# Audit: Dialogue Doctor — Chapter 10

id: dialogue_doctor | owner: claude | tier: core
chapter: `output/chapters/chapter_10.md` | manifest: ch10 scene 01, lines 2–143, 46 dialogue lines — one scene block required
provenance consulted: `output/drafts/claude/chapter_10.round_01.md`, codex initial assessment, codex claude-tic audit, mechanical gate report (open=0; WATCH `legacy-uncontracted-casual-dialogue` ×9)

Stance: skeptical professional edit. Read cold, attributions covered, every exchange run against failure modes 1–7, the fake-sharp cut-list, rule 9 in both directions, voice cards, and the reading guide's binding rules (§2 plain-speech floor, §2/§6 zero-tolerance dialogue diagnosis).

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SCENE 01 / Odile's studio, Week 4 class through lock-up (lines 2–143):

- `CLEAN — voice convergence — covered attributions across the assignment Q&A, the "two" exchange, the critique rail, and the sink exchange; speakers stay sortable: Odile uncontracted imperatives, June compressed corrections with craft nouns, Theo offers-then-questions, Luis two-word placement diagnosis, Mara social warmth; strongest counter-candidate: "You make it look like she could set the brush down whenever she wants" (Theo, line 117) — an optical observation in June's register, not Theo's domestic one — it survives convergence because the scene builds the license explicitly: he has just spent an hour painting her grip and June has just told him "You saw it." (Its separate referent defect is flagged under mode 7.) Second candidate: Luis's "Third easel. The screw." (line 91) vs. Theo's terseness — survives; Theo never speaks in two-word fragments anywhere in the chapter, and Luis's fragment is placement diagnosis per his card.`

- `CLEAN — monotone Q/A rhythm — tested the "two" exchange (lines 47–59), the critique exchange (lines 95–99), and the sink exchange (lines 105–135); line lengths and weights vary from one word ("Theo.") to multi-clause offers, and statements outnumber questions; strongest counter-candidate: "Did you sit?" / "Mostly not." / "Then you posed all evening." (Odile/Theo, lines 95–99) — a short symmetrical volley — survives because the weights are unequal: Odile's question is load-gathering, Theo's answer is evasive-honest per his card, and her two-beat reply breaks the meter instead of continuing it.`

- `CLEAN — missing interiority — Theo's mind stays on during every exchange: "Which was generous, since the true number was zero" (line 45), "which he took for patience" (line 71), "He decided she'd given up and gone to memory, and felt sorry about it" (line 81), the cap-on-the-tube recognition mid-conversation (line 113); strongest counter-candidate: the stretch from June's exit through Odile's "Lock up... Do not improve anything" (lines 135–137), where two loaded lines pass without registered reaction — survives because the closing section answers both materially rather than narratively: he attempts the card and fails (lines 139–141), and he tightens the wing nut anyway (line 143), which is the response to "Do not improve anything" rendered as action. Also tested the rule-9 explain-twice direction: "understood that everyone in the room had recognized them faster than he had" (line 101) was the strongest candidate for captioning what Luis, Mara, and Odile just said — it survives narrowly because "faster than he had" adds the lag-cost (his card's interiority rhythm is delayed recognition) and converts immediately into object action (the tape roll to the table).`

- `CLEAN — questions-as-statements — every question in the scene is genuine and gets answered: "Can Ben hold his coffee?" (Priya, line 31), "What's Theo's?" (Mara, line 41), "Is that how I look?" (Theo, line 113), "Did you sit?" (Odile, line 95); strongest counter-candidate: "Did you sit?" — Odile already knows the answer and uses it — survives because it is a real question with a real answer she needs on the record before the diagnosis, and her diagnosis targets the person ("Then you posed all evening"), which is her card's licensed move, not manufactured portent.`

- `CLEAN — fake-McCarthy minimalism — clipped runs are anchored: "Brennan." / "It was tipping." / "Sit down," Odile said. (lines 75–79) carries attribution on the third beat and the starkness is Odile's earned register, not performance; strongest counter-candidate: June's one-word "Theo." (line 55) — survives because the surrounding beats ("He looked at his hands, which were holding a roll of masking tape he had no memory of picking up") keep the reader oriented and the clip is doing interruption work her card licenses.`

