The temptation at the start of a series is volume: generate forty frames, find the woman in the pile. This room begins the other way, at the empty plinth. A place is held first — a card written, a desk arranged, a standard of judging fixed — and only then is anything made to stand in it. Beginnings feel slower this way and are faster by the third sitting, because nothing has to be unpicked.
The order of a beginning here
Write the card before the first frame
Age, hair, build, face, signature — settled in words while settling costs nothing. The first frame is then a test of the card, not a guessing game.
Prove the card at standard cost
A handful of 6-credit frames, judged line by line. A line that fails is rewritten now, deliberately, once.
Let the place fill gradually
Keepers join the series one sitting at a time. A place held well fills with work that agrees with itself.
What this refuses is the restart. Studios that begin in a pile begin again every month, and their characters have pasts of three weeks. A series begun at a held place accumulates instead: the tenth sitting is judged against a card the first sitting already proved, and the woman in frame forty is recognisably the woman in frame one — which is the entire point of keeping her.
Questions
How many proof frames are enough?
Usually four to six at standard cost. You are testing five written lines, not shopping for a face.
What if the card itself is wrong?
Rewrite it now, once, in full — a deliberate new root. What you may not do is nudge it weekly.
Does a slow start cost more?
It costs less. Restarts are the expensive habit; proof frames at 6 credits are the cheapest tuition in the studio.