as reels every three to four months, reel goals vary by director, films tend to have 'two lives' with story staff rotating around screening four or five, and Coco's first version centred on death before research shifted it; Klaus director Sergio Pablos records performances, pairs them with storyboards and cuts a story reel to test how scenes play, including trying music in the reel. Practitioner accounts; reel limits not stated.
• articleWhat do documentary makers say about paper edits, string-outs and card walls, and where do they disagree on how much structure to plan before editing?
  Roger Nygard surveys documentary editing: paper edits from transcripts, assistant-built topic string-outs by transcript word search (his own method), story cards on a wall whose order can invert, interview-first blind assemblies with talking heads moved repeatedly, and judgment-based endings, plus Herzog's counter-position of shooting what you want for the screen. Statements by other filmmakers are second-hand in this article.
• articleHow does a documentary editor describe finding structure from raw footage (string-outs, breakdowns, card boards), with examples and limits?
  Editor Maya Mumma organises verite footage by stringing out each card, then each shoot day, then breaking days into beat sequences sorted by character, location and event; she starts archival films with chronology, builds an early card board of beats with parallel thematic columns, keeps a 'good things' bin for strong lines, and found one film's structure by cutting five filmed subjects to three. She says each project differs.
• articleWhat do two working screenwriters say about writing dialogue from listening to real speech, with their examples and caveats?
  In Scriptnotes 438, John August and Craig Mazin treat film dialogue as an optimised synthesis of real speech: listen to real talk for patterns, interruptions and listening behaviour, but do not transcribe it verbatim; emotional speakers become less, not more, eloquent; rehearsed and discovering speakers can share a scene. The episode does not discuss subtext by name. Hosts' opinions, unmeasured.
• articleHow does a working writer-director describe writing dialogue that carries subtext, with a concrete technique, scene examples and an example where direct speech was kept?
  Dee Rees (BAFTA Screenwriters' Lecture, 2017) advises writing dialogue several steps back from what characters feel (her professor's 'triple bumper': back off three times), building scenes on avoidance, letting action and blocking carry the unspoken, and giving each character a distinct vocabulary; she also kept a direct line the actors fought for and changed the blocking to make it work. One practitioner's account.
• articleWhat do articy:draft JSON export and its localisation exports (xlsx) preserve for localisation IDs, text states and conflict handling?
  articy:draft 3 JSON export with Localization replaces localisable text with LocaIDs (keys in Excel column A, text in column B) and leaves parsing to the user; the Unity importer uses LocaIDs built from TechnicalName plus property name (not to be changed), an optional 'Is final?' column that stops overwrites, and loc_<package>_<language>.xlsx files. articy:draft X imports carry text states (In Progress, Final, Outdated) and offer abort or skip on multi-user claiming conflicts.
• articleWhat do Yarn Spinner v3.2.1 compiled programs and string tables preserve about line IDs, localisation and variables, and which line IDs are stable across recompiles?
  Yarn Spinner v3.2.1 compiles dialogue to a protobuf Program whose line and option instructions carry only a line ID and substitution count; text lives in a StringTable keyed by line ID with node, file, line number, metadata and shadow-line ID. Implicit IDs are stable only while the source file is unchanged, so localised projects should add #line: tags. Command text is embedded in the program rather than in the StringTable.
• articleIn Beat 2.1.18, what does a #n# suffix on a Fountain scene heading do, and how are scene numbers shown, locked and unlocked?
  In Beat 2.1.18 a trailing #n# fixes (forces) a heading's number; other headings are numbered automatically from the document start value; 'lock' writes ' #N#' into every unnumbered heading and leaves forced ones alone.
• articleWhen a screenplay with locked scene numbers moves between Trelby, Starc, Beat and afterwriting, where are the numbers written and where are they read?
  At the pinned commits, Starc (when its scene-number option is on) and Beat write a Number attribute on FDX scene-heading paragraphs, Trelby writes none, and none of the four importers read (Starc, Beat outside tag definitions, Trelby, afterwriting) take a scene Number from FDX, so locked scene numbers such as 12A are at risk of renumbering on any FDX round trip through these tools (static reading).
• articleWhere do the Fountain 1.1 syntax page, an FDX sample, and the BBC Writers format PDFs agree and disagree about screenplay elements, and what could not be read (Nicholl, Final Draft documentation)?