- `CLEAN — jargon-trading without translation — craft terms in dialogue are weighed in place: "I can cut glassine for yours. If it's riding in the tote it'll pick up everything in there." (Theo, line 121) supplies the purpose in the next breath; "I could rewax the flat-file runners. The second drawer's been catching." (line 53) translates itself; ferrule/filbert live in narration with physical context; strongest counter-candidate: "glassine" — survives for the reason quoted.`

- `FAIL — attribution opacity (referent collapse, integration regression) — "You make it look like she could set the brush down whenever she wants." / "She can," June said. "That's the arrangement." (Theo and June, sink, lines 117–119) — the reader cannot resolve "she." Theo is addressing June ("You make it look like...") about a grip that is June's own; no speaker calls their addressee "she," so the line's deixis is broken and June answering "She can" about herself compounds it into third-person self-reference. This is a regression introduced in integration: the raw draft (round_01 lines 117–119) read "You make it look like the brush could leave whenever it wants." / "It can," she said. — which parses. The broken deixis is also evidence the revised line is composed rather than speakable (cut-list: "lines that sound quotable but not speakable").`

- `FAIL — FAKE-SHARP (two instances) —`
  `(a) "It is the one with your name on it," she said. "It just doesn't need the label." (June, line 135) — split verdict, per evidence. The first sentence survives and is strong June: it is a literal, object-grounded dry correction — the Week Three portrait with "his name on the back in her square capitals" is planted at line 9 and re-invoked by Theo himself at line 133, so her line is indexical to a real object, in her card's correction register, and the full form "It is" carries legitimate contrastive stress (rule 4 emphasis license). The tag sentence fails: "It just doesn't need the label" explains the wit after it has landed, converts a true correction into an aphorism about labels, and winks at the fake-couple "label" theme on top — rule 8 ("a line can be informal, contracted, character-specific, and still read as if it was workshopped") and the cut-list's compact-aphorism bullet. The exchange is better — and harder — ending on the unexplained correction.`
  `(b) "That's the arrangement." (June, line 119) — even with the mode-7 referent repaired, this tag turns a complete answer ("It can") into a polished maxim encoding her quit-clause, delivered cool at a moment her card says she compresses or jokes, not epigrammatizes — rule 7 ("not every line should be... a quotable aphorism") plus the global voice rule that Odile is the only character licensed for high-density memorable lines; June already lands "It was what you gave me" (line 111), "It's how you were tonight" (line 115), "I painted it because it was true and I had an hour" (line 131), and the name-on-it correction (line 135) in this one exchange. The density survives only if the pure-tag lines go. Counter-candidates checked and passed: "You gave me plenty. You just weren't at your easel for any of it." (line 107) — balanced but information-bearing, it tells Theo what she painted; "I didn't paint it to fix you... because it was true and I had an hour" (line 131) — survives on the deflating tag "and I had an hour," which is the friction rule 8 asks for; "The left hand's underdone. In mine. Don't tell anyone." (line 135) — survives as card-true self-aimed exit.`

- `CLEAN — INTERIORITY-OVERCORRECTION — the scene is not over-stripped: Theo's relationship to every exchange is on the page (the zero behind "deciding between two," the felt-sorry misread at line 81, the cap-on-the-tube likeness at line 113); strongest counter-candidate: June's exit and Odile's "Lock up" landing in silence (lines 135–137) — survives, as shown under mode 3, because the final section is the reaction, rendered through the failed attempt at the card and the disobeyed instruction.`

- `FAIL — DIALOGUE DIAGNOSIS (reading guide §2/§6, zero tolerance; two instances, both narration) —`
  `(a) "...and did not comment on them, which from Odile was a comment." (line 17) — narration assigns communicative weight to her silence; this captions the conversation instead of showing what Theo does with what he (didn't) hear. Same structure as the banned exemplar "that had the rhythm of a partial answer." Zero tolerance admits no comic-beat exception.`
  `(b) "Mara asked, friendly, ordinary, the way you ask a couple a question one of them should be able to answer for the other." (line 41) — "friendly, ordinary" is allowable manner attribution, but the trailing clause characterizes the question's social shape and delivery — a caption on the exchange. The presumption it explains is already dramatized one line later by June answering for him; the caption is redundant as well as banned.`
  `Checked and passed: "Which was generous, since the true number was zero" (line 45) — rates the social act of covering, not her language, and converts into Theo's reckoning with the lie; "said nothing, which he took for patience" (line 71) — reads the person, not the sentence; Odile's "That is the entire comment" (line 85) — procedure of her own critique, targets the work/person per her card, consistent with the codex tic audit's clearance.`

