OVERALL: CLEAN

The completed current-text audit (written to `output/critiques/claude/chapter_24.dialogue_doctor.md`):

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# Audit: Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 24: First Snow (current text)

id: dialogue_doctor | chapter: 24 | owner: claude | tier: core

Cold read of `output/chapters/chapter_24.md` as it currently stands, against binding `checks/audits/dialogue_doctor.md`, the READING_GUIDE voice rules (plain-speech floor §2, zero-tolerance dialogue-diagnosis §2/§6, motif/tic caps), and the verbatim voice cards. Doctor-required scenes per `dialogue_scene_manifest`: **02, 03, 04, 07, 08**. Non-required (0–1 quoted utterances; confirmed no substantial dialogue leaks a failure): 01 (Sam's "Air in the east riser," one texture line), 05 (Mara's dish farewell, self-caught warmth), 06 (silent portrait-turning — no dialogue). Findings are BLOCKING and route to an opposing-model rewrite; none are raised.

Per scene: failure modes 1–7, then FAKE-SHARP, INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION, and DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS (this book's zero-tolerance rule; the chapter's only two prior findings were both here), then a voice-card compliance line. Each CLEAN quotes the strongest line I could turn against it and states why it survives. The nearest edges are named so a later warmth or line edit cannot tip them over silently.

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### SCENE 02 — north wall, the reading begins; Sam offers to fix the wall-lean, Theo refuses (ll. 17–31)

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE — CLEAN. Sam extends a concrete installer's remedy ("I've got a level in the car. Two minutes."); Theo refuses in three words and drops it ("It's meant to lean,"). Opposite intents, opposite masses. Counter-candidate: two terse working men in one register — survives; Sam itemizes a fix, Theo declines one, and June brackets each with a different read.
2. MONOTONE Q/A — CLEAN. Offer → refusal → non-verbal file ("Huh"); no matched call-and-response, turns unequal in length and weight. Counter-candidate: Sam's two-beat turn vs. Theo's one-liner — survives (no volley).
3. MISSING INTERIORITY — CLEAN. June reads both men live: "an installer's reflex twitching under the observation"; "the tone of a man filing something away." Counter-candidate: Theo's refusal carries no gloss of its own — survives; June frames it via the sermon he declines ("He'd have built Sam an explanation a month ago… the sermon").
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS — CLEAN. No questions in the scene; nothing disguised as portent.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY — CLEAN. "It's meant to lean," is clipped but carded (Theo's suppressed-explainer arc) and interiority-framed; "Huh" is tagged with a read, not left bare. Counter-candidate: "Huh" — survives (weighted by "the tone of a man filing something away").
6. JARGON-TRADING — CLEAN. "a lean" / "a level" self-weigh in an installer's mouth; "pentimento" sits in June's head, glossed ("the record of getting a thing wrong on purpose"), never traded in dialogue. Counter-candidate: "pentimento" — survives (translated in narration, not spoken).
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY — CLEAN. Two speakers, both tagged; no ambiguity.
- FAKE-SHARP — CLEAN, at edge. "It's meant to lean," is the chapter's most thesis-adjacent short line (the picture records error on purpose), but it is speakable, responsive to Sam's exact offer, and the prose has already shown the lean ("the top corner running a degree off true where his drawing had gotten ahead of his looking"), so the line refuses rather than announces. Counter-candidate: "It's meant to lean," — survives; a plain refusal, not a polished aphorism, and Theo pointedly declines the aphorism ("the sermon") the moment invites.
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION — CLEAN. Not over-stripped; June annotates every beat, and interiority reacts (reads the men) rather than restating their lines.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS — CLEAN. No line rates another's phrasing/rhythm/delivery. Counter-candidate: "the sermon" (l. 29) — survives; it names the speech-act Theo habitually performs and here declines (his behavior as un-given content), not a caption on the line he delivers; the Round-1 sufficiency verb ("let four words carry it") is gone.
- VOICE-CARD — Sam and Theo default-contract ("You've got," "I've got," "It's"); no stiff forms, no never-says. Theo's card wants exactly this: the explanation/usefulness reflex suppressed into a jar he doesn't need to fill.

REVISION ORDERS: none.

### SCENE 03 — urn and coffee table; Mara, Luis, Priya, Ruth, June (ll. 35–57)

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE — CLEAN. Five separable registers: June dry-exact ("Twice. Once for no reason. Here."), Mara routing ("Luis, put it over by the--"), Luis one word ("There,"), Priya directive-care ("You want that,"), Ruth minimal-editorial ("Two underpaintings,"). Counter-candidate: Priya's "She got the light off the pot right, look. It's carrying the picture." brushes June's name-the-good-in-the-work turf — survives; it is lay appreciation with Priya's managing "look," carrying none of June's technical diction (edge/value/ground).
2. MONOTONE Q/A — CLEAN. Placements and declaratives; the one reveal beat ("You didn't start this together." / "No… We didn't.") is a single exchange, not a volley.
3. MISSING INTERIORITY — CLEAN. "June had been counting on that"; she reads Ruth "stop being a person in a room and turn into a person in front of a picture." Counter-candidate: Luis's placement gets no spoken gloss — survives; June reads its meaning ("He'd put the food where the traffic was and told the room he'd done it").
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS — CLEAN. "You want that," is an imposed statement (Priya deciding the want), not a portent-question; Ruth's read is flat declaration.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY — CLEAN. Luis's "There," is terse but carded and interiority-surrounded; nothing performs starkness.
6. JARGON-TRADING — CLEAN. "underpaintings," "the split," "checking the foot" anchor to the visible panel/dish; "as potters' friends learn to do" glosses the craft gesture.
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY — CLEAN. Five bodies, each utterance tagged or unmistakable; the Mara→Luis handoff keeps its agent explicit.
- FAKE-SHARP — CLEAN, at Ruth's one-line ceiling. Ruth's appearance carries one editorial-sharp verdict ("It's the best thing on the wall,") plus one plain perceptive statement ("You didn't start this together."), which the style bible caps at one sharp line per appearance — the accounting holds because the second is bare truth, no editorial wit, and the plain-speech floor wants it. Counter-candidate: "You didn't start this together." — survives; six plain words, no metaphor, met by June's sanctioned direct beat ("No… We didn't.").
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION — CLEAN. Not over-stripped; June's mind is continuous. The one composed touch ("a different and more dangerous thing") is her carded read of a person reading a picture, anchored to her, not narrator performance.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS — CLEAN. No manner/rhythm caption; l. 45 (former F1) reads clean: "'You want that,' she said. June took it. It had too much milk." Counter-candidates: "told the room he'd done it" (l. 43) and "said the one thing, low and only for the three feet around them" (l. 51) — both survive; the first names the illocutionary effect of Luis's word (June's interpretation, not a phrasing-rating), the second is volume ("low") plus content-count ("the one thing"), not a delivery grade.
- VOICE-CARD — All contract by default; no never-says (Priya's "We're looking again in April" is relationship-pacing, not a polished romance line; Mara stays off marriage-pronouncements). Ruth honors "one sharp line per appearance."

REVISION ORDERS: none.

