Series drift is usually blamed on the model. Read the prompts instead. The character is recharted from memory each time, and memory revises as it goes: “auburn hair in a bun” in one month becomes “copper hair worn up” in the next, and the audience watches a stranger quietly inherit the feed. The repair is cartographic. Chart the woman once, in words you paste rather than retype, and let every plate be drawn from that single sheet.
Five entries, in order
A working chart holds five things. Age — a number, always 25 or over. Hair — colour, length, one habitual arrangement. Build — two or three words, no more. Face — one or two details that endure. Signature — the mole, the comb, the mark that survives a crop. Everything else is a scene line: garment, room, light, pose. Scene lines are meant to change. Chart entries are not.
Two habits keep the chart healthy. Entries are stated plainly and positively — “auburn-copper hair in a high twisted bun held by a tortoiseshell comb” can be redrawn faithfully, while “beautiful hair” is reinterpreted at every attempt. And the chart is editioned. When the character is deliberately changed — a new arrangement, a new signature — the new text is saved as edition two, with a date, so an old set can still be redrawn exactly as it was first surveyed.
Working from it
Production then becomes methodical. Pair the chart with scene lines that share one room and one light, and draw the set at the standard model’s 6-credit price. Keep the strongest third. Spend on corrections, swaps and enlargements only after the cull. When a plate returns off character, the cause is almost always visible on paper: a scene line contradicted a chart entry, or an entry was too vague to hold a survey. Both are fixed in the wording, not in settings.
What it cannot do
It cannot hold a woman who was never charted. If the entries are adjectives — lovely, striking, perfect — no system will keep her. Decide her on the chart first. The chart is not where the imagination happens. It is where the imagination is kept, sheet after sheet.