Film Story (stage 0b) — the dramatic engine

Why this stage exists, and why the skill must do the work

Most people asking for a film bring a situation ("a creator builds a world, fans play it") — not a story. They will not say "add a loss" or "give her a dilemma" because they don't carry that vocabulary; they only know afterwards that the result felt like nothing. The skill's job is to supply the dramatic engineering unasked, show it in tables, and let the user attack it.

The failure this stage prevents has a shape: the parallel-event outline. A goes here, then B, then C, then the product. Every event succeeds. Nobody loses anything. The viewer is not asked a question they need answered. It reads as a demo with people in it. A film is not a list of events; it is one question the viewer cannot stop asking until the last image answers it (or refuses to).

The emotional algorithm (what the brain keeps)

Memory is written by emotion, and the emotions that write deepest are not the pleasant ones: