.claude/skills/video-script-production/references/implicit-pull.md

# Implicit pull: keeping a viewer waiting between the questions

Added after the Moser Baer v4 review: "the open loop that keeps the viewer watching through might not be satisfied for the full script. It doesn't have to be explicit; it can be subtle, implicit and implied."

## The problem

Explicit loops (a question asked, then answered) go stale. v4 declared a spine loop and a beat loop at the end of each beat, and the linter passed, but a beat loop opened in a beat's last two sentences is only alive until the next beat answers it. Inside a beat, in the middle of a paragraph of dates, nothing was pending. The viewer had no reason to keep listening *right now*, which is when people leave.

## What a pull is

A **pull** is something the viewer is waiting for without anyone having asked a question. It is made of information the viewer already holds plus a tension the script keeps in view. It stays live from its signal to its resolution, and it only works if the script **touches** it (a word, a date, an image, a callback) often enough that the viewer still has it in mind. The linter treats a pull as warm for 60 seconds after each touch.

| Type | The viewer is waiting for | Example from Moser Baer |
|---|---|---|
| `clock` | a deadline that is coming | The bond falls due on 21 June 2012; every later beat can say how far off it is |
| `irony` | the moment the people in the story find out what the viewer already knows | We know the date the bond falls due; the company, in 2007, is selling it as ordinary financing |
| `jeopardy` | what happens to a person or group the viewer has met | Workers who built the plant: introduced early, and the viewer wants to know where they end up |
| `prediction` | the verdict on something the script said should be true | "If that's right, sales will barely move and profit will vanish. Check March 2008." |
| `motif` | what a recurring image or claim means | The shut gate; the founder's habit of leaving whatever was running out |
| `gap` | a fact the script says it does not have | "I have not found where the bond's money went" |
| `pattern` | whether a repeated shape repeats or breaks | Price halves in discs, drops to a chocolate's price in films, falls by two-thirds in solar: the viewer starts to expect the next price to fall |

## Why it should work, and how sure we are

| Support | Grade | What it says |
|---|---|---|
| Loewenstein's information-gap theory (above, Lesson B) | B | The viewer must know enough to notice the gap. A pull is a gap built from facts already given, so it needs no new question. |
| Brewer and Lichtenstein (1982), structural-affect theory | B | Suspense comes from an initiating event with significant consequences for someone the audience cares about, plus uncertainty about the outcome. That is `jeopardy`, and with a known date it is `clock`. |
| Gerrig and Bernardo (1994), readers as problem-solvers | A (experimental, fiction only) | In seven experiments suspense rose when readers believed the number of ways out had been restricted, even when their estimate of escape did not change. A deadline and a shrinking set of options are the same lever. |
| Hitchcock to Truffaut on the bomb under the table (dramatic irony) | C | Craft doctrine: tell the audience what the characters do not know. Experiments on whether knowing the outcome reduces suspense disagree (a 2018 *Frontiers in Psychology* study found outcome knowledge changed emotional response separately from suspense). Use `irony` for the known date or known result, not as proof. |
| E. M. Forster ("the audience wants to know what happens next") | C | The simplest pull is a person the audience wants to follow. |
| Zeigarnik effect | **D** | Replicates inconsistently; do not cite it for any of this. |
| Ours: loop-timing raters agree poorly (0.08 to 0.39) | Ours | So pulls are declared with quotes and checked mechanically; whether they work is for a fresh reader. |

No lesson here has been tested on audience retention. The rule is a design constraint: no stretch of the script should depend on the viewer's goodwill alone.

## How to place them (Step 3 of SKILL.md)

1. **Pull inventory.** After the chain is drafted, walk the beats and for every minute of runtime write one line: *what is the viewer waiting for right now?* If the answer is "the next beat", the minute is uncovered.
2. **Choose at least four pulls of at least three kinds.** One of them should be a person (`jeopardy`) so there is a human in the waiting, not only a mechanism. One should be a `motif` that comes back as the closing image.
3. **Plant early, touch often, resolve late.** Signal the pull in the first third where you can. Touch it at least twice more, no more than about a minute apart, in a way that sounds like narration: a repeated word, a date, a callback to the scene. Resolve it in the beat where the facts resolve it, or admit the gap aloud and mark it `left_open`.
4. **Touches are not announcements.** "Remember this date" is script-talk (F2). "Five years before it falls due" is a touch.
5. **Keep them true.** A clock needs a real date, jeopardy needs real people who are in the sources, irony must rest on a fact the viewer is told. Do not build suspense on hindsight smugness ("how did they not see it?"), and do not invent a person.
6. **Fewer than you think are explicit.** The spine and at most two beat loops are asked aloud; everything else rides on pulls. If every pull is spoken as a question, the voice becomes the staged run-up that F2 counts.

## What the E rules check

| Rule | Checks |
|---|---|
| E1 | every pull has a valid type, a signal quote in its beat, at least two touches in the text, in order, and either a resolution or a line that admits the gap |
| E2 | after the hook, no stretch longer than 45 s (warn) or 75 s (fail) without an explicit loop or a pull touched in the last 60 s |
| E3 | at least three kinds of pull used |
| E4 | every middle beat carries a pull signal, a touch or a beat loop |

The checks confirm the declared pulls are in the text where the chain says. They cannot confirm that a touch *feels* like tension. A fresh reader can: ask "at which paragraph did you stop caring what happens?"