Foundation concepts

Your first reading #

Use this chapter to learn four distinctions: who or what an element represents, what a connection claims, what a classification describes, and what an intended feeling can establish. You can look up individual category values when you need them.

1. Read identity and connections: separate participants, conditions, occurrences and possibilities, then ask what links them.
2. Read the explanations and examples in semantic coordinates and emotion. The complete reference material follows each explanation; you do not need to memorize it.
3. Read scope and identity, then try the application checks before continuing.

Return to Activity profiles when comparing how an activity develops, and Spaces and axes when choosing classifications. Both remain part of this chapter; the reading route gives you an order for approaching its full material.

Identify the thing you mean #

First ask: am I describing a participant, a condition, an occurrence or a possibility? In our Hobbit example, Bilbo is a traveler, Gollum blocks his way, and a ring makes Bilbo invisible. Bilbo spares Gollum and leaps past him. (spoiler alert!)

Bilbo is the participant; his invisibility is a condition; the leap is an occurrence. Being caught is a possibility, not something the leap establishes.

A node represents a distinct story element: an actor, state, possible outcome, actual occurrence, storyline or Action frame. An actor is not its changing condition. A projected outcome is not an event that has happened. Two similarly worded occurrences can remain distinct.

Ask what a connection asserts #

Ask: what would this connection let me say? Linking Bilbo as the subject of “spares Gollum” identifies who acts. Using that occurrence as evidence for a choice supports a reading of the progression. Neither link, by itself, says that sparing Gollum causes every later event.

A grammatical connection composes a clause. A causal connection asserts order or influence. A checkpoint connects a progression to actual evidence. Each connection makes a different claim.

Semantic coordinates #

Ask: what aspect of meaning am I describing? A classification helps you state a reading precisely. For example, Bilbo’s restraint can be read as a decision about how to treat another being: the concern is relational, and the tension becomes a choice. These are two answers to two different questions.

An axis is one classification question. The sphere of existence axis asks where a concern unfolds: internally, between people, in a system, in our account of existence, or beyond ordinary selfhood. A second axis can ask how a limitation is being confronted. The chapters on the story model’s four levels explain the applicable values before using them. Choosing one named value on each applicable axis gives a semantic coordinate.

For the thematic reading above, relational / decision records the domain and the kind of turn. Another occurrence could have the same coordinate. The shared classification would not make it the same event or prove that either interpretation is supported.

For a first pass, continue to emotion once you can explain why a shared classification does not mean a shared identity. The reference below explains the dimensions and counts.

Reference: axes and dimensions

A node represents an identifiable story element in the graph. A discrete semantic space describes meaning through a finite number of axes. Each axis has a finite set of named values, called an enumeration.

One axis makes a 1D space; two make a 2D space; three make a 3D space. A small illustrative system with two domains and three stages has 2 × 3 = 6 possible combinations. Dimensions count axes, independently of a story-model level or node membership.

Coordinates classify meaning. Several nodes can share a coordinate, and each position permits many concrete realizations. They are neither unique identities nor positions on the graph canvas. Enum indexes do not measure quality, probability, or semantic distance. Different categories use different applicable axes.

Emotion: a Hybrid 4D Matrix #

What feeling do you want the telling to invite? In the mercy example, Gollum remains dangerous, but Bilbo spares him. For a screen treatment, “uneasy sympathy” names a feeling we might invite in viewers. The telling needs to support it.

Describe four aspects of the intended feeling: how pleasant it is, how activated it is, how much control it conveys, and how expected or surprising it is.

Name the emotion you want to evoke, then describe it by choosing one named value on each of the four axes. MythOS calls this the Fontaine–Scherer-inspired Hybrid 4D Matrix. The name expresses the particular feeling, such as “uneasy sympathy”; its coordinate makes four aspects of that feeling explicit.

Complete example: for a teaching interpretation of Bilbo’s mercy toward Gollum, “uneasy sympathy” might use displeasure / alert / vulnerable / uncertain, in valence / arousal / dominance / predictability order. We want viewers to notice suffering, stay attentive, feel exposed to danger and remain unsure of the outcome. Here, “uneasy sympathy” describes the feeling we want to invite in viewers. Bilbo’s feelings are a separate question.

Choosing adjacent values: use alert when you intend watchful attention to the danger; choose calm for a settled response. Here displeasure emphasizes suffering, whereas neutral would withhold a pleasant/unpleasant emphasis. Choose vulnerable for exposure to danger and uncertain because the outcome remains open. Explain the intended emphasis before adjusting a value. Another supported reading can choose differently; the label “sympathy” does not dictate one correct coordinate.

On a first reading, explain why the example is watchful, exposed and uncertain. Then continue to scope and identity, or explore the four sliders below to compare the values.

