Analogy (Levin) — A relation between plots in which the secondary action repeats the primary action’s pattern in a different key. §3.2.
Attention tax — This chapter’s term for the cost, in reader attention, of any material that diverts from the chain carrying the reader’s primary investment. The formal counterpart of Chapter 13’s empathy budget. §1.2, §3.8.
Braiding — The interleaving of two or more chains in discourse time: how often the narrative changes thread, at what points, and in what proportions. §6.1.
Braiding rhythm — The pattern of crossings across a whole book: even, accelerating, decelerating or interrupted. §6.6.
Chain — A sequence of scenes linked by causality in the sense established by Chapter 2 (Scene and Sequel), such that each descends from the one before. The defining requirement of a subplot. §2.1.
Character-system / plot-system — Woloch’s term for the arrangement of character-spaces into one structure of distributed attention; this chapter’s extension of it to the distribution of chains across a cast. §3.5.
Contrast (Levin) — A relation between plots in which the secondary action inverts the primary one. §3.2.
Convergence — The relation a secondary chain eventually bears to the primary one. Literal convergence is intersection in event; thematic convergence is relation without intersection. §6.1.
Convergence point — The page at which deleting a thread would break the main plot’s causal logic; the moment at which the subplot’s kernels become the main plot’s. §3.4, §7.1 test 5.
Crossing character — A character with business in two or more chains, whose crossings are motivated rather than convenient. §5.3. Called the hinge character in the first edition; renamed because Chapter 2 keeps hinge for its own term.
Digression — Non-narrative material occupying a subplot’s page-share; has no chain and cannot be assessed by this chapter’s tests. §2.4, §8.11.
Direct linkage (Levin) — A relation between plots in which the secondary action affects the primary one causally. §3.2.
Dormancy interval — The number of pages between consecutive appearances of a thread. The maximum interval, not the average, is diagnostic. §6.6.
Double plot — Two chains of comparable weight, neither clearly subordinate; the object of Empson’s and Levin’s studies. §2.4.
Entrelacement (interlace) — The medieval romance technique of following one thread to a point of suspension, announcing the departure, and taking up another. §6.2.
Kernel — Chatman’s term for a narrative moment that opens an alternative and cannot be deleted without destroying the narrative’s logic. §3.4.
Page-share — The percentage of a book in which a given thread is the primary business of the scene. §5.5, §7.1 test 7.
Presence is not a plot — The chapter’s shorthand for the distinction between a recurring character and a subplot: recurrence without a chain is not a secondary plot. §2.3.
Promotion — The structure in which a thread introduced as secondary is revealed to have been primary; and, in revision, the decision to restructure a book around a subplot. §6.4, §7.1 test 10.
Reinstatement cost — What a reader must expend to resume a dormant thread; a function of interval, distinctiveness, and whether the thread was suspended mid-question. §3.7, §6.6.
Satellite — Chatman’s term for a narrative moment that does not open an alternative and can be deleted without destroying the narrative’s logic, though the discourse is impoverished. §3.4.
Subplot — A secondary chain of causally linked scenes with its own goal, conflict and consequence, running alongside the main plot and competing with it for page count and attention. §2.1.
Temporal counterpoint — This chapter’s proposed sixth domain: a thread running on a different clock, whose function is to make the main plot’s pace legible and to let the book hold a duration it could not otherwise contain. §4.6.
Thematic alibi — The unfalsifiable defence of a functionless thread on the ground that it “explores the same themes”. §8.13.