Cast introduction scheduler

Four unfamiliar forms do not necessarily mean four new people

A crowded introduction can contain several jobs at once. The story establishes a person, attaches a public title to someone already familiar, shortens a full name and reminds the audience of a returning character. Counting every unfamiliar string as another person hides those differences. This workbench separates the jobs before proposing where they belong.

It schedules author-declared introduction events across ordered scenes. You supply the starting knowledge, exact forms, permitted scene windows, locks, prerequisites and editorial budgets. It audits the current arrangement or finds one bounded feasible proposal. It does not read a manuscript, measure a reader's memory, select better names or rewrite the scene for you.

Use it when the main question is where to establish and reconnect names. Use cast separation when the question is whether supplied forms resemble one another. A clear-looking roster can still arrive in an unhelpful burst; a well-spaced introduction can still contain an ambiguous name. These are connected decisions with different rules.

Original fictional scene: the public demonstration

Dena Quill and Olek Fen have already appeared in the story. At a small public exhibition, Dena now acts under the name Inspector Quill, and the host starts calling Fen simply Olek. A third person, Pella Moss, is due to appear when the demonstration needs a replacement test weight. Pella's first full introduction belongs to that action, not to the earlier briefing.

The host's draft announcement piles everything together: Inspector Quill checks the platform, Olek steadies the cart, Pella Moss brings the weight, and “Pel” is asked to take it away. It sounds as though several people have entered in quick succession. In the author's plan, however, only Pella is new. The extra forms still need connections, even though they do not create extra individuals.

Before the exhibition opens, Dena calls across Fen's familiar cart: “Olek, leave the second wheel free.” The surrounding action identifies whom she means. The short form has a place before the protected demonstration. Inspector Quill remains in the public announcement, where Dena's newly relevant authority matters to the scene.

Pella is named when she brings the weight. Only afterward, while clearing the platform, does the host use Pel with an explicit connection to Pella. The story has not made the newcomer arrive earlier merely to satisfy a spreadsheet. It has moved one familiar person's additional form and delayed a second form until its declared prerequisite is established.

This is an original fictional example, not a recorded rehearsal or reader study. The revision illustrates a choice about exposition. It does not establish that an audience remembers a particular number of names. Inspector Quill, Olek, Pella Moss and Pel remain useful because they express public role, familiar address, first identity and a later connected short form at different moments.

If the host used Pella's full name throughout, there would be one fewer form to introduce, but a different conversational register. If the short form appeared without a connection to Pella, a stable private person ID would not make that relationship clear to readers. If Pella arrived before the action, the protected story beat would change. Apply the method by deciding which of those consequences you intend, not by assuming that the smallest count is automatically the best writing.

Declare what has already been established

An identity has a stable ID, a working name, knownAtStart and knownForms. These fields describe the author's intended starting point for the reviewed excerpt. They are not observations about actual readers. Established people need at least one exact known form; an unknown person has an empty list. The tool does not infer familiarity from a common name or the number of earlier chapters.

The example begins with Dena Quill and Dena already associated with one person, and Olek Fen associated with another. Inspector Quill and Olek are not yet established forms in this scoped plan. Pella has no known form. You can change that baseline if an earlier part of your story already did the work, but make the declaration deliberately.

Each used unknown person needs exactly one identity event. That event establishes a person with an exact form and consumes one new-identity slot and one new-association slot. A label event introduces an additional connected form for an established person; it consumes only an association slot. A reminder repeats a known or introduced exact form and consumes neither new counter.

Here “new association” means a person and form together. Two different people called Captain remain two associations. Repeating Captain for the same person is a reminder. Exact spelling is used; the software does not decide whether two written variants are equivalent or whether a reader will interpret an honorific correctly. Those questions need their own review.

Give a scene a budget without pretending to measure a mind

Scenes appear in narrative array order. Each has an identity budget, association budget and allowed event kinds. A zero budget can still allow reminders. An empty allowedKinds list makes a scene unavailable for introduction events. These are explicit production choices, not a prescribed capacity for a human reader.

In the initial plan, the public demonstration allows one new identity and two new associations. The current arrangement contains one identity but four associations. It exceeds the second editorial budget, not the first. The quiet return allows no new identities or associations but can still remind the audience of Dena. Its zero counts do not mean that the scene is empty or easy to understand.

Choose budgets to express a revision you actually want to test. Do not report a budget as a measured cognitive limit. Raising it can make an arrangement feasible without improving the prose; lowering it can force a move without proving the previous scene was confusing. The output makes the chosen constraint visible so you can assess the tradeoff.

Windows and locks preserve the writer's authority

Every event has earliest and latest scene IDs, a proposed scene or null, and a lock. A null proposed placement is an unplaced event the planner can schedule. A locked event needs a current placement. The permitted window may be wider than the lock: Pella could technically fit elsewhere, but the author protects the first introduction in the demonstration.

