Edition drift is usually blamed on the model, the way a misregistered sheet is blamed on the press. Look at the job tickets instead. The character was described from memory at every job, and memory edits as it goes: “silver-lilac hair in a side fishtail braid” on the first sheet becomes “flowing lavender waves” three sheets later, and the audience watches a stranger quietly join the run. The repair is clerical, not mechanical. Write the character down once, on a tag you paste rather than retype — a tag spec the whole run is kept to.
Five set lines, always in order
A working tag spec holds five things. Age — a number, and in this shop a mature one, 30 or over. Hair — colour, length and one habitual style. Build — two or three words, no more. Face — one or two details that endure every crop. Signature — the mole, the ring, the mark that survives even a tight frame. Everything else belongs to the changing line: outfit, room, hour, light, pose. Changing lines are meant to change at every job. Spec lines are not.
Two habits keep the tag honest over a long run. Lines are stated plainly and positively — “silver-lilac hair in a loose side fishtail braid tied with a black velvet ribbon” survives the press, while “beautiful hair” is reinterpreted at every attempt. And the tag is versioned like a reprint: 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 old edition can still be reprinted exactly as it was first pressed.
Working from the tag
Production then becomes a calm routine. Pair the spec with changing lines that share one room and one light, and print the edition at the standard model’s 6-credit cost. Keep the best third. Spend on corrections, plates and finishing only after the cull. When a sheet returns off character, the cause is almost always visible on the ticket: a changing line contradicted a spec line, or a line was too vague to hold her. Both are fixed on paper, at the desk — not by hunting through settings at the press.
What a tag spec cannot do
It cannot hold a character who was never decided. If the lines are adjectives — lovely, striking, perfect — no press in any shop will keep her, because there is nothing set in type to keep her to. Decide her on paper first. The tag spec is not where the imagination happens; it is where the imagination is kept, sheet after sheet, so that months from now a new entry in the edition can still be laid beside the very first one and found to be the same woman, in registration.