Narrative pattern language
Winkletter • 12 May 2025 •
For my card project I need to start working on the text for the cards, updating them for my updated understanding of fiction. Today I worked on my “pattern language” for talking about stories. I essentially chatted with ChatGPT for several hours and made a few documents that summarize the framework.
- Narrative Pattern Language: A Google Doc with a high-level overview of the framework.
Tomorrow I’ll probably work from this document and a copy of my existing card text to start working on better, more succinct definitions. One basic reason the cards exist is to give writers a language they can use to talk about the text at the level of pages and paragraphs. It covers the first two domains of this pattern language–Subject and Structure–but I also sneak in two cards for Style.
| DOMAIN | PRIMARY LAYER | SUB‑LAYER | WORKING DEFINITION | KEY QUESTIONS for the writer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SUBJECT | Gestalt Subject | Genre, Milieu, and Concept | The macro “what kind of story is this?” frame that filters, captures, and converts readers. | What promise am I making about experience, world‑rules, and twist? |
| State | Character, Setting, and Prop | The stable nouns readers must track. | How many elements can my reader comfortably encode now? | |
| Change | Action (agency), Event (world), and Experience (interior) | The engine of transformation that creates rhythm and meaning. | Does each change recalibrate goals, stakes, or emotion? | |
| STRUCTURE | Gestalt Structure | Perspective, Pacing, and Plot (discovery order) | The reader‑facing orchestration of information. | What does the reader see, how fast, and in what sequence? |
| Time | Past, Present, and Future | A shifting frame, not a line—compress, expand, or braid as needed. | Have I stayed in the moment until its affordances are exhausted? | |
| Mode | Description, Introspection, and Dialogue | The discourse channel (world‑as‑seen, felt/thought, said/heard). | Which mode best delivers the next crucial cue? | |
| STYLE | Gestalt Style | Voice, Tone, and Accessibility | The unified aesthetic signature and reader “welcome mat.” | Does any shift here feel earned and foreshadowed? |
| Rhetoric | Representation, Coherence Patterns, and Distortion | How the text makes, arranges, and bends meaning. | What symbol, pattern, or bias is steering interpretation right now? | |
| Prosody | Rhyme & Rhythm, Beauty, and Significance | The music of the sentence—sound, cadence, emphasis. | Where should the prose breathe, sting, or sing? | |
| PROCESS (cognitive‑load management) | Development | — | Front‑load research, world‑modeling, or outlining to lighten later strain. | What must exist before drafting starts? |
| Drafting | — | Flow‑state composition; trust intuition and capture raw change. | Am I writing at my current skill ceiling without over‑monitoring? | |
| Revision | — | Re‑see the text as if reader‑new; refine signals, pacing, and clarity. | Where does the intended cue fail to land for a fresh eye? |
Comments
Yeah. I’m never happy to just follow the instruction sheet. I always want to take things apart and put them back together differently.
If anyone is interested in the inside baseball of writing fiction, you are the go-to guy!