The planner never silently unlocks that event, moves it outside its window or puts its kind into a prohibited scene. If those rules leave no valid place, the result says so. An impossibility within a declared finite worksheet is not a verdict that the story itself cannot work. You can revise the actual rule when you decide the plot permits it.

The lock protects the scene slot, not a line number in a manuscript. Within a scene the tool shows an order consistent with the declared prerequisites. It has not inspected the existing paragraph order. Confirm that the real scene establishes the connections in that order before treating the table as a production instruction.

Use prerequisites for links that should not be guessed

An additional form for an unknown person automatically depends on that person's identity event. A reminder of a newly introduced form depends on its introduction. An initially established form needs no new source event. These are explicit model rules, not an automatic interpretation of a name's meaning.

You can add an authored dependency with before, after and minScenes. Zero allows both events in one scene while retaining prerequisite order. One requires at least one scene-position step. In the example, the Pella-to-Pel connection has a one-step requirement, so placing both in the demonstration fails that declaration. The model does not call that step a day, an episode or a measured retention interval.

Cycles are rejected, including cycles that would place everything in one scene. An event cannot require its own later explanation and also serve as that explanation's earlier prerequisite in this model. Unlinked disguises, deliberately uncertain identities and real publication-gap retention are outside its scope. Use a suitable identity or reader-observation workflow instead of forcing those cases into an asserted connection.

Read the worked proposal beside the original

Run the initial plan. The original table shows four new associations in the demonstration against its budget of two, and the Pel event violates the one-scene prerequisite. The feasible proposal moves olek-short from s2 to s1 and pel-short from s2 to s3. Pella's protected first introduction stays in s2. The quiet return stays a reminder with zero new counters.

The proposed demonstration therefore contains Inspector Quill and Pella Moss: two new associations but only one new person. The briefing introduces Olek as an additional form for an established person. After the test, Pel adds a connected form without creating another individual. Read those placements against the actual actions before accepting them.

The search prefers current placements and then nearby eligible scenes, using deterministic tie breaks. It returns the first feasible complete arrangement within its candidate-attempt bound. It does not promise the fewest moves or the best dramatic order. Different permitted windows or stable event IDs can affect which feasible proposal appears first; none supplies an artistic quality score.

A proposal is not an edit until applied

Apply this placement proposal changes only the proposed scene fields after comparing the frozen proposal inputs with the current worksheet. Names, identity baselines, budgets and dependencies are retained. If you edited an input after the calculation, the tool asks for a new calculation instead of overwriting the later work. Merely changing JSON formatting can trigger that conservative check.

After application, the current arrangement already meets the declared rules, so no further move is proposed. Undo restores the matching changed event records while preserving unrelated input. If an affected event was edited or locked afterward, undo refuses to replace it. Returning to an earlier placement can also return its earlier violations; undo is not a claim that the old arrangement is now feasible.

The private handoff contains the original audit, proposed placements, diff, prerequisites, search state and input snapshot. It can expose names, protected reveals and story plans. Review it before sharing. Copies describe the visible current or proposed scene explicitly. Saving a project preserves the parameters; it does not modify a manuscript in another application.

Distinguish an exhausted search from an unfinished one

A feasible result has a complete placement that passes the declared rules. satisfied-original means the current arrangement already passes, so there is no revision to apply. infeasible means the finite declared domains were exhausted or an event has no possible scene after the constraints. limit-reached means the attempt bound stopped the search before it could settle the question.

No partial search arrangement is offered as a completed proposal. When there is no complete alternative, the cards still describe the current arrangement and retain its diagnostics. Increase the bound or revise the real budgets, windows, locks and prerequisites deliberately. The browser runs planning in a worker; a failed or superseded request cannot authorize an old proposal to overwrite newer inputs.

Use the tables to make an editorial decision concrete. They can show that a name burst is actually several forms of familiar people, or that moving a small reference protects a more important entrance. Whether the resulting scene feels graceful, whether readers connect the forms and whether the chosen names suit the characters remain creative questions to read and test in context.

Is the budget a recommended reader-memory limit?

No. It is an author-selected editorial constraint counting identities and exact person/form associations in the reviewed scenes. The tool has no observed comprehension or retention data.

Does a same-scene dependency check the paragraph order?

No. minScenes zero permits one scene and displays a topological prerequisite order. The author must check that the actual writing establishes the links in that order. Input-row order is not treated as prose order.

Will applying a proposal rewrite names or manuscript text?

It changes only the proposed scene fields for the scoped events after checking the frozen inputs and current constraints. Names and prose remain authored data. Later edits require regeneration rather than a stale overwrite.

Does limit-reached mean no schedule exists?

No. It means the candidate-attempt bound stopped the search. Only an exhausted finite search or an empty constrained domain yields the infeasible state. Neither is an artistic verdict about every way of telling the story.