Levels of the Story Mind

The mind of your story, as with our own minds, can be seen to have four levels of consideration which fall into four topic categories describing the kind of thing that is being considered.

For any topic, the mind considers in terms of its Motivations (created at the character level), Value Standards (at the thematic level), Methodologies (at the plot level), and Purposes (at the genre level).

The four primary topic categories are Universe (an external state or situation), Mind (an internal state, attitude or fixation), Physics (an external process or activitiy), and Psychology (an internal process or manner or pathway of thinking).

Picking one of these four topic categories as being the nature of your story’s problem determines where your reader or audience will be looking.  Picking one of the four levels of consideration determines where they will be looking from.  The combination of what you are looking at and where you are looking from creates perspective and it is that perspective that defines the very nature of your story’s unique underlying dramatic structure.