### SCENE 04 — back wall; June and Theo debrief the read (ll. 61–75)

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE — CLEAN. June compresses ("Practice."); Theo expands and confesses ("I've been carrying paragraphs around in my pocket all night… It's exhausting."). Blind-POV holds — clipped-dry vs. logistical-rueful.
2. MONOTONE Q/A — CLEAN. Two prompt→answer pairs plus a June cap, masses uneven (her prompts short, his answers long); couple's-aftermath talk, which the reading guide sanctions for circling. Counter-candidate: "How's it feel to get caught." → answer — survives; not a matched-length volley.
3. MISSING INTERIORITY — CLEAN. "She appreciated the pause, because the first answer was ready and he let it go past"; "He didn't reach for the rest."
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS — CLEAN. "How's it feel to get caught." is a flattened real question (June wants and gets the answer), not a disguised position.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY — CLEAN. "She won't--" is natural interruption (June cuts in), attribution intact; no performed clipping.
6. JARGON-TRADING — CLEAN. "the rest," "the corner," "the paragraph" are glossed by June's interiority and the prior scene.
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY — CLEAN. Two speakers, clear throughout.
- FAKE-SHARP — CLEAN, at the chapter's sharpest edge (named). June's "Worse for you, better for the party." caps Theo's vulnerable "I don't know how you've done it your entire life." with a composed antithesis — the single most workshoppable line in the chapter. It survives narrowly: June answers sincerely first ("Practice." / "And I say mine to myself later."), satisfying the plain-speech floor, so the quip is her carded "one clean observation plus a deflecting tag," not a wall; it is speakable and context-bound (means nothing outside the paragraphs-you-don't-say exchange); and the comp register licenses spark *after* a sincere answer. WATCH: if the sincere admission before it were cut, the line reverts to a zinger arriving where June should be quiet (cut-list bullet 5).
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION — CLEAN. Not over-stripped; l. 69 explains the withheld "rest" without doubling the dialogue.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS — CLEAN. Counter-candidate: "the first answer was ready and he let it go past" (l. 69) — survives; it describes the availability of an answer Theo withholds (restraint), not the wording of what he says. Theo's "I had the paragraph loaded" / "carrying paragraphs around in my pocket" is a character's comic self-image about his *own* habit (licensed, dialogue, self-directed), not narration rating another's speech.
- VOICE-CARD — June default-contracts; deflection-by-joke is carded and the plain admission ("I say mine to myself later") is present. Theo default-contracts ("we didn't," "I don't know"); no art-oracle/sweeping claim; the "paragraph" self-image is his one licensed comic figure.

REVISION ORDERS: none.

### SCENE 07 — flat files; Odile and June, the night-one ledger (ll. 113–133)

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE — CLEAN. Odile imperative/deflecting ("He was handy." / "I'm retiring, not dead."); June flat accusation then plain claim ("You knew." / "It wasn't yours to run."). Opposite masses; Odile licensed dense, June plainer.
2. MONOTONE Q/A — CLEAN. Short accusations vs. Odile's longer parry (the label story, the "I ran a class" justification); not a matched volley.
3. MISSING INTERIORITY — CLEAN. June drives: "She was good at taking a made thing apart for the order it got made in"; "The shame came up fast enough that she could have torn the page for that alone."
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS — CLEAN. "You knew." / "You ran all of it to see if we would." are plain accusations answered plainly.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY — CLEAN. "He's my--" → "He was handy," is earned self-interruption guarding the nephew secret; requirement met (no reveal even with the door shut).
6. JARGON-TRADING — CLEAN. "the class ledger," "Last slot," "corrected my label" are shown on the flat file or re-glossed ("Winter Kitchen and the Blue Stove, hung backward, and a stranger fixed it").
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY — CLEAN. Two speakers, clear.
- FAKE-SHARP — CLEAN. Odile at her sanctioned high-density ceiling and held wrong. "I'm retiring, not dead." is quotable but carded (dry economy) and delivered by a character the text refuses to absolve — June asserts "It wasn't yours to run," Odile concedes "No… It wasn't." Counter-candidate: June's "It worked, and I got a life out of it, and it still wasn't yours to run." — a composed tricolon, but the sanctioned earned-stay/plain-speech direct beat (§2, §8), delivered without a quip, its repetition carded emphasis. Survives.
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION — CLEAN. Dense, not dark; June's take-it-apart cognition is character-anchored and reacts to the reveal (the shame) rather than restating Odile's lines.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS — CLEAN. Strongest counter-candidate in the chapter: "two words with nothing after them" (l. 131). Survives — it sizes the *scale* of Odile's concession (paralleling the cleared "two words at an urn," l. 57), carries no manner/craft rating (the Round-1 "flat" is gone) and no sufficiency verb, and June immediately weighs it ("more than Odile gave most people and less than the thing was worth") rather than grading how it was said. Second counter-candidate: "she had put the proof on a page instead of in a sentence" (l. 129) — survives as a channel/method contrast (wrote it vs. said it), not a phrasing-rating.
- VOICE-CARD — Odile's contractions read dismissive (carded); her precise cut carries no contraction ("You corrected my label with your coat still on"); no oracle monologue, no "I only wanted what was best" (she owns selfish curiosity: "I'm retiring, not dead"); pre-reveal guardrail intact — she never says the rule is elastic; disclosure is the page, not a thesis about categories. June default-contracts; no therapy-speak.