  Fountain 1.1 (changelog 14 Mar 2014) marks dual dialogue with a trailing caret on the second character cue; the Final Draft sample .fdx expresses it with a DualDialogue XML wrapper and carries (CONT'D) in three character cues (typographic apostrophe) plus an automatic-continueds setting; the BBC film-format sample prescribes layout (double-spaced action, short paragraphs) and says CONT'D is not essential.
• articleHow do Ren'Py's save/load, rollback, default statement, after_load label and _version variable work together when a game script changes after players have saves?
  Ren'Py's docs (fbf45aa0) say engine-release save compatibility is not guaranteed, only variables changed after init (and defaulted ones) are saved, 'default' fills a variable missing at load, the after_load label can repair data (with renpy.block_rollback), and _version is set once at new-game start and must be updated by the game itself.
• articleHow does SugarCube 2 define what a save contains, what happens when a save from an older story version is loaded, and how can saves be versioned and upgraded?
  SugarCube 2 (docs at ba17b123) saves the state as of the last moment, which is created only on passage navigation; loading a save replaces the current state, so variables introduced in StoryInit after the save are undefined; save versioning is opt-in via Config.saves.version (no default) and is only useful with Save.onLoad upgrade handlers.
• articleWhat exactly is in an ink save-state JSON and which version numbers gate loading it?
  At ink 35c63e52 (v1.2.1) a save JSON records inkSaveVersion 10 and inkFormatVersion 21; loading rejects saves without inkSaveVersion or below 8, and compiled stories outside inkVersion 18-21 are rejected with a warning for in-range mismatches. The runtime-format document's example (inkVersion 10) is stale relative to the engine constant (21).
• articlePROPOSAL on 1916 practice: which failure modes does Sargent name for motive and plausibility, which are claims and which examples, and what check could an agent run on an outline using only those?
  From Sargent's ch. X, XII and the passages they point to (ch. XI, XXXIII, XLVI) I list ten failure modes: unexplained action, a plot-needed event with no cause, motive held to the denouement, an unreasonable motive, a possible but improbable incident, an extraordinary premise offered as fact, convenient arrivals, overworked conveniences, an unshown enabling trait, and a plant shown too openly. Each is a Sargent claim or a Sargent example, labelled as such. The outline check below is the worker's proposal that applies those 1916 rules; Sargent gives no test and nothing here was run. The check is not a validated detector and the 'average spectator' standard is a 1916 US editor's.
• articleWhat does Sargent mean by possible, probable and plausible, and why does he say a true but improbable incident should be cut?
  Sargent (ch. XII 'Plausibility') says an incident can be explained, prepared for and correctly coloured and still fail because the average spectator will not accept it as a likely thing. His test is acceptance, not truth: 'possible' is not 'probable', and a possible but improbable incident is worse than a fantastic one that is offered as imagination. So he tells writers to prefer a story that sounds true to one that is true, and to drop true events that are too strange. The exemption is a declared fantasy. His examples (Capitol dome, policeman and aeroplane, sea serpent, Verne) illustrate these claims; none is tested. The standard is an editor's account of the 'average spectator' in 1916.
• articleHow early and how openly must a motive or enabling fact be planted before the act that needs it, and how does Sargent treat coincidence and convenient arrivals?
  Sargent's rule in ch. X (para 7) is that the motive be given clearly in action as the story goes on, not held back for the denouement. The fuller rule is in ch. XLVI 'Preparation for the Event' (outside the assigned chapters): give the explanation in advance, casually, in footage where there is time, because an event with no preparation 'cannot be understood or accepted' yet a plant shown too openly kills suspense. For coincidence, ch. X to XII never use the word (0 of 7 whole-text hits lie in flat chars 96409-118827); Sargent's rule sits in ch. XXXIII paras 21-23: characters cannot just 'happen to be' where the author needs them, so give each arrival its own purpose, and avoid shortcuts such as the death-bed confession. He gives no definition of coincidence, no count and no placement rule. His rules are claims; the Andrew, Frank, John and Henry stories are examples.
• articleIn Sargent's 1916 manual, why must every action in a photoplay have a motive the audience can see, and how does he tell an explained or self-motived action from an unmotived one?
