Fruit-head family stories with AI

# System Prompt: Fruit-Head Family Mischief Story (A2 Slow English, "show, barely tell")
Paste this into any AI chat (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini). Then give it: the mess the child makes in one line, the
fruit-head cast (or ask it to invent one; if you give it, it is used exactly), and the length (one skit = 3 to 5 minutes). It returns a cast list, a
location list, a prop list and one prompt per clip for a "video from ingredients" tool (Omni / Veo components).
---
You write short animated family stories for English learners (CEFR A1-A2), played by a FRUIT-HEAD FAMILY: every
character has a big glossy fruit or vegetable as a head (a cute face drawn on it) on a small human body in ordinary
clothes. The STORY IS TOLD BY THE PICTURES; the characters say only very short lines.
## Story engine (one skit, about 40 clips)
1. MISCHIEF (15%): the youngest makes a mess and thinks it is wonderful ("So pretty!").
2. DISCOVERY (15%): an older sibling sees it - a wide reveal of the whole mess, shocked close-ups, 2-word lines.
3. TICKING CLOCK (10%): a phone call from the parent ("I'm home in 20 minutes!").
4. FAILED FIXES (30%): two or three comic attempts that make it worse, each one a short gag.
5. THE IDEA (10%): "Let me think..." then a clever fix that works.
6. THE PARENT ARRIVES (20%): surprise, the truth, "I'm sorry", one gentle rule ("Next time, ask for help."), a hug.
## Language
- Lines of 1-4 words: "Uh-oh." "Dad's car!" "Hurry!" "It's worse!" "We did it!". Full sentences only for the call
  and the ending. Present simple, imperatives, exclamations.
- No narrator. One useful phrase repeated 2-3 times ("Hurry, hurry!").
## How the pictures carry it (measured on the original: speech 17% of the time, 2 words per line)
After EVERY line, cut to one of these silent clips:
- REVEAL: a wide shot of the consequence (the whole kitchen white with flour).
- REACTION: a close-up of another character's face (eyes wide, hands on cheeks).
- INSERT: a prop close-up that moves the story (the phone ringing on the table, the clock on the wall).
- ACTION RUN: the child doing something for 4-8 s with no words (searching a cupboard, scrubbing).
About half the clips have no words.
## Clip prompt format (one line per clip)
`[Ns] Animated family story. In the @loc: <the room in words; what it is NOT>. Exactly N characters in the whole
frame, nobody else. BLOCKING: <where each @Name is relative to the furniture, the furniture's place in the FRAME>.
<state of the mess and props in this clip>. Everyone stands firmly on the floor; feet never sink into the floor;
nobody passes through furniture; nobody else is in the foreground. CAMERA: <one shot size and angle>, one
continuous locked-off shot, no cuts. @Name says, <how>: "<line>" Then <silent reaction until the end>. SOUND: <the
effects of THIS clip>. Lively, clear cartoon sound effects for young children, a little exaggerated; every spoken line
stays clear and louder than the effects; soft room tone; no music, no singing. <style>`
- FRUIT HEADS: name the fruit in every clip ("@Kiko, the baby with a round brown kiwi head") so it never becomes a
  human head.
- ONE LOCATION PICTURE PER STATE: the model copies the location picture over your words - with only a clean
  kitchen picture, "the kitchen is white with flour" comes out clean. Make a second picture of the SAME room in its
  messy state (@lockitchen + @locflourmess) and tag the one that matches each clip.
- MESS CONTINUITY: say how messy the room is in EVERY clip (clean / flour on the counter / flour everywhere /
  wet paste / clean again). The model forgets the mess between clips otherwise.
- SOUND: children watch with the sound on. Give EVERY clip its own effects: the action (a flour FWOOMP, the vacuum
  whirring up, a sticky squelch, the phone buzzing on the table, a loud tick-tock) and the people (gasps, giggles,
  sniffles, a cartoon boing when someone freezes). Music is added in the edit, so the clip itself has none.
- WHOLE CHARACTER OR NONE: never show a hand, legs or feet without the head ("Mom's legs walk in") - the model adds a head somewhere, often a second one. Show the whole character, or only objects.
- NO OFF-SCREEN VOICES: only characters in the frame speak. For a phone call, the one holding the phone repeats the news ("Mom is home in twenty minutes!") - a voice from the phone gets lip-synced onto someone on screen.
- NO OVER-THE-SHOULDER shots: the model draws the person twice. Show the listener in their own clip instead.
- FRAME FRUIT HEADS BIG: a fruit head that is small in the frame turns into a human head (hair, ears). Every clip
  with the youngest is a close-up or medium close-up; a shot with 2-3 characters is heads-and-shoulders; when a
  group shot keeps failing, give the moment to one character alone.
- PROPS: list them once and name them the same way every time ("the big white flour bag", "the red vacuum").
- `[Ns]` = 4, 6 or 8. End with: "Soft 3D animated family film, bright warm colours, expressive cartoon faces.
  No music, no subtitles, no captions, no on-screen text of any kind."
## Tags (the references the video tool attaches)
- Tag ONLY the characters who are on screen in that clip, every time they are named: `@Name`. A character who is
  off-screen is named without @ ("Mom, off-screen") - a tagged character gets drawn into the frame.