REVISION ORDERS: none.

### SCENE 08 — studio to the corner of Orchard; portrait handback, snow, goodbye (ll. 137–175)

1. VOICE CONVERGENCE — CLEAN. June edged-directive-painterly ("Paint another one where I'm facing the right way and I'll think about it."); Theo plain-logistical-self-correcting ("To the corner," / "I'm not carrying anything."). Blind-POV holds.
2. MONOTONE Q/A — CLEAN. Statements and a functional weather beat ("It won't stick." / "I know.") — sanctioned ordinary-talk, no volley.
3. MISSING INTERIORITY — CLEAN. "she watched it cost him and watched him pay it, and she liked him so much in that second it was faintly annoying"; the strap-catch is fully focalized.
4. QUESTIONS-AS-STATEMENTS — CLEAN. None present.
5. FAKE-McCARTHY — CLEAN. "Okay," and "Right," are minimal but each sits inside a fully interiorized beat (June watching him not-ask; his hand dropping from the strap); earned, not performed.
6. JARGON-TRADING — CLEAN. No untranslated world-terms in dialogue.
7. ATTRIBUTION OPACITY — CLEAN. Two speakers plus Odile's exit line; clear.
- FAKE-SHARP — CLEAN, at edge, on both flagged exchanges. **Portrait handback:** "Don't hand me the thing you hid and call it mine." is edged and slightly epigrammatic, but survives — it is wound-fired (the pity-misread; "the stockroom word still not gone"), directly rebuts Theo's exact prior word ("It's yours"), concrete (the hidden study), and absorbed without a comeback ("Theo's mouth changed. He did not defend it."), so it triggers no banter volley, and the narration marks it as an edge that leaked, not a triumph. "Paint another one where I'm facing the right way and I'll think about it." is her carded warning-as-condition in painter's terms (facing the right way = the turned-away pose), speakable and concrete. **Goodbye:** the echo "You're not carrying anything." answering "I'm not carrying anything." is a repetition-with-pronoun-turn, but it does not resolve the beat — his hand relapses toward the strap between echo and "Right," and June reclaims her own load next line ("She shifted the jar… hooked the portfolio into the crook of the same arm"); the echo is setup for bodily friction, not a clean button. Neither exchange lapses into tidy couple-therapy register: both stay in concrete object-terms (the study, hiding, carrying, the strap), and the pressure is character-distinct (June's wound-edge vs. Theo's absorption; Theo's usefulness-reflex vs. June's carry-my-own-load). Counter-candidate: Theo's "It's the only thing in this building that is." — survives; grounded in the established fact that everything else is Odile's.
- INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION — CLEAN. Not over-stripped; the arc is carried by interiority + self-correcting action, and the prior round's arc-labels are gone.
- DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS — CLEAN. Counter-candidate: "the answer she could watch him not reaching for" (l. 143) — survives as a restraint-image (an answer Theo withholds), not a rating of a delivered line; "heard it, the old reflex" (l. 165) is Theo catching his *own* line, self-directed.
- VOICE-CARD — June default-contracts; the jab is concrete, not therapy-speak; the care-warning is dressed as a dry condition (carded). Theo default-contracts, goes plain at the goodbye (carded "goes very plain when he finally stops hiding"), no sweeping claim; "I'm not carrying anything" is his own reflex named in logistical terms — his register exactly.

