Audit written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_13.positive_prose.md`. Full audit text follows.

---

# Positive Prose Audit - Chapter 13

Source audited: `output/chapters/chapter_13.md` (cold read), checked against raw draft `output/drafts/claude/chapter_13.round_01.md`, chapter packet, voice cards, reading guide, mechanical gate (open=0), and Codex local audits.

## 1. Portable paragraphs

`PORTABLE-PARAGRAPH` — "The room did not disappear. [...] That made it worse. It meant the kiss was happening in the same world as everything else." — The three frame sentences contain no noun this book owns; the anti-swoon inversion plus double meaning-caption could run under the midpoint kiss of any self-aware fake-dating novel (an Emily Henry or Christina Lauren midpoint would take them unchanged). The inventory between them — wet rack, windowpane, Odile's roster table — is the book's; the frame is the genre's. — ORDER: Cut "The room did not disappear" and "That made it worse. It meant the kiss was happening in the same world as everything else." Keep the literal inventory and end the paragraph on a concrete item only June would clock (e.g., which rack slot holds their two wet panels), so the same-world fact is enacted rather than announced.

`PORTABLE-PARAGRAPH` — "He did not perform surprise, or joke into her mouth, or turn the room into an audience they owed a shape to." (echoed at "No one clapped. No one made the wrong joke.") — A catalog of avoided romance clichés; narration listing the tropes it isn't doing is itself the most portable move in post-2018 romcom prose, and "an audience they owed a shape to" is abstraction in a scene full of real objects. This negative catalog could caption the cover-kiss of any current fake-dating title unchanged. — ORDER: Replace the catalog with what Theo literally did — the wide right arm and the brush kept off the scarf are already present; extend by one concrete observation (what his free hand did or did not do). At the echo, cut "No one made the wrong joke" and let Mara's "Ruth, Sam, give me one without the brush rag" carry the tact unannotated.

Strongest counter-candidate, passes: "Fine was going onto a flyer. Fine was going into the group thread. Fine was going to sit at the front table with PARK / BRENNAN underneath it and the record of six inches between them." — Anaphoric triple, a polished shape, but every noun is owned by this book (the flyer, the thread, the roster label, the six inches measured by the failed photo), and the escalation is June auditing specific consequences, not generic dread. It cannot be transplanted without bringing the whole scene along.

## 2. Summarized pressure

`SUMMARIZED-PRESSURE` — "A month ago, standing too far from Theo in a picture would have been an annoyance, a bad crop, a reason to tell her friends not to make a story." — Retrospective stakes-explainer at managerial altitude: the narrator compares now to a month ago so the reader is told, not made to feel, that the photo's falseness now costs June something. The scene has already supplied the lived version one sentence earlier — Mara's thumb sliding to the next name, the glass flattening to late-night green. — ORDER: Delete the sentence. If a beat is needed before June moves, spend it inside the scene (the preview still lit in Mara's hand, the distance June would have to cross), not on a then-versus-now gloss.

`SUMMARIZED-PRESSURE` — "June knew it as a place she left every week with paint under her nails and too many reasons to come back." — Pre-explains the `After Class` subject's meaning before the agreement happens; "too many reasons to come back" states June's entire arc as a quotable summary and drains the exchange that follows ("You've never seen it after class." / "You have.") of its discovery. — ORDER: Cut the clause from "and too many reasons" (or the whole June sentence; the Theo sentence about chairs up and jars soaking can stay). Let the dialogue carry the asymmetry — it already does. If June's stake needs a beat, make it one literal thing she has never seen: where the chairs go, what a full rack looks like at ten.

`SUMMARIZED-PRESSURE` — "It was not a fantasy. That was the problem." — The offer's pressure delivered as a two-sentence verdict after the paragraph has already inhabited it (the rolled posters, the mug of dead pens, the spare keys pressed into her palm, the loading dock, the clean wall needing screws by January). The stinger summarizes a dilemma the images just made the reader live. — ORDER: Cut both sentences and let Theo's "Everything okay?" land directly against "screws by January." The cut makes the concealment that follows colder and keeps the close on objects, per the chapter card's no-profundity-close rule.

