.claude/skills/video-script-production/references/read-aloud-checklist.md

# The read-aloud checklist (Step S9)

The linter checks that the declared structure is in the text. It cannot hear the script. This checklist is the author's own pass, done once the gates are green and before any reader: print the spoken text (`node scripts/extract-vo.js --script SCRIPT-vN.md --mode timed`), read it in order as if you were saying it to one person, and answer each question. Each item exists because a real defect of that kind passed a green linter in Moser Baer v4, v5 or v6; the example is given so you know what to look for.

Record the result in the hand-off file as `Read-aloud pass: done (<date>; what you found)`. A pass that found nothing is suspicious; look again at items 1 to 3.

## Listening for what the reader cannot follow

1. **Every pronoun and "the same thing" has its person or thing in the previous sentence.** Defect: v5's hook closed on "So let's start with the city he left"; "he" was last named three paragraphs earlier, as "its founder". v6 beat 3: "Every other maker had noticed the same thing" followed a line about Ratul being excited, so "the same thing" pointed at nothing; it became "had noticed the boom". (Rule I3 catches only the hinge line; the rest is yours.)
2. **Every name, term and acronym is explained the first time it is spoken**, in words a stranger would use. Defects the v4 readers found: the Philips dispute, "gigawatt", "tribunal", "Alchemist ARC", "net worth", "recast" versus "restructure". Rule A7 covers declared jargon only.
3. **No stretch is a pile-up of new names, figures and concepts**, even if the figure count is within budget. Defect: v4's CARE paragraph (dates, a loss figure, "negative net worth", "subsidiaries") and the CBI paragraph (two agencies, four people, three figures in about 20 seconds) passed the linter and were the readers' heaviest stretches. The linter counts figures, not named people or terms (a candidate rule).

## Listening for claims

4. **Nothing is asserted about what someone thought, felt or intended unless a source says it.** Hedge ("I think", "as far as I can find") or cut. Defects: v6's "each step looked sensible from where Puri stood" had to become "I think each step looked sensible"; v4's "It doubled down" contradicted the script's own "I can't see inside anyone's head".
5. **A link is not built on an adjacency the script itself says it cannot support.** Defect: "Alongside all this, the company owed a bond" joined two things the script said it could not connect.
6. **A comparison shows scale, not innocence or guilt.** Defect: comparing alleged fraud with creditor claims; fixed by "claims are not stolen money, so that clears no one".
7. **Hedges are true.** Every "I couldn't find" or "I went looking for" describes a check that was made, by whoever will say it.
8. **Allegations and findings are kept apart**: who alleged what, what a court decided, what the CBI is challenging; nobody called a villain, a crook or a fraudster without a conviction.

## Listening for promises and flow

9. **A tease is paid at the size it was sold.** Defect: "something so strange you can't unsee" was paid by an ordinary pair of results; it became "said one thing in December and was doing another by June".
10. **Nothing is said twice.** Defects: a recap after the thesis was already stated read as a third ending; v6's close said "it worked" and then "Three escapes worked".
11. **The join into every beat feels like "therefore" or "but".** If you could say "and then" there with nothing lost, the flow is broken (the linter checks the words, not the feel).
12. **The hook promises experiences, not the route**, and the learning it promises is paid in the close.

## Listening for the voice

13. **Say each sentence aloud in one breath.** A sentence you would not say to a friend is written English. Defects: "no X, no Y, just a Z", "Think about what that does", "Here is what matters".
14. **The persona is fair and warm where it counts.** Aloof about verdicts, never about the workers. No sarcasm at a person. No claim to effort that was not made.
15. **Each figure of speech helps.** Does the picture explain something? Does it come back? Is its limit honest? A comparison that decorates is cut.
16. **The close is quiet and human**, and it returns to the opening image.

## Listening for the facts one more time

17. **Units and magnitudes**: crore versus million, rupee versus dollar, "doubled" versus the arithmetic (1,620 to 3,500 is 2.2 times). Check the 7 hero numbers against the ledger by eye.
18. **Dates**: the day, month and year of every dated event in the hook and the pulls (the 21 June 2012 clock must be right).
19. **Names**: spelling, and whether a private person is named on the strength of one source.

## Listening for the cast, the turns and the dense stretches (review round 7)

Each item exists because the user's notes on the Hinglish v6 found a defect that a 100/100 linter had not.

20. **The opening list is what the audience actually did.** Include the slightly guilty association (a pirated movie on a blank disc), not only the respectable ones. It is a mirror, not a claim about the company.
21. **The decode test.** Say each sentence to someone who has not read the research. Any line they would have to work out ("walking away from whatever was running out", "a chalti hui cheez") is rewritten with the concrete noun and the word people say (feeling, busy, pivot). In Hinglish, prefer the English word people use when it is shorter and clearer.
22. **The hook's last line is a person's act and a puzzle**, not a place or a mechanism: "the day Deepak Puri walked away from a business that was working. Why would he?" Give no manner (calm, cold) that no source gives.
23. **Each beat is a small arc: the doubt, the person's edge, the proof.** If a beat shows the doubt and the success but not why this person could do it, the viewer has nothing to understand. The edge must be something a source supports; if none does, say what the record shows (twenty years of making things in the country) and stop.
24. **Restate the height before the fall point.** When the script is about to show a decision or an admission, remind the viewer where the company stood ("still a champion, with its fate in its own hands").
25. **A cliffhanger lands in the viewer.** "You'd do a double take" is safe; "everyone was stunned" claims a reaction no source gives.
26. **A dense beat's headline is a trailer line, not a spoiler or a summary of the numbers.** It opens a question the details answer, holds no figure, and is followed by details that close it. If the headline and the last line of the beat say the same thing, one of them goes.

## After the pass

Fix, run `check.js` again (the edits can break a declared quote), and write the result in the hand-off. If the pass changed a fact, mark the change in the ledger and in "What changed from the previous version".