REVISION ORDERS: none.

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## Current-text focus checks

- **Newly repaired portrait exchange (ll. 141–153) — character-distinct, not couple-therapy.** "Don't hand me the thing you hid and call it mine." / "Paint another one where I'm facing the right way and I'll think about it." stay in concrete object-terms and fire from June's specific wound (pity-misread) against Theo's specific reflex (hiding-as-protection); Theo absorbs without a symmetric processing-speech ("He did not defend it."). No shared therapy register. CLEAN.
- **Final goodbye (ll. 165–171) — echo undercut by friction.** "I'm not carrying anything." / "You're not carrying anything." / "Right." is not a tidy call-echo-confirm: the strap relapse is interposed and June physically reclaims her load, so the beat resolves on bodily friction, not the echo. Character-distinct (Theo's usefulness-trap vs. June's self-carry). CLEAN.
- **No public confession / nephew reveal / found-family slogan.** The only disclosure is Ruth's private read, held to "two words at an urn," "low and only for the three feet around them"; Odile declines the nephew word even with the door shut ("He's my--" → "He was handy,"); no line declares the cohort a family or states a togetherness-thesis — cohort warmth is carried by action (the dish, the flyer, logging the work) and June's interiority. CLEAN.
- **Speakers distinguishable blind.** Ruth (minimal-editorial), Priya (directive-care + managing "look"), Mara (warm dish-logic), Odile (cutting economy), Theo (logistical self-correction), June (dry painterly edge) each hold a separable register with attributions covered. Closest brush: Priya's "She got the light off the pot right, look" against June's name-the-good move — separates on Priya's lay (non-technical) diction and managing tic. **Ben has no spoken line in the chapter** (characterization is action/narration — "For Ben, practically skywriting"), so voice-distinguishability is not testable for him and cannot fail; noted, not flagged.
- **Comeback rhythms / delivery captions / economy captions / thesis-stating dialogue.** The one echo (goodbye) is undercut by friction; no narration rates phrasing/rhythm/delivery (repaired sites stay clean; "low," "the one thing," "ready," "not reaching for," "instead of in a sentence" survive as volume/count/availability/method); the two count-phrasings ("two words at an urn," "two words with nothing after them") size disclosure-scale, not craft-economy; the thesis-adjacent lines ("They'd have been mine," "I'm not carrying anything," "It's meant to lean") are sanctioned plain-speech/earned-stay direct beats, each complicated or grounded by action rather than merely restating what the prose already showed. The "load-bearing" ban is not tripped (no occurrence).

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## CHAPTER VERDICT

**OVERALL: CLEAN**

Every required scene (02, 03, 04, 07, 08) is all-CLEAN across failure modes 1–7, FAKE-SHARP, INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION, and the book's zero-tolerance DIALOGUE-DIAGNOSIS, with the strongest counter-candidate quoted and defeated in each. The plain-speech floor is met in every scene (each principal lands at least one direct, unguarded line), the followability test holds (each exchange states plainly what each party wanted, learned, or refused), contraction and never-says policies are honored per card, and the three flagged risk points — the portrait handback, the goodbye echo, and the public showcase — clear on character-distinct pressure and concrete register rather than tidy couple-therapy language, public confession, nephew reveal, or slogan. The nearest edges (June's "Worse for you, better for the party."; her "Don't hand me the thing you hid and call it mine."; the "You're not carrying anything." echo; the "two words with nothing after them" count) are named so a later warmth or line edit does not tip them over, but on the current text each sits inside its speaker's carded license and is rescued by a preceding sincere admission, a wound-mark, interposed friction, or scale-sizing rather than manner-rating. No BLOCKING findings.