Strongest counter-candidate, passes: "Until tonight, the eighth Tuesday had been a date at the far edge of a packet [...] Now it had a door, a room of other people's coats, a table with plastic cups, and a label that might put PARK / BRENNAN under a thing they had made together." — Projection rather than scene, but built from particular objects and landed in a voice-card stress action (rinsing a brush she still needs), so the clock is felt in the body of the scene rather than reported over it.

## 3. Polished dialogue

`POLISHED-DIALOGUE` — "I know," Theo said. "I need thirty seconds without asking." — Theo articulates his own growth edge in a finished sentence; his voice card has him least articulate about himself, and the narration then certifies the line ("That was new"). He is too articulate about the exact shape of his dependence. The under-pressure version would withhold the self-analysis: he would simply not ask, and June would hear the not-asking. — ORDER: Have Theo decline the card and stop ("No." — then his brush resuming behind her, a silence June can identify because she now knows his sounds). Attach "That was new" to the behavior, not to a caption he supplies for himself.

`POLISHED-DIALOGUE` — "Do not improve it. Do not punish it for being ordinary. Paint what was trusted to you." — Three stacked aphorisms. Odile's licensed mass is one sentence, sometimes two, and the third imperative is a theme statement of custody, bookending "handed" with "trusted" — catechism, not diagnosis of the room. — ORDER: Cut "Paint what was trusted to you." End her instruction on "Do not punish it for being ordinary." and let "Begin" follow Ben's lowered finger as written.

Counter-candidates, pass:
- "Same room," he said. "Two views. I don't want to explain your half for you." — Borderline composed, but it is a practical proposal in Theo's offer-first register, "your half" is a literal panel fact, the line is his plain-speech floor for the scene, and it withholds everything romantic. Passes.
- "I can hold the photo. [...] Priya wants the layout by Thursday, but I can lie to Priya. Badly." — The option list is Mara's documented over-hosting under stress; the joke lands on herself, and the offer transfers real control of the photo to June rather than smoothing past her. Passes.
- "Top rack," Priya repeated, and carried June's gray water to the sink with her own. / "Mm." — Post-kiss tact routed entirely through logistics and a grunt; nothing pre-resolved, nothing therapeutic. Passes.
- "Than when you liked it." — Odile at her sanctioned economy; the diagnosis targets the painter, not the sentence. Passes.

## 4. Figurative where literal

`FIGURATIVE-WHERE-LITERAL` — "A boy using the surface the world had left under his pen." and, two paragraphs later, "because nothing in that kitchen had the courtesy to stay out of anything else" — Twin pathos captions on the chicken-thigh ghost. The literal facts (reversed ochre numerals, eighty-nine cents a pound, the cheap paper nap, the dry pen) have already made the poverty legible; both personifications italicize a meaning the reader holds. — ORDER: End the first passage on "Eighty-nine cents a pound." In the second, end on the skipped places and the dry pen; the dinner price entering the drawing needs no courtesy clause.

`FIGURATIVE-WHERE-LITERAL` — "June looked at the room because the room had been looking back all evening" — Personification installed to launch a list that is already exact (paired easels, sink, tape scars on the shelf, windows black with work-lamp reflections). The back-to-back easels have enacted the room's pressure all chapter; the room does not need eyes. — ORDER: "June looked at the room." plus the existing list; cut the looking-back clause.

Counter-candidates, pass:
- "secondhand daylight at the bottom of four stories" — Figurative, but it is a painter naming a value while mixing it (ultramarine, umber, too much water); June's optical competence, not decoration. Passes.
- "It arrived with the exact caution of a borrowed frame." — Comparison drawn from Theo's working life, clarifying the custody and risk of the touch rather than decorating it. Passes; note "exact" is a June-register word recurring nearby ("the exact caution," "she knew exactly," "still exact enough") — watch density at next touch.
- "The message did not make Philadelphia larger. It made it printed: board, yes, formal, call tomorrow." — A not-X-but-Y shape, but "printed" is a precise idea (the offer becoming typographic, official) cashed immediately in the message's actual words. Passes.

Chapter verdict: `LLM-CLEAN-FOUND` — 9 orders above (2 portable, 3 summarized-pressure, 2 polished-dialogue, 2 figurative-where-literal). The chapter's literal studio work (outlet plate, DECORATOR'S WHITE tape, clothespin spacing, the dropped brush bristles-down) is the standard the flagged passages fail against; the orders are cuts and substitutions, not rewrites.