  Sargent (Technique of the Photoplay, 3rd ed. 1916, ch. X 'Motives') says a character always has a reason, but an audience cannot see it unless the film shows it, so an act that is neither obvious nor explained 'is absurd'. He asks for motives that an audience will accept as 'reasonable and logical', and he gives 'motivation' a second job: every important action must show a definite bearing on the plot and advance it toward the climax. His examples (green-cow drunk, fence beside an open gate, suitor ejected as a drug fiend, plot-needed fire) illustrate these claims; they are not tests. This is one trade editor's 1916 rule set for silent one- and two-reelers, with no measured effect.
• articleWhose script is the Chapter XX five-reel specimen, what permission statement does the book print for it, and how should an agent treat it?
  Chapter XX prints 'Everybody's Girl' as adapted from O. Henry's short story 'Brickdust Row' by A. Van Buren Powell and produced in film form by the Vitagraph Company. The only permission statement is footnote 35: 'Used by permission. Copyright, 1918, by the Vitagraph Company of America. All rights reserved.' It gives no licence terms (scope, term, territory, redistribution). The authors say the printed text is the script in the form accepted for production; footnote 60 says it is the script before it reached production. Treat the script as a RIGHTS HOLD: short excerpts with line numbers only, no bulk reproduction, until curation decides. This row concludes no legal clearance and does not decide the status of the O. Henry story, the film or the Gutenberg wrapper.
• articleWhat audience-driven changes does the printed Kismet scenario record, and do its marginal notes agree with the reasons Baker gives in Chapter X?
  1919 stage practice, one play. Baker says he printed the full Kismet scenario 'chiefly' to show the changes it underwent. In Chapter X he gives two: the love passage of Hajji was moved away from the murder plotting (judged in rehearsal by actor and author to protect audience sympathy), and the torture of Hajji became a blow with the key (the horror was too great 'when acted'). Bracketed marginal notes in the printed scenario (annotator not named) agree on both and add reasons and timing: the scene was split because Hajj 'could not have a love scene' while brooding about the assassination, and the order was altered in rehearsal at an actor's suggestion; the torture was cut 'as too long and too ugly' and altered during rehearsal. Other notes record a scene cut at rehearsal as irrelevant to the story, a scene cut before rehearsal on a friend's suggestion, and a scene enlarged in rehearsal. All of this concerns insiders' judgement in rehearsal, not measured audiences.
• articleWhich of Forster's statements in Ch. VI-VII are general claims and which are his readings of named novels, what does he hedge or exclude, and how do his claims relate (by candidate ID only) to the existing worldbuilding and Forster rows?
  1927 criticism, with a worker's map. Forster presents fantasy and prophecy as one 'fantastic-prophetical axis' for books that the usual apparatus of story, people and plot does not fit (E1, E2), and says that for these lectures the tools were laid down (E4). General claims are few: the extra demand on the reader (E16), fantasy leaving the governing forces of the universe untouched (E14), prophecy as tone of voice (E17), and the contrast of fundamental versus incidental confusion (E15). Most of the chapters' length is reading of named novels, and the practical handling remarks sit inside those readings (see -02, -04). He hedges repeatedly: the approach is 'not critically sound' but his heart refuses to assent (E5), books can only be known by reading them (E8), classification is risky (E7), and he keeps a reservation about prophecy (E9). Compared by ID: his reader-demand view differs from Tolkien's world-side consistency criterion (C3-B175-S37-01); his bounded-departure remark (E14) i...
• articleWhat does the prophetic tone demand of the writer and the reader according to Forster (1927, ch. VII), and what failure modes does he name for novels, critics and readers?
  1927 criticism. Forster says the prophetic aspect demands two qualities of the reader: humility and the suspension of the sense of humour (E1); without humility the reader sees only 'a figure of fun' (E3) and laughter has no critical value (E4). For the critic and writer he asks attention to the novelist's state of mind and actual words, down to the minutiae of style (E6), while neglecting common sense (E7). Prophetic fiction has a recognisable shape: spasmodic realism and the sensation of song (E14), intermittent realism in the ordinary objects (E12), no reflection and no hammering (E15). The costs and failures he names: the furniture of the novel gets broken (E9, E10); philosophising writers such as Hardy give surveys, not sound (E20); Joyce is too workmanlike (E18, E19); Lawrence also preaches and bullies (E21, E22); readers who mock or obey lose the treasure (E23); turning images into symbols or harmonising the incidents kills the work (E24, E25). He ends with a reservation abou...