FOCUSED CHECKS (per assignment):

1. **Week 4 directness, Theo/June.** Confirmed direct without maxim-polish: "I don't know," he said. "I went through the whole week on the train this morning and it's all maintenance." (line 57) — plain admission with spoken-texture friction ("on the train this morning"), squarely inside his card's allowed plainness. "It was what you gave me." (line 111) — survives the cut-list because it is strictly indexical to that evening's evidence, a correction not an aphorism; it answers "That wasn't a pose" as text, satisfying the followability test. "Theo. You don't have to do anything about it." (line 127) — the plain-speech floor working as designed; he answers "I know" while doing the thing anyway, which is the scene's pressure rendered in action. None of these three is flagged. The maxim drift in this exchange is confined to the two FAKE-SHARP tags above.
2. **Odile oracle drift.** None found. Tested her full line set: "It is always loose. It is how I learn things about people." (line 17) — knowing, but material (the loose easel as instrument), inside the pre-reveal guardrail that clues stay logistical; "Folded hands are rest. Rest is not a love." (line 29) — epigram-shaped but operational: it tells the class what disqualifies a subject; "Photographs are cheating. Mime is worse." — practical rule; "Then you posed all evening. You just didn't know it." (line 99) — insult-as-diagnosis targeting the person, her licensed move; "Lock up. Do not improve anything." (line 137) — imperative doubling as diagnosis, card-true. Economy and practicality hold throughout; she never prophesies.
3. **"It is the one with your name on it."** Decided with evidence under FAKE-SHARP (a): the line itself is keepable June; the appended "It just doesn't need the label." is the workshopped half and must go.
4. **Uncontracted-line sweep** (gate: 9 WATCH hits). Every full form belongs to Odile's formal-casual register ("You do not work here on Tuesdays," "It is always loose," "If it is, I am sorry for both of you," "You are standing in her light," "Do not improve anything") — all valid under her card's cutting-precisely license — except June's "It is the one with your name on it" (line 135), which is valid contrastive emphasis under rule 4 (the contraction would destroy the correction's stress). No stiffness found in Theo, Mara, Priya, Luis, or June elsewhere; all default-contract correctly ("That's a chore," "I'll go first," "He's deciding between two").

REVISION ORDERS:

1. **(mode 7, lines 117–119)** Replace "You make it look like she could set the brush down whenever she wants." / "She can," June said. with referent-sound speech. The raw draft's logic is the executable template: Theo observes the grip itself — e.g., restore "You make it look like the brush could leave whenever it wants." — and June answers "It can." Do not retain any third-person "she" for a person being directly addressed.
2. **(FAKE-SHARP b, line 119)** After repairing order 1, cut "That's the arrangement." outright or replace it with friction per June's card — a self-aimed deflection or a pivot into craft/logistics ("It can," then she reaches for the tote, or undercuts herself). The quit-clause subtext must survive as grip and exit behavior, not as a maxim.
3. **(FAKE-SHARP a, line 135)** End June's line at "It is the one with your name on it." Delete "It just doesn't need the label." Let her shoulder the tote and go straight to "The left hand's underdone. In mine. Don't tell anyone." — the existing exit already supplies the deflating friction the cut tag was faking.
4. **(dialogue diagnosis a, line 17)** Delete "and did not comment on them, which from Odile was a comment." Render the noticing as action Theo does something with — e.g., she looks at the jars a beat longer than the cards deserve and deals; Theo registers what the look costs him, not what her silence "says."
5. **(dialogue diagnosis b, line 41)** Keep "Mara asked, friendly, ordinary" at most; delete "the way you ask a couple a question one of them should be able to answer for the other." The presumption is already dramatized by the beat that follows — Theo's missing answer and June's "He's deciding between two." No caption needed.

OVERALL: BLOCKING (5 findings)

Resolution routing: per audit contract, these orders go to the opposing model lane for rewrite. Orders 1–3 are localized to the sink exchange (lines 105–135); orders 4–5 are single-clause narration deletions. None disturbs the scene engine the codex assessment accepted, and order 1 is a restoration of raw-draft logic the integration broke.
