Album drift is usually blamed on the model. Watch the prompts instead. The character is described from memory each time, and memory edits as it goes: “chestnut waves to one side” in spring becomes “flowing brown hair” by summer, and the audience watches a stranger quietly take over the album. The repair is horticultural. Nurseries do not re-decide a cultivar at every planting — they keep a sheet. Write her down once, in words you paste rather than retype.
Five entries, in order
A working sheet holds five things. Age — a number, always 25 or over. Hair — colour, length, the one way she usually wears it. Build — two or three words, no more. Face — one or two details that endure. Signature — the orchid at her ear, the scar, the mark that survives a crop. Everything else is a scene line: dress, setting, light, pose. Scene lines are meant to change with the beds. Entries are not.
Two habits keep the sheet healthy. Entries are stated plainly and positively — “long chestnut-brown waves swept to one side” survives generation, while “beautiful hair” is reinterpreted at every attempt. And the sheet is versioned. When the character is deliberately changed — a new cut, a new signature — the new text is saved as version two, with a date, so an early set can still be regrown exactly as it was first planted.
Working from it
Production then becomes orderly. Pair the sheet with scene lines that share one setting and one light, and grow the set at the standard model’s 6-credit price. Keep the best third. Spend on pruning, grafts and framing only after the cull. When a page returns off character, the cause is almost always visible on paper: a scene line contradicted an entry, or an entry was too vague to hold. Both are fixed on the sheet, not in settings.
What it cannot do
It cannot hold a woman who was never decided. If the entries are adjectives — lovely, striking, perfect — no system will keep her true. Decide her on paper first. The sheet is not where the imagination happens. It is where the imagination is filed, so the album can grow in rows instead of wandering.