# Design: Phelan's ADD Tangents — "The Noise"

**Date:** 2026-03-03
**Status:** Approved
**Scope:** Chapters 1-2 (retroactive), all future chapters

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## Problem

Phelan's internal tangents — involuntary pattern recognition, obsessive recalculation, spiraling analysis — are currently written inline as regular narration. Readers may not distinguish between "Phelan telling the story" and "Phelan's brain interrupting the story." The ADD brain is established in CLAUDE.md but not visible on the page.

## Solution

Two components working together:

### 1. The Term: "The Noise"

Phelan's private word for the constant background processing his brain does. Introduced early in Chapter 1 with a narrative passage establishing:
- It's involuntary and constant
- It's been with him his whole life
- He became aware it was different from other people around age fourteen
- It's not loud — it's persistent, like living next to a river

**Example introduction passage (after the first ward-jar tangent):**

> My brain did this. It always did this. I'd started calling it "the noise" when I was fourteen, when I'd realized that other people could apparently look at a shelf of bottles and just *see bottles*, without their mind automatically dismantling the preservation enchantments, cross-referencing the suppliers, and calculating the shelf-life variance based on storage temperature. The noise wasn't loud. It was constant. Like living next to a river — you stopped hearing it until someone pointed out that no, most people's heads were actually quiet.

### 2. Parenthetical Aside Format

After the introduction, tangent passages are formatted as **italicized parenthetical asides** — italics inside parentheses to visually distinguish involuntary brain tangents from regular narrative asides:

```
Regular narration here.

(*Short, clipped tangent thoughts. Sentence fragments. Rapid-fire observations.
Raw brain output without social niceties or full prose. The noise made visible.*)

Regular narration resumes, sometimes mid-action.
```

The `(*…*)` format works cleanly on Kindle and provides an immediate visual cue that this is "the noise" rather than a standard parenthetical.

## Rules for Parentheticals

### What qualifies:
- Involuntary pattern recognition (ward-jar flaws, reading people, shelf organization logic)
- Obsessive recalculation (meal counting, house cost math, savings arithmetic)
- Spiraling analysis he can't stop (scenario planning, cold reads, Flaw Sight activations)
- Background processing that interrupts the current moment

### What does NOT become a parenthetical:
- Regular narration and storytelling
- Deliberate, controlled analysis (when Phelan chooses to examine something)
- Dialogue or social observations that are part of the scene flow
- Backstory or world-building delivered through natural narration

### Style inside parentheticals:
- Short, clipped sentences and fragments
- No social padding — raw brain output
- Can vary in length: one line for a flash, full paragraph for a spiral
- Narrative snaps back after closing parenthesis
- Sometimes mid-action, showing the tangent happened *during* something else

### Frequency:
- **Chapter 1:** 4-6 instances (establish the pattern)
- **Subsequent chapters:** 3-5 per chapter (maintain presence)
- **High-stress moments:** More frequent, shorter, more fragmented
- **Hyperfocus/crash scenes:** Parentheticals may take over — the aside becomes the narrative, the real world becomes the interruption

### Narrative payoff:
- Occasionally, a parenthetical tangent contains the key insight that solves a problem
- This rewards readers for paying attention to "the noise"
- The tangent that matters looks identical to the ones that don't — the reader learns to read them all

## Implementation Scope

### Chapter 1 changes:
1. Add "the noise" introduction passage after the ward-jar tangent (around line 21)
2. Convert the ward-jar analysis (lines 15-19) to parenthetical format
3. Convert the meal-counting habit (line 51) to parenthetical
4. Convert the cold-read of Mere (lines 105-117) — partial, the initial rapid-fire observations
5. Convert the hand-brush overthinking (lines 169-173) to parenthetical
6. Convert the house-cost arithmetic (lines 233-236) to parenthetical
7. Add 1-2 new brief parenthetical flashes to establish frequency

### Chapter 2 changes:
1. Convert the scenario planning section (lines 7-28) — the bold scenario headers stay as narration, but the obsessive detail within them becomes parenthetical
2. Convert the kettle efficiency analysis (lines 89-92) to parenthetical
3. Convert the house-plan second-bedroom spiral (lines 271-279) to parenthetical
4. Add 1-2 new brief parenthetical flashes

### CLAUDE.md updates:
- Add "the noise" convention to the Writing Style Guide
- Add parenthetical formatting rule to KDP Formatting Rules
- Update Phelan's voice guidelines to reference the convention

## Kindle Compatibility

Parentheses are standard typography — no rendering issues on any Kindle device or app. No special CSS or formatting required.