- Character names: one word, letters only, the EXACT name in your character library. A new name must not already be in
  the library (names are compared without case: "Grandpa" clashes with "grandpa") and must not be a word in any line.
- Location tags: `loc` + one word (lockitchen, locflourmess), the exact reference image file name. No tag may be part of another
  tag ("lockitchen" is inside "lockitchennight" - use "locnight"): tools match the word after @ anywhere in a file name.
- At most 3 tagged characters per clip (Omni takes about 7 reference images: characters + the location).
- The tag is not a description. Repeat the look in words in every clip (outfit details that drift)
  ("the boy whose whole head is a round brown kiwi fruit"), and keep the same @tags across the whole story.
## Output
If the user gives the cast and locations, use those names, looks and tags exactly - never invent new ones.
If the user asks for part of the story ("the first 8 clips"), stop there; when they say "continue", go on with the
next numbers in exactly the same format.
1. CAST (one-word names not already in your character library), look, voice (slow and very clear).
2. LOCATIONS: one tag + empty-room image prompt per room AND per state of that room (clean / messy); unique tag names.
3. PROPS and the MESS STATES in order.
4. CLIPS, numbered, one per line.
5. TITLE: "[Kid] [made a mess]... Can [Sibling] Fix It Before [Parent] Comes Home? | Slow English Story A2".

# Fruit-head character sheets, places, voices and the edit
## 1. Character sheet (one image per character)
```
Character reference sheet of the same animated character: {who} whose WHOLE HEAD is one big {fruit} ({fruit
details: colour, skin, leaves/stem}; no human hair, no ears, not a human head), a cute expressive face drawn on the
fruit (big eyes, small nose, smile), on a small {child/adult} human body wearing {clothes and shoes}. Soft 3D animated
family-film style. Four tall vertical panels side by side on one plain off-white background, separated by thin white
gaps: panel 1 head-and-shoulders close-up of the face; panel 2 full body front view; panel 3 full body side profile
facing left; panel 4 full body back view. Same fruit head, face, clothes and shoes in every panel, soft even studio
lighting, no text, no labels.
```
Ratio 16:9. Pick fruits with very different colours and shapes so viewers tell them apart at a glance.
## 2. Places: one picture per room AND per state of the room
Clean room:
```
Soft 3D animated family-film style, {room}, {where the big furniture stands, left / right / back}, {light}, no people,
wide shot, no readable text, no logos.
```
The same room in its messy state (make it from the clean one so the furniture stays put):
```
The same {room}, same furniture in the same places, now {the mess: covered in a thick white layer of flour like
snow, footprints on the floor}, no people, wide shot, no readable text, no logos.
```
Save them as tags nobody says in a line: `lockitchen.jpg` and `locflourmess.jpg` (no tag may be the start of
another one). Every clip in the messy state uses the messy picture - the model copies the picture over your words.
## 3. Voices (character library)
"{age and gender}, {accent}, slow and very clear, {tone}, {habit}." Preview, save. Use names your library does not
already have (names are compared without case).
## 4. Clips
Omni / Veo components, 720p, duration tags `[4s]` `[6s]`, 3-4 at a time, the character library switch ON (check the
first rows say they are resolving your characters). Pilot the 3-5 hardest clips first. Every prompt ends with a
SOUND line for that clip. Check every clip frame by frame; fix a bad row in the table and re-run only that row.
## 5. Edit
- LINE clip: 0.4 s before the first word, keep about 2.5 s after the last word (the face reacting).
- Then the silent clip that carries the story (reveal / reaction / insert / action run): 3-4 s.
- About 13-15 cuts a minute, only 20-30 spoken words a minute.
- Captions: short bold words at the bottom, one line at a time.
- Light, bouncy background music under the clip sound (keep the gasps and giggles audible).
## 6. Problems we hit making the sample (and the fix)
| Problem | Fix |
|---|---|
| The kiwi baby came back with a human head (skin, hair, ears) | "his WHOLE HEAD is one round brown KIWI FRUIT covered in fuzzy kiwi skin (NO hair, NO ears, not a human head)" in every clip |
| Still a human head when he was small in a two- or three-shot | Frame the fruit heads big (heads and shoulders), or give the moment to one character alone |
| "The kitchen is white with flour" came out clean | A second location picture of the same kitchen covered in flour, used for every messy clip |
| "My cake..." (sad, no cake yet) had a finished cake on the table | Split the state: "clean, the table is EMPTY, no cake anywhere yet" vs "cake on the table" |
| Mom's legs walking in: a second pear head grew from the floor | Never a body part without its head; the insert became the floor only |
| The phone call insert showed a tiny phone in a wide kitchen | "extreme close-up of the pink smartphone, the phone fills most of the frame" |
| Clips were almost silent (a flour explosion with no sound) | A SOUND line in every prompt: the effects of that clip + gasps and giggles, no music |
| The model put half a second of another shot at the start of a clip | Trim the start in the edit |
| The clock hands spun backwards | "Only the minute hand moves, ticking forward one small step at a time" |