Reference: the four axes and their values

Johnny R. J. Fontaine and Klaus R. Scherer, with Etienne B. Roesch and Phoebe C. Ellsworth, identified evaluation–pleasantness, potency–control, activation–arousal and unpredictability in their 2007 study, The World of Emotions Is Not Two-Dimensional. MythOS adapts these dimensions into a categorical matrix for story authoring. The labels below are the application’s vocabulary, not the paper’s original measurement scale.

The axis named predictability runs from routine to shocking, including unresolved uncertainty and abrupt surprise. Its name is not a numerical probability. Each axis has seven categorical values, giving 7 × 7 × 7 × 7 = 2,401 possible coordinates. This counts label combinations, not a catalog of 2,401 distinct emotions. Different authored names can share a coordinate. Labels such as mania describe a category here, not a clinical diagnosis.

Seed tone, relationship feeling, storyline-intent feeling and action-phrase feeling each contain one emotion. New authoring values start explicitly at neutral / alert / balanced / neutral; these defaults express an authored starting point. All four coordinates are required. Only a shot’s audience experience can combine simultaneous emotions in an unweighted list. Do not average categorical coordinates.

These coordinates describe the feelings you want to evoke in viewers. Judge how well the telling supports them by examining the material; the coordinates alone cannot tell you how viewers respond or how a character feels. Follow realization and abstraction to see how the same vocabulary connects intention with concrete presentation.

Activity profiles #

What changes the activity over time? Start with the garden in the Average profile: preparation builds capacity, opening begins visible work, and harvest releases what was grown. Read the scenario alongside the curve to connect its shape to events. Compare the other four profiles when you want to test a different pattern.

These profiles explore how an activity can develop over a stretch of story time. An energy phase is a named kind of movement, such as preparation (charge), intensification (amplify), or interruption (disruption). It describes what happens, separately from how high the activity appears on the curve. These are possible patterns, not mandatory plot structures.

Reading the reference: Average is an illustrative baseline, not a statistical average. Height describes relative activity in the scenario, not a percentage or an enum coordinate. Energy phases describe what is happening: a release can occur at different heights; disruption can interrupt any part of a progression.

Phases can repeat or be skipped, and their durations differ. The numbers on each curve locate events described below. These five original comparative scenarios are separate from our running Hobbit interpretation. They explore possible patterns rather than supplying events from the novel. In each writing exercise, a Storyline node states an intention and uses action memberships to develop it. Realization develops that contract into concrete material; abstraction reads the material to reconstruct the commitments it expresses. The exercises call this reading back Reconstruct, matching the corresponding app operation. Selecting a profile does not generate story content.

Use realization and abstraction to move between the intended pattern and its concrete evidence. For your own work, choose manual authoring or optional generation; the graph’s shape alone cannot verify dramatic causality.

Spaces and axes #

Which questions apply to this kind of element? Describing the leap asks what happens and who acts; describing uneasy sympathy asks what feeling the telling invites. They need different classifications. Use the table to find the applicable axes when you reach the chapter about that element’s level in the story model.

Reference: categories and their axes

This inventory maps the categories developed in the chapters on the story model’s four levels. A transcendent ideal names an ultimate ideal of overcoming a human limitation; a thematic arc develops a question or tension; an actor is a participant; and an action describes what a participant does. A catalog is a collection of named categories and their meanings. Actualization describes how an aspiration is blocked, sought, built, or embodied. These are the main axes used across the story model’s Levels 0–3: intent and context, story structure, dramatic action, and presentation. The four-axis emotion model connects emotional intention with concrete telling. An axis offers a finite set of named values; choosing one value on each applicable axis gives a semantic coordinate. Each single axis is a 1D discrete space; a catalog combines applicable axes for a particular category. Structural sequence is listed separately. Emotion dimensions are separate from the story model’s levels: a 4D emotion coordinate can appear at more than one of those levels.

20, 45, 144 and 2,401 count possible label combinations, not populated catalog entries or universally appropriate realizations. Actual phrase coordinates combine dialectic, energy and voice; Action frame nodes group checkpoint evidence with their own applicable coordinates. Projected outcomes describe possibilities, and states describe conditions. These categories do not all use the same coordinate shape. Inspect supported fields in the current interface.

Scope and identity #

Ask: does this element change identity when I discuss it somewhere else? Referring to Bilbo in a later chapter still refers to the same participant. In a hypothetical imagined version where he kills Gollum, the imagined occurrence belongs to that account; it does not replace the mercy occurrence in the main story.

Chapter ownership identifies where a participant or piece of dramatic evidence is first analyzed at the story model’s dramatic-action level (Level 2). Representation scope distinguishes the main reality from an embedded account or imagined demonstration. Stage membership describes a storyline’s structure. Keep these distinctions when following node connections.

Check your understanding and continue #

Try answering before opening each explanation. Use the earlier examples and reference tables as needed.

You are ready to continue when you can distinguish a participant, state, occurrence and possibility; explain what a connection claims; and separate classification and emotional intention from proof. Remembering every axis value is unnecessary. Continue to Nodes and relations to connect Seed, Storyline and Action frame, or inspect the built-in example to practise these distinctions.