Beat — One of the six named functions of the scene–sequel pair. A job done, not a quantity of prose; a beat may occupy a page or a subordinate clause. §2.4, §4.
Causal chain — The relation by which a scene’s disaster produces the following sequel’s reaction, and that sequel’s decision produces the following scene’s goal. §3.7.
Chain structure — A recognisable arrangement of scene–sequel pairs across a narrative, with characteristic benefits and costs. Twelve are tabulated at §6.3.
Compression — The setting of page-space against story-weight for a given beat. The principle is that the two should track each other; the failure is a default register applied regardless. §5.1.
Conflict — The resistance a goal meets, whose function is to change the goal’s shape rather than merely to postpone its achievement. §4.2.
Decision — The sequel’s terminal beat: a commitment to a new concrete objective, which becomes the following scene’s goal. §4.6.
Deferred decision — A sequel whose reaction and dilemma are shown but whose decision is withheld past a break, and later paid. §6.2.
Dilatory space — Brooks’s term for the narrative middle, which resists the ending it desires. The theoretical form of deferral. §3.2.
Dilemma — The weighing of options each of which carries a real cost, none obviously correct. §4.5.
Disaster — The scene’s terminal state: worse off, or a success whose cost exceeds its value, or a success revealed to have been the wrong goal. §4.3.
Displaced sequel — A structure in which the disaster belongs to one character and the reaction to another. §6.3.
Free goal — A scene goal with no origin in any prior decision. §8.1.
Function — Propp’s unit: an act defined by its significance for the course of the action, irrespective of who performs it. The direct ancestor of the beat. §3.3.
Goal — A concrete, immediate objective, legible before the resistance begins, specific enough that success can be scored. §4.1.
Hinge — This chapter’s proposed addition: the point between dilemma and decision at which the character’s criterion for choosing changes. Where arc happens. §4.7.
Motivation-reaction unit (MRU) — Swain’s sentence-level pattern of external stimulus followed by internal response; the causal chain at paragraph scale. §4.0.
Narrative desire — Brooks’s term for the reader’s want, produced and sustained by the text, for the end that will confer meaning on the middle. §3.2.
Proairetic code — Barthes’s code of actions: the reader’s capacity to recognise and name a sequence in progress. A goal is a licence to name the sequence. §3.3.
Propter hoc — “Because of this”, as against post hoc, “after this”. In logic, treating succession as causation is a fallacy; in narrative it is a competence. §3.1.
Reaction — The character’s registration of the disaster, which converts an external event into the internal state a decision can issue from. §4.4.
Recursive sequel — A sequel containing scenes within itself, each generating further reaction rather than resolution. §6.3, §9.1.
Scene (narrow sense) — The goal–conflict–disaster half of the pair. Distinguished throughout from the loose workshop sense used in Chapter 1, and from Genette’s sense of a duration relation. §2.3.
Sequel — The reaction–dilemma–decision half of the pair. Nothing to do with a follow-up volume. §2.1.
Stalled sequel — A sequel expanded past the point at which new considerations arrive; repetition mistaken for depth. §8.5.