• articleWhat does Forster (1927, ch. VII) mean by 'prophecy' in a novel, and how does it differ from predicting the future, from preaching and from fantasy?
  1927 criticism. Prophecy is not foretelling the future (E1); it is 'a tone of voice' (E4), an accent in the novelist's voice (E2): the novelist 'proposes to sing' rather than say something about the universe (E3). Which faith or view is implied does not matter; the implication is what signifies (E5, E6). He separates preacher from prophet by two readings: in George Eliot God and the furniture 'are all in the same plane', while in Dostoevsky characters stand for more than themselves yet remain individuals (E9, E10, E11, E12); he says the Karamazov world is not a veil and not an allegory (E13). Prophecy faces unity where fantasy 'glances about' (E18), and Forster can name only four writers for it (E19). He admits the lecture 'promises to be so vague and grandiose' (E7), and gives no checklist for recognising the tone.
• articleWhat does Forster (1927, ch. VI) claim or show about handling a fantastic element so it stays alive inside a novel, separating his general claims from his readings of Flecker's Magic, Zuleika Dobson, Joseph Andrews, The Magic Flute and Ulysses?
  1927 criticism. Forster gives no rule set for making a fantastic element convincing: in Ch. VI the words 'rules', 'plausible' and 'convincing' do not occur and 'consistent' occurs twice (E25). His general claims are that fantasy reaches events but not 'the forces that govern' the universe (E1) and that fantastic novels have an 'improvised air' (E2). The explicit handling remarks sit inside readings of single novels: the true fantasist merges magic and common sense 'by using words that apply to both' (E11); Matson's individual, definite protagonist 'causes the book to grip' (E7); for Zuleika Dobson 'all will depend on the handling' and resting it on one supernatural machine would be 'inept' (E12, E14). The rest is description the worker can read as technique (passengers behaving as if nothing is happening, wish logic escalating by little shocks) that Forster does not label as rules. Failures he names: heavy or thin fantasy from one machine (E14), an unsatisfying ending (E16), fantasy...
• articleWhat does E. M. Forster (Aspects of the Novel, 1927, ch. VI) say fantasy is, what does it ask of the reader, and which devices does he list?
  1927 criticism. Forster defines fantasy by the demand it makes on the reader: it asks us 'to pay something, extra' (E2). The fantasist asks the reader first to accept the book as a whole, then to accept certain things in it that could not occur (E3, E4); some readers grant the first and refuse the second, then stop or read coldly (E5, E6), and he says this is no discredit to them (E8). He says fantasy 'implies the supernatural, but need not express it' (E10; Tristram Shandy has none, E11) and lists devices in four groups: a god, ghost, angel, monkey, monster, midget or witch brought into ordinary life; ordinary people put in no man's land, the future, the past, the earth's interior or the fourth dimension; divisions of personality; parody or adaptation (E12, E13, E14). He calls their number strictly limited and says they do not go stale (E15, E16). This passage gives no rule list for making them convincing (see -02).
• articleWhat is the simplest test of whether a character agent refuses facts that the character could not know, and what numbers have been reported with it?
  Two papers use a multiple-choice test with an explicit refusal option. KBF-QA (arXiv 2606.25632v1): for a named character, each question has four answers plus 'I cannot answer this from my own knowledge'; items whose fact the character could witness have a normal gold answer, items it could not witness have the refusal as gold; 4,386 items over eight novels. CHARM (arXiv 2609.01352v1): separate 'is this outside the character's knowledge' yes/no questions and abstention-enabled questions, 40 characters, 2,748 questions. Reported: retrieve-everything RAG recalled 63.8 to 66.4 and refused only 8.7 to 11.3 on KBF-QA; the visibility-bounded ReverieMem refused 81.2; on CHARM GPT-4o recognised the boundary 91.3 percent of the time but still answered in 72.1 percent of cases.
• articleWhat does an openly licensed worked example look like that turns a short written scene into numbered storyboard panels, with each panel mapped to a line of the scene and a stated reason for the shot?
