# Positive Prose Audit — Chapter 15 ("Keys Elsewhere")

Cold read performed against the READING_GUIDE register rules (§2 plain-speech floor, §4 motif caps, §8 smallness test), the style_and_voice modal-dialogue rule ("Odile is the only character licensed for high-density memorable lines"), and the chapter packet's offer-chapter risk list (no brochure prose, no self-help insight closer). Raw-draft provenance was compared throughout: the synthesis correctly cut several Claude-isms ("medium-sized dog," "developing a presence," "called the competence a personality," "The flaw wasn't in the offer"), but residue survives, concentrated in the Nia call and the closing choice-frame.

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## 1. Paragraphs portable to another novel

PORTABLE-PARAGRAPH — "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…" — The yes/no balanced scaffold is generic offer-choice prose; swap the name and the first two clauses sit unchanged in any Emily Henry career-offer subplot (*Book Lovers*, the Charlie/city choice, verbatim). "Solved seven things" counts her problems from managerial altitude instead of naming one. The only non-portable matter in the sentence is the press image at the end. — ORDER: Cut the yes/no architecture. Let the sentence be the back-room image plus one concrete unanswered line from her own punch list (the page she already read looking for a line to cross out); the choice should be carried by what the woman at the press will not do, not by a weighed-pairs formulation.

PORTABLE-PARAGRAPH — "Then Mara, replying with the photo itself, and June, who had sworn off looking at it, looked at it." — The sworn-off-it/did-it-anyway reversal is the stock fake-dating beat of the heroine ambushed by the couple photo; it could appear unchanged in *The Unhoneymooners* or any of a dozen contemporaries. The recovery afterward ("trying to caption," "not surprised") is June's; the entry move is everyone's. — ORDER: Replace the reversal with June inspecting the image in her actual register — Priya's text already supplies "photo holds at 8x10" and "Mara's crop works," so let June open it to check the crop or the matte reproduction and get caught by the face while doing print QC. The ambush should arrive through her competence, not through the genre's wink.

Strongest counter-candidate considered: "When the call ended, the apartment was very quiet in the ordinary way—the radiator ticking, somebody's TV below—". Radiator-and-TV is portable apartment furniture on its face, but "quiet in the ordinary way" is a deliberate refusal of active-silence portent (a banned tic), and the paragraph immediately turns to the non-portable punch-list reading. Passes.

## 2. Pressure summarized rather than inhabited

SUMMARIZED-PRESSURE — "I'll spare you the rent math. The numbers are in range." / "She had already done it in the margin anyway, in her neat handwriting, and it came out the way Nia knew it would." — The material pressure that makes leaving rational — the entire reason this offer is dangerous — is gestured at twice and landed zero times. "The numbers are in range" is recruiter-brochure phrasing from a character whose card tic is money specifics; "came out the way Nia knew it would" reports the verdict of arithmetic the reader never sees. The chapter is otherwise unafraid of figures ($32/hr, net-45, $340/mo, eighty-pound matte), which makes the elision at the one place it costs something conspicuous. — ORDER: Put the margin arithmetic on the page in June's hand — two or three real figures: her portion of current rent against the Tasker one-bedroom, set against the Kessler money she won't see until March. Cut "The numbers are in range"; Nia can name the salary band or say nothing. The reader should be able to do June's math and flinch at the answer.

Strongest counter-candidate considered: "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." This is summary in form, but it forces the reader to compute the two days of avoidance from concrete times rather than being told she'd stalled; the pressure is performed by the arithmetic, not reported. Passes. Likewise "The version that kept returning put her at the press with a rag. Behind her, the wall stayed clean and empty under the raking light." — the chapter's central self-knowledge rendered as a specific recurring picture with a technical light term, replacing the raw draft's essayistic version (raw line 73, "called the competence a personality"), which was correctly cut. Passes.

