# Positive Prose Audit — Chapter 15: Keys Elsewhere

Stance: skeptical cold read against the *Eight Tuesdays* register (warm, precise, lightly comic; June optical/exact/self-aimed; feelings through object and action before naming; no thesis lines, no brochure prose, no self-help closer). The codex tic audit explicitly deferred two narrator-as-philosopher passages (raw lines 73 and 87) to this pass; both are adjudicated below. Verdict format per `positive_prose_audit.md`.

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## 1. Which paragraphs feel portable to another novel?

PORTABLE-PARAGRAPH — "It was all true. None of it was wrong. The whole thing was good. [...] She'd prepared for an offer she could find the flaw in. The flaw wasn't in the offer." — This is the smooth offer-choice epigram the chapter card warned against ("revelation... not a thesis line"): a rhythmic triplet plus a balanced reversal that states the "good but not right / the flaw is me" thesis in prose that could close the offer chapter of any competent contemporary romance; the deferred raw-line-87 risk survived integration nearly intact. — ORDER: Keep the punch-list reread (that part is June). Cut the triplet to one plain clause and delete the "flaw" epigram; the realization must stay inside the object — e.g., she goes down the page looking for the line to cross out and there isn't one, and the chapter moves on without naming what that means.

PORTABLE-PARAGRAPH — "not because she was hiding it but because that was how the jacket landed, and if she moved it now she'd be admitting she'd noticed." — The props (umber cuff, jacket) are owned, but the triple-decker denial scaffolding ("not because X but because Y, and fixing it would admit Z") is the generic self-aware-narrator irony of the genre, and it is the fourth use of the told-herself/denial device in three pages ("She told herself that was about weight distribution"; "which was not yet an accomplishment"; later "had been melodramatic and the slip was just paper"). June's voice card licenses self-correction "sparingly; not every observation becomes a dry diagnosis"; this is saturation. — ORDER: Keep the weight-distribution beat (best of the family) and the "melodramatic" reversal (it pays off the first). For the jacket, let action stand alone: the jacket lands over the chair, cuff in. No because-clauses.

PORTABLE-PARAGRAPH — "Her own face in it was doing the thing she'd been trying to caption since Mara sent it: not surprised. That was the trouble with it. Surprised she could have explained." — The flyer-photo beat avoids stock interruption mechanics (print specs, no swoon), but it lands on a pre-resolved inversion epigram — polished self-knowledge arriving already composed at the exact moment June should be least composed; the chiasmus is quotable in any romance where the heroine sees the kiss photo. — ORDER: Keep "not surprised" and "That was the trouble with it." Cut "Surprised she could have explained." — withhold the explanation; the trouble stays untranslated and the next buzz arrives.

Strongest counter-candidate considered, passes: "There was the yes that solved seven things and the no that she couldn't yet justify with anything Nia would recognize as a real reason, and between them there was a back room at eight-fifteen with one bank of lights on and a woman at the press who would not turn around." The antithesis shape is risk-adjacent, but "seven things" is counted on the page (the punch list has exactly seven entries), "a real reason" is Nia's own phrase being paid off, and the back room is assembled from chapter-built parts (Vandercook, eight-fifteen, one bank of lights). Not portable; keep.

Also checked: the apartment-measurement paragraph ("eight inches... ten and a half... thirty inches by forty") — non-portable installer arithmetic, passes the smallness test; the call-station paragraph passes on "Pen that worked, established by scribble."

## 2. Where does prose summarize pressure rather than make the reader inhabit it?

SUMMARIZED-PRESSURE — "Her pulse had gone straight past the part of the offer that was supposed to be for her and settled into the part that kept the room usable." — This is the deferred raw-line-73 passage: the avoidance reflex reported from managerial altitude, one sentence after the notebook already proved it ("The line that interested her was *true up the Vandercook.* Not the wall. The press."); the caption re-explains evidence the reader just inhabited, and "pulse... settled into the part of the offer" is anatomically nothing. — ORDER: Cut the sentence. If the beat needs a third leg, keep it in the notebook: she counts what she's written — three lines on the machines, the wall one word — or goes back and underlines the gripper note and leaves "wall" alone.

SUMMARIZED-PRESSURE — "because Asha did not need a job description to give her permission." — The Asha comparison is the chapter's sharpest pressure (the role June is hesitating over, a peer would simply take), and the sentence inhabits it concretely right up to "a wet canvas in the back room by the Friday after" — then the because-clause names the whole wound in therapy vocabulary ("permission") from altitude. — ORDER: End the sentence at "the Friday after." If a beat is needed, make it material: Asha's two leads sit flattened to the left of the notebook; nothing on the page has June's own work on it.

Strongest counter-candidate considered, passes: "June had spent Wednesday on an invoice and Thursday at Marchetti Rooms, both of which were real, neither of which had taken until eight-forty." Two days of stalling rendered as schedule arithmetic — the guilt is inhabited in clock terms without one feeling-word. Likewise "Then she put one heavy line through the last one." — the cut question (*what happens if no*) is lived as pen action; the raw draft's explanatory clause was correctly removed.

## 3. Where does dialogue sound polished, therapeutic, aphoristic?

POLISHED-DIALOGUE — "The job's good. You'd be good at it. Both those things can be true and you can still say no." — Nia is too articulate about June's psychology: "both those things can be true" is current therapy-idiom, a symmetrical blessing that arrives pre-resolved and would slot unchanged into any 2020s novel's good-mentor phone call; her card is deadline-driven candor, not emotional adjudication. — ORDER: Keep "The job's good. You'd be good at it." Cut the both-things clause; the under-pressure version has no third sentence — she goes straight to "If you say no, send me someone good. I still have a program to keep open," and the gap where reassurance would be is the texture.

Strongest counter-candidates considered, pass:
- Nia's pitch run ("I'm offering you work, June, not a rescue. You'd be doing me the favor as much as the other way. I've watched you walk into rooms where the job was going wrong and make it stop.") — composed, but diegetically rehearsed: June asked for "the official version," Nia wrote the job description, and the first sentence is her voice-card register verbatim-adjacent. The composure is in-world preparation, not workshop fluency. Passes; do not extend it.
- June's "The coat counts. Coats are people who left their position marked." — quotable, but it answers inside a running game Theo opened ("one occupied by a coat that I ruled counts"), in their shared label-notes register, and the narration frames it as deflection ("answered the part that was a fact"). The thematic shadow stays sideways and unannounced. Passes at one per chapter; the chapter's other dialogue ("Define run." / "Sticking open or sticking shut?" / "That's a hold.") holds the plain-speech, unquotable floor.
- Brochure-phrase hunt: negative. Nia's terms stay in grant-and-machine specifics ("two grants and a city line item," "the youth grant reporting starts caring whether the position's filled," gripper/bearing/filters). No "opportunity," "community" abstractions, or perk-speak; "It's in writing" replaces the raw draft's flourish.

## 4. Where would literal precision beat figurative language?

FIGURATIVE-WHERE-LITERAL — "[Asha] would walk into the Tasker building and have the gripper bar apologizing by Friday" — Object personification of exactly the family the tic audit cut elsewhere ("opening it with a screwdriver and an apology," "developing a presence," "otherwise excuse itself" — all removed); this survivor reinstates the cute-machine register, and the call already established the literal fix in June's own diagnostic vocabulary. — ORDER: Replace with the literal mechanics the chapter built: Asha would have the spring out (or the gripper freed) by Friday — keep "and a wet canvas in the back room by the Friday after."

Strongest counter-candidates considered, pass:
- "in case the rest of the answer came from the same pen. It didn't come." — borderline object-magic, but the pen is the established station prop ("Pen that worked, established by scribble"), the line is June mocking her own preparation ritual, and the failure lands literal and flat ("It didn't come."). Passes.
- "flattened and set to the left like a reference swatch" — figurative, but it converts the raw draft's off-register "control group" into painter vocabulary that tells you how June uses the scrap (something to check the offer against). Clarifies; passes.
- Personification sweep per focused checks: catalogs stay weight and ledger liability ("signed out under her name... the returned column blank"); the mineral spirits jar stays inert ("not yet an accomplishment" aims the joke at June, not the jar); the deadline is literally a written receipt pinned under the jar; the apartment is "very quiet in the ordinary way — the radiator ticking, somebody's TV below" (the raw draft's "argument with itself" radiator was correctly cut); the phone only buzzes. The closing image passes as object-action, not maxim.

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## Chapter verdict

`LLM-CLEAN-FOUND`

Orders, in revision sequence:

1. Cut the post-call thesis: reduce "It was all true. None of it was wrong. The whole thing was good." to one plain clause; delete "The flaw wasn't in the offer." — replace with the failed search for a line to cross out.
2. Strip the jacket-cuff denial scaffolding to action; retain only the weight-distribution and "melodramatic" instances of the told-herself device.
3. Cut "Surprised she could have explained." from the flyer-photo beat; end on "That was the trouble with it."
4. Delete the "Her pulse had gone straight past..." caption; carry the avoidance in notebook evidence only.
5. End the Asha sentence at "the Friday after"; cut "did not need a job description to give her permission."
6. Cut "Both those things can be true and you can still say no" from Nia's line; jump from "You'd be good at it." to "If you say no, send me someone good."
7. Replace "have the gripper bar apologizing by Friday" with the literal fix (spring out / gripper freed by Friday).