  The WikiU Film School lesson on Wikiversity (page revision 2146020, 2020-04-29) gives a complete short scene, "Seduced by the Dark Side!" (nine short prose paragraphs, revision 1878977 of Template:Origscript), and one storyboard of it in 14 numbered panels. Each panel carries a transition or move label (Fade In, Dolly In, Pedestal Down, Dolly Left, Cut To), the dialogue line or stage direction it covers, and for panels 1-13 a first-person note saying what the author wants (for example wide lens for emotional distance, 85 mm then 135 mm for warmth). The text is stated CC BY-SA; the panel drawings are separately licensed (mostly CC BY-SA 2.5, some GFDL, one listed public domain). It is a teaching example by the course author: nothing was measured, and the drawings themselves were not inspected here.
• articleWhich events in a narrative text can I treat as established story-world facts, and which kinds of statement should I leave out because they are only believed, hoped, hypothetical, future or narratorial summary?
  LitBank's event layer is a worked, openly readable rule for the 'story-world fact' layer: tag only events asserted as actually occurring (past/present, positive polarity, specific, in the narrative frame); believed, hypothetical, desired, future and generic events and narrator summaries outside the imagined world are not tagged. The paper reports kappa 0.813 on five texts between two co-authors and documents a hard case (narrator addressing the reader). The layer says nothing about who asserts an event or who believes it, so it supplies layer (c) only, and in Persuasion chapter 1 the annotation file shows a reported 'was married' untagged while the narrator's later 'purchased independence' is tagged (observation; reasons not documented).
• articleWhen I annotate a scene, how do I record who asserts or believes each statement and how committed each party is, so that the narrator's statement and a character's belief are not collapsed into one 'fact'?
  FactBank 1.0's guidelines give the most explicit open-text model of source-relative commitment: every event has a default source (the text author, s0), reported or believed content adds a nested source such as 'John according to the author', and each source gets its own value (certain/probable/possible, positive/negative/underspecified). The guidelines' own examples show the author uncommitted while a reported source is certain, and the reverse (author asserts, character ignorant). The scheme is built on newswire, records no separate 'analyst inference' layer (footnote 2 excludes the annotator's own beliefs), and was not applied to fiction by this source; mapping the narrator onto s0 is the analyst's step (synthesis).
• articleWhat does Forster (Aspects of the Novel, 1927, ch. VIII) mean by 'pattern' and by 'rhythm', how does pattern relate to story and plot, and what checks and costs follow for planning a work's overall shape?
  1927 criticism. Forster calls the third aspect after story and plot 'pattern' (borrowed from painting) and, where beauty is not the shape of the whole, 'rhythm' (borrowed from music) (E1, E17). Story appeals to curiosity, plot to intelligence, pattern to the aesthetic sense, 'it causes us to see the book as a whole' (E3, E4); pattern springs mainly from the plot (E9). His two worked cases are hour-glass shapes (Thais, The Ambassadors) and a grand chain (Roman Pictures) (E5, E6, E8, E10). The price of rigid pattern, in his reading of Henry James, is that most of human life is pruned away (E12, E13, E15), and his own verdict is that most readers find it 'beautifully done, but not worth doing' (E16). Rhythm is his alternative: recurrence with variation, like Proust's little phrase, which may be forgotten for long stretches (E18-E22); done badly it hardens into a symbol (E23, E24), and he doubts it can be planned beforehand (E25). A second, whole-symphony rhythm he cannot illustrate fro...
• articleUsing what Forster (1927) says about story, plot, mystery, memory, loose ends and the cost of too much causality, what concrete checks can an agent run on an outline to tell a merely chronological sequence from a causal plot, and what does Forster warn about?
  1927 criticism turned into checks (the checks are this worker's synthesis; Forster offers none by name). From Forster: a time-ordered series invites 'and then?' (E1, E2, E8-E10) while a causal plot invites 'why?', so each link in an outline can be tested for whether it states a cause. A withheld cause is legitimate when it is revealed later and the reader could remember what is needed (E3, E4, E6, E7). Forster also separates modes: a story-teller like Scott may leave ragged ends and need not 'hammer away at cause and effect' (E11-E13), whereas a plot-maker may not leave loose ends (E6, E12). He warns that too much causality drains characters (Hardy, E15-E16), that plot and character trade off (E17, E18), that plots tend to be wound up weakly at the end (E19), and that the Gide passage he reports rejects prearrangement altogether (E21, E22, E25). So the checks below are conditional on the outline's declared mode and have no source-backed pass mark.
