{ "vercy": "1.0-draft", "publication": { "status": "research-draft", "adjudicationStatus": "unreviewed", "publishableCanonical": false, "generatedAt": "2026-09-12T11:30:45Z", "providers": [ "Codex" ], "breadth": "recalled by Codex without web access - no source was read", "missingProviders": [], "pass": 2, "cost": { "grok": { "seconds": 21.4, "error": "Reading additional input from stdin...\nOpenAI Codex v0.153.4\n--------\nworkdir: R:\\02_PROJECTS\\02_Meta_Models_Platforms\\Ver.cy\\current\\thing-registry-backlog\nmodel: gpt-6-astra\nprovider: openai\napproval: never\nsandbox: read-only\nreasoning effort: none\nreasoning summaries: none\nsession id: 01a09561-5452-7201-92cb-8ef380502a5f\n--------\nuser\nDescribe what is already known about one registered thing. Answer as JSON only, no prose around it.\n\nThing: narrative technique\nSense to describe: (none recorded)\nDomain code: ACT.ACT\nAlso known as: (none)\n\n\nContext for this batch of 1001 things:\n# Batch 044: ", "usd": 0.0, "recall": true }, "codex": { "seconds": 66.3, "error": "Reading additional input from stdin...\nOpenAI Codex v0.153.4\n--------\nworkdir: R:\\02_PROJECTS\\02_Meta_Models_Platforms\\Ver.cy\\current\\thing-registry-backlog\nmodel: gpt-6-astra\nprovider: openai\napproval: never\nsandbox: read-only\nreasoning effort: none\nreasoning summaries: none\nsession id: 01a09561-5457-7c30-b1ae-654db6dfaef9\n--------\nuser\nYou are drafting a Vercy meta-model for one registered thing. Answer as JSON only, no prose around it.\n\nThing: narrative technique\nRegistry id: vr.tr.narrative-technique\nPlane / domain: ACT / ACT.ACT\nRegistry definition: (none recorded)\nNames folded into this " } }, "enrichment": { "pass": 3, "engine": "claude", "producedAt": "2026-10-06T12:00:00Z", "ingestedAt": "2026-10-06T08:41:26+00:00", "fields": [ "agent_conduct", "ethics", "failure_modes_and_hazards", "owners" ] }, "gate": { "passed": true, "version": "1.0", "at": "2026-10-07T10:10:25+00:00", "evidence": [ "completeness 1.00", "sense: Wikidata description", "2 live sources", "review by codex: pass" ] } }, "metaModel": { "id": "THING-Q10428845", "registryId": "vr.tr.narrative-technique", "name": "narrative technique", "version": "0.1.0-research.1", "entryKind": "thing", "family": "Thing Registry", "domain": [ "ACT.ACT" ], "status": "research-draft" }, "canonicalUrl": "https://ver.cy/models/thing/q10428845/", "model": { "registry_id": "vr.tr.narrative-technique", "name": "narrative technique", "purpose": "Enable an agent to recognise, compare and apply narrative techniques by recording how they shape storytelling, where they occur and what evidence supports their interpretation.", "definition": "A narrative technique is a method of constructing or presenting a story by organizing events, mediating perspective, or controlling the information available to an audience, although its boundary with literary device and narrative convention varies across critical traditions.", "scope_statement": "This model owns narrative technique as a repeatable way of selecting, arranging, presenting or withholding narrative material, including competing definitions, concrete uses, conditions of application and interpretations of its effects.", "in_scope": [ "Definitions of named techniques, their attribution to particular frameworks and disagreements about their boundaries", "Operations on narrative time, information, perspective, voice and presentation", "Evidence identifying a technique in a passage, sequence, performance or interactive experience", "Relationships among techniques, including combinations, dependencies and incompatible classifications", "Application choices, medium constraints and evidence for intended or observed audience effects" ], "out_of_scope": [ "The complete narrative work and its publication, production or ownership history", "Storyworld entities and events except as needed to describe their presentation", "Genres and narrative forms as whole-work classifications", "Themes, motifs and subject matter independent of how they are narrated", "General rhetorical or stylistic devices without an identified narrative function", "An author's biography or overall style beyond evidence relevant to a particular use" ], "distinguishing_features": [ "A candidate technique specifies an operation on telling or experiencing a story; a theme such as betrayal specifies what the story concerns.", "The operation can be described across different story contents; a particular betrayal or journey is an event, not by itself a technique.", "Identification requires evidence in presentation, sequencing or audience access; a claimed effect such as suspense alone does not establish which technique produced it.", "A genre or form can host multiple techniques, while a technique can occur within only part of a work and across different genres or forms.", "A stylistic device qualifies here when its narrative function is identified, such as repetition revealing conflicting memories rather than repetition considered only as verbal pattern." ], "characteristics": [ { "name": "Definition and interpretive framework", "kind": "relation", "unit_or_values": "Attributed definition linked to a reference, tradition or analytical framework", "why_it_matters": "The same label may identify different operations under different accounts." }, { "name": "Narrative operation", "kind": "category", "unit_or_values": "Reordering, pacing, repeating, withholding, disclosing, shifting perspective, layering narration or other explicitly described operation; multiple values allowed", "why_it_matters": "Identifies what the technique changes in the presentation of narrative material." }, { "name": "Narrative target", "kind": "category", "unit_or_values": "Event order, represented duration, event frequency, information access, narrator voice, focalization, narrative level or audience participation", "why_it_matters": "Separates techniques that use similar surface devices to manipulate different aspects of narration." }, { "name": "Occurrence extent", "kind": "measurement", "unit_or_values": "Start and end locators in words, panels, timestamps, scenes or interaction nodes, with medium and counting convention stated", "why_it_matters": "Makes an identification inspectable and distinguishes local uses from sustained patterns." }, { "name": "Identification status", "kind": "state", "unit_or_values": "Proposed, supported under a named definition, disputed or rejected", "why_it_matters": "Keeps ambiguous interpretation separate from well-supported identification." }, { "name": "Technique relationships", "kind": "relation", "unit_or_values": "Alternative label, broader operation, narrower variant, co-occurring technique, prerequisite or