Manner

A manner says how a person delivers lines in a given mood, without touching what the lines say. define manner for <person> holds one or more when it is <mood>: blocks, and each block carries either beat rows, a voice word, or both.

A beat is a small piece of physical business printed alongside the reply — a gesture, a glance, a bit of stage direction. Several beats in a block rotate rather than repeat, so a character with three beats does not do the same thing twice in a row. A voice word colors the delivery instead of adding business, which is usually what you want for a mood that should make someone quieter rather than busier.

Manner is the cheapest way to make one authored line read differently across a scene, because the line itself is written once. Reach for it before writing mood-conditioned duplicates of the same reply: if the words are the same and only the delivery changes, that is a manner, and splitting it into two rows will drift as soon as one of them is edited.

define manner for Will Kemp
  when it is cheerful:
    beat "He sketches half a jig step on the spot, done before it began."
    beat "He snaps his fingers at a passing thought and grins."
  when it is stung:
    voice flat
end manner