## 3. Dialogue that sounds polished, therapeutic, aphoristic

POLISHED-DIALOGUE — "Because I need you to say yes for real reasons or no for real reasons. 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. I have a building full of jobs about to go wrong." … "I'm not going to talk you into it and I'm not going to talk you out of it. The job's good. You'd be good at it." — Aphorism saturation. Every voice-card anchor Nia owns ("not glamorous… one of its virtues," "work, not a rescue," "send me someone good") is deployed in a single call, and the synthesis added fresh epigrams on top: the real-reasons doubling, the going-wrong chiasmus, the talk-you-into/out-of antithesis, the good/good couplet. Each line arrives pre-resolved; Nia is perfectly articulate about June's psychology, her own fairness, and the offer's moral status, with zero functional or unquotable speech in the run. The style sheet licenses this density for Odile alone. — ORDER: Keep at most one anchor per beat ("work, not a rescue" earns its slot). Rough the rest into working speech: let Nia read half a sentence off the posting and abandon it, misremember which grant covers the position and correct herself, or answer a June question with a flat fact instead of a balanced pair. The fairness should be visible in what she discloses (renewal odds, the search-plan alternative — that material already works), not in epigrams about her own neutrality.

POLISHED-DIALOGUE — "Noon. Eat lunch after." — A food-imperative-as-care closer is Odile's owned move per the voice cards ("Eat. Then decide to be tragic."; "feeds people without comment"). In Nia's mouth it reads as the book's best-line machinery distributing wit to whoever is on the phone — exactly the flattening the voice differentiation rules exist to prevent. — ORDER: End the call in Nia's register — a logistical follow-through ("I'll send the description tonight," a calendar fact) — or cut to "Noon." and let June hang up.

Strongest counter-candidates considered: June's "You're being very fair about the part where it might evaporate" passes — it is an honest warning dressed as a joke, her documented care move, and it withholds the real subject (her own hope that the offer would have a flaw). The Theo text exchange passes: "one occupied by a coat that I ruled counts" / "Coats are people who left their position marked" is aphorism-shaped, but its content is pure install-crew logic, it is the one coded exchange the chapter spends (within the §2 spice budget), and June's reply is explicitly framed as answering "the part that was a fact" — deflection visible as deflection. Asha's "you'd love it, it's terrible" is her card register (cf. "Not pretty. Cheap enough to forgive"). Passes.

## 4. Figurative language where literal precision would beat it

No findings. What was checked: every simile and personification candidate in the chapter, with raw-draft comparison. The dangerous personifications were already executed out in synthesis ("It was developing a presence" → "It occupied one narrow strip of sill"; "the radiator ticking through its argument with itself" → "the radiator ticking"; "wanted to come out of the same pen" → "came from the same pen"; "otherwise excuse itself" → "fold shut").

Strongest counter-candidates considered: "in case the rest of the answer came from the same pen. It didn't come." — residual agency granted to the answer, but the line states June's actual reason for sitting there (the deadline became real when she wrote it; she is testing whether the decision works the same way), and "It didn't come" lands the failure as flat fact. A fully literal substitute ("She wrote nothing else") would lose the reasoning, not just the ornament. Passes. "Like a tool on the bench you weren't using and someone else needed" — work-bench economy is the literal ethics of Asha's name; the simile clarifies rather than decorates. Passes. "Left the deadline pinned under the jar she hadn't opened" — metonymy, not personification: the deadline is physically written on the pinned receipt and the jar is a real weight chosen for a stated mechanical reason ("so it couldn't slide off or fold shut"). The closing sentence reports two facts and stops short of a maxim. Passes — concurring with the tic audit's provisional hold.

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## Chapter verdict

**LLM-CLEAN-FOUND**

Orders:
1. Cut the yes/no choice scaffold in the closing paragraph; carry the choice on the press image and one concrete punch-list line.
2. Replace the "sworn off looking at it, looked at it" reversal with June inspecting the flyer photo in print-QC register and being caught by the face anyway.
3. Land the rent math once, with real figures in June's margin; delete "The numbers are in range."
4. Thin Nia's epigram run to one anchor per beat; convert the remainder to functional, interruptible speech.
5. Replace "Eat lunch after" with a Nia-register logistical closer or end at "Noon."