contrast; attribution required", "why_it_matters": "Supports comparison without treating every related label as interchangeable." }, { "name": "Effect evidence", "kind": "category", "unit_or_values": "Stated intention, analytical hypothesis, reported audience response or measured audience response", "why_it_matters": "Prevents an intended or inferred effect from being recorded as a demonstrated outcome." } ], "affordances": [ "Annotate a narrative occurrence with its technique, evidence, definition and alternative readings", "Compare candidate classifications by testing their required narrative operations", "Propose a technique for a storytelling objective and identify the information or structure it requires", "Revise a passage or sequence and inspect how the change alters time, perspective or disclosure", "Trace interactions among techniques across a work or branching experience", "Adapt a technique across media while recording what operation is preserved and what changes" ], "agent_conduct": { "may": [ "Explain and identify narrative techniques in texts, films and games, with examples.", "Help writers apply techniques such as flashback or unreliable narration in their own work." ], "must_not": [ "Present a technique's name or definition as fixed when critical traditions disagree.", "Use narrative techniques to make fabricated stories pass as real news or testimony.", "Reproduce long copyrighted passages to illustrate a technique.", "Present its own story techniques as a real person's account." ], "requires_human": [ "Publishing a narrative built from real people's lives." ] }, "ethics": { "considerations": [ "Storytelling shapes how people understand events; it can inform or manipulate.", "Real people written into stories deserve fairness and privacy." ], "affected_parties": [ "Readers and audiences", "Writers", "Real people depicted in stories" ] }, "owners": { "steward": "Nobody owns it; writers and critics share it.", "master_systems": [] }, "failure_modes_and_hazards": [ "Persuasive framing can make misinformation feel credible.", "Unclear perspective can confuse readers about who is speaking or what is true." ], "what_it_is_for": [ "Narrative techniques are used in fiction across prose, film, theatre and interactive storytelling to organize events and control an audience's access to information.", "Writers and critics use them to plan or explain effects involving perspective, suspense, pacing and the presentation of time." ], "facets_not_applicable": { "interfaces": "No generally applicable official standard or regulation governs narrative techniques as methods of fictional storytelling.", "recognition": "A narrative technique is an abstract method inferred from storytelling choices rather than a physical entity with visual identification cues." } }, "sources": [ { "id": "wikidata", "title": "Wikidata item Q10428845: narrative technique", "url": "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q10428845", "url_status": "live", "what_it_supports": "identity and sense of the item", "checked_by": "wikidata-api" }, { "id": "wikipedia-en", "title": "Wikipedia: List of narrative techniques", "url": "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_narrative_techniques", "url_status": "live", "what_it_supports": "general description of the item", "checked_by": "wikidata-api sitelink" } ], "structure": { "bundles": [ { "id": "definitions-and-boundaries", "name": "Definitions and boundaries", "description": "Establishes what counts as the technique and preserves differences among analytical accounts.", "rationale": "Recognition depends on an explicit definition rather than an assumed universal meaning for a familiar label.", "layers": [ { "id": "attributed-definitions", "name": "Attributed definitions", "description": "Records definitions together with the frameworks and terminology that make them usable.", "findings": [ { "id": "definition-dependent-recognition", "name": "Definition-dependent recognition", "description": "Record each proposed definition, its attribution and the conditions it gives for recognising an instance.", "questions": [ { "text": "What operation does this account call a narrative technique, and what conditions must an instance satisfy?", "kind": "definition", "id": "definition-dependent-recognition-q01" }, { "text": "Which reference or analytical tradition supplies this definition, and which alternative accounts use the label differently?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "definition-dependent-recognition-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "neighbouring-concepts", "name": "Neighbouring concepts", "description": "Distinguishes techniques from narrative content, forms, devices and effects.", "findings": [ { "id": "operation-versus-label", "name": "Operation versus label", "description": "Record the storytelling operation behind a label and explain overlap with neighbouring concepts without forcing exclusive categories.", "questions": [ { "text": "Does the candidate describe how narrative material is presented, what happens, a whole-work form or an audience effect?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "operation-versus-label-q01" }, { "text": "When a rhetorical device or narrative form also functions as a technique, what specific narrative operation justifies including it here?", "kind": "definition", "id": "operation-versus-label-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "narrative-mechanics", "name": "Narrative mechanics", "description": "Describes the changes a technique makes to temporal presentation, information access and narrative mediation.", "rationale": "An agent needs an operational account to distinguish techniques and apply them deliberately.", "layers": [ { "id": "time-and-sequence", "name": "Time and sequence", "description": "Tracks relationships between events and their order, duration and recurrence in the telling.", "findings": [ { "id": "temporal-transformation", "name": "Temporal transformation", "description": "Record temporal operations against an explicit reference sequence, preserving uncertainty when event chronology cannot be reconstructed.", "questions": [ { "text": "Does the technique reorder events, compress or expand their presentation, omit an interval or narrate an event more than once?", "kind": "definition", "id": "temporal-transformation-q01" }, { "text": "What event sequence and passage or scene boundaries support the claimed temporal transformation?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "temporal-transformation-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "voice-perspective-and-disclosure", "name": "Voice, perspective and disclosure", "description": "Separates who narrates, whose