This is an organized glossary of terms for the Metaphysics of Story.

General

Storytelling – The presentation characters (and societies) pursuing happiness within a given reality, especially as those pursuits form the basis of a conversation about morality and the pursuit of happiness. 

Morality – The criteria we hold about what makes a person deserving of happiness.

Happiness – The way we describe a desirable mix of personal sensations. 

Sadness – The way we describe an undesirable mix of personal sensations.

Four Levels of a Story: 

Presentation – Presented Details – Told – 

• The use of a medium to convey the details of a story.
• Properties:

• POV: The perspective through which details of the story are available to be presented.
• Sequence: The order in which the events of the story are presented.
• World: The reality in which the story takes place.
• Societies: Groups of individuals with some level of collective beliefs, desires, values, and actions.
• Characters: The individual entities that have a pursuit of happiness.
• Exposition: When the details are presented specifically for the audience to understand the story’s context.
• Continuity: Ensuring the events of the story are literally possible within the given framework.
• Techniques:
  • Revelations: When a detail is revealed at a specific time for maximized audience impact.
  • Symbols and Motifs: Strategically presented cues used to increase narrative depth and cohesion.
  • Pseudo-Theme: The actual commentary on the nature of reality and morality.

Subtext – Implied Details – Shown – 

• Details implied about the story based on what is presented
• Properties:

• Exposition: When the details of the story as they are implied by what is presented, using show-don’t tell methodologies.
• Theme: The implicit commentary on the connection between beliefs, values, desires, and choices and subjective consequences.
• Plot: The sequence and logic of events in the story.
• Techniques:
  • Show-Don’t Tell: Trust the audience to figure things about without having to spell everything out.
  • Theme-Environment Fit: When the details of the world help highlight the theme of the story.

Narrative: The Presentation and the Subtext of the story:

Emergent – Story as received by the audience – 

• What the audience feels or understands about the story based on the presentation and subtext.

World Immersion

• When the audience cares about the world, its locations, societies, technologies, forces, magics, creatures, and ecosystems.
• World-based Conflict: When the audience is worried that a happening will bring undesirable effects story world.
• World-based Tension: When the audience doesn’t feel like an aspect of the world is experiencing the results that they feel it deserves.
• Societies: Groups of individuals that have their own culture with its collective desires, abilities, values, and decision making processes. 
• Genre: The bounds and conditions for the audience’s suspension of disbelief.

Plot Buy-in

• When the audience cares about the progression and outcome of events within the story world. 
• Plot Conflict: When the audience is worried that their 

Character Investment

• When the audience cares about the fates of the characters.
• Character-based Conflict: When the audience is worried that a happening will bring undesirable effects on the characters.
• Character-based Tension: When the audience doesn’t feel like the character is experiencing the results that they feel they deserve. 

Thematic Engagement

• When the audience cares about the moral message(s) being presented by the story.

• Thematic Conflict: When the audience is worried that a certain detail will reveal that their moral beliefs will not be reflected in the story’s themes.

• Moral-Genre: The bounds and conditions for the audience’s thematic expectations.

• Thematic-Morality: The audience’s buy-in to the themes as presented by the story. 

• Theme: A pivotal truth around which character’s fate turns.

• Thematic Question: A pivotal truth around which the character’s fate will turn.

• Thematic Truth: The best or right stance on the thematic question as implied by the story.

• Thematic Choice: The point at which the character solidifies in their mind their stance relative to the thematic question.

• Thematic Conflict: when the character has to sacrifice in order to make the thematic choice.

• Passive Themes: When the character does not question their own stance toward the thematic question

• Active Themes: When the character questions their own stance toward the thematic question.

• In this theory how does questioning differ from being challenged on the thematic question?

• Timing of the Thematic Choice: The point(s) in the story at which the character makes their thematic choice. Sometimes the character makes the thematic choice early or they already made it prior to start of the story. 

Presentation and Aesthetics

• Tone: The general emotional state evoked in audience.
• Pacing: The rate at which the audience registers the passing of time in a story. 
• Flow: The audience’s experience of cohesion through shifts in presentation and aesthetics of the story.
• Craft: How well the storytellers use the elements of their medium to deliver an aesthetically pleasing presentation of the story.
• Plausibility: The audience’s perception of how well the story operates within its given reality.
• Suspension of Disbelief: Is the audience willing to grant the details presented by the storytellers for the sake of experiencing the story as intended?

Peripheral Influences

• When the audience relates to a story because of things about them rather than the story.
  • This is to catch those elements of personal influences that do not show up in other areas of audience engagement. 
• Nostalgia: When the audience’s previous positive experience with something will increase their engagement with this story.
• Social Relevance: When the Audience engages with a story with the intent to enjoy or discuss it with others.

Meta – Stories as seen in context of other stories –

• Ways to categorize and analyze a story.