• articleWhat distinction does E. M. Forster (Aspects of the Novel, 1927) draw between story and plot, what do the 'king died ... queen died of grief' examples show, and what roles do causality and mystery play?
  1927 criticism. Forster defines a story as 'a narrative of events arranged in their time sequence' and a plot as also a narrative of events, 'the emphasis falling on causality' (E1, E4). His examples use the same two events: 'the queen died' after 'the king died' is a story; adding 'of grief' makes it a plot (E5-E7). A second plot form tells the death first and reveals the grief later; he says this suspends the time-sequence and makes a 'mystery' (E8-E9, E12). The audience question is 'and then?' for a story and 'why?' for a plot (E10); a plot asks the reader for intelligence and memory, and asks the plot-maker to leave no loose ends (E11, E14, E15). Within these chapters this is a definition and a contrast, not a procedure or a measured test.
• articleWhat numbers does Writing the Photoplay (1913, revised 1919) give for scenes per reel, synopsis length, footage for action versus inserts, and leader or letter length, and how do those compare with what the 1916 Sargent manual and the 1915 Zuver lessons are recorded as saying in cycle 3?
  The book gives ranges, not hard caps. A reel is about 1,000 feet and holds 25 to 50 scenes (40 per reel in the five-reel example, scenes per reel "almost doubled" with close-ups); no word count governs a script, footage does; a five-reel story's action takes about 3,800 to just over 4,000 feet, leaving under 1,000 feet for inserts; synopses shrank from about 250 words (earlier) to "as many words as needed", with 6 to 12 typed pages for a feature and 3,000 to 6,000 words in one writer's method. No numeric cap on leaders was found; the stated limit is qualitative. Against Sargent (1916) and Zuver (1915), as published in other cycle-3 rows, the leaders advice agrees in spirit (state the interval, avoid many time jumps, use letters sparingly), but the scene-count figures are not like-for-like. Label: 1913 practice. The pinned Gutenberg text is the Revised Edition (title page "Copyright 1913 / Copyright 1919"; it mentions 1918 releases and "February, 1919" postage), so some passages are ...
• articleHow were leaders (before-the-scene and cut-in) and inserts (letters, telegrams, news items) written into a 1913-era numbered continuity, when did the authors say to use them, and what cautions do they give?
  The authors define a leader (sub-title before a scene), a cut-in (dialogue leader inside a scene) and an insert (letter, telegram, news item shown inside a scene), and give notation: a before-scene leader is written ahead of the numbered scene; a letter is flagged "On screen, letter", given in full, then closed with "Back to scene"; busts and close-ups get their own scene numbers. They say to use inserts only when action cannot make the point, to prefer a letter or news item over a plain leader, to avoid a leader straight after the title, and not to under-use leaders either. Label: 1913 practice. The pinned Gutenberg text is the Revised Edition (title page "Copyright 1913 / Copyright 1919"; it mentions 1918 releases and "February, 1919" postage), so some passages are 1919 revisions and are not 1913 practice. Excerpts drop Gutenberg italic underscores; line numbers are those of the CRLF file as pinned.
• articleWhat parts did a 1913-era photoplay script submission contain (synopsis, cast of characters, scenario/continuity, scene-plot), in what order and form, and what job did each part do for the editor and director?
  Esenwein and Leeds call the whole manuscript the "photoplay script" and say it has three essential parts in this order: the Synopsis, the Cast of Characters, and the Scenario or Continuity of Scenes, plus an optional Scene-Plot on a separate sheet (omitted when a company wants "synopsis only"). The synopsis is the editor's first read and is finalised last; the cast list is a separate division that tags minor characters with scene numbers; the continuity starts on a fresh sheet and numbers every scene. Label: 1913 practice. The pinned Gutenberg text is the Revised Edition (title page "Copyright 1913 / Copyright 1919"; it mentions 1918 releases and "February, 1919" postage), so some passages are 1919 revisions and are not 1913 practice. Excerpts drop Gutenberg italic underscores; line numbers are those of the CRLF file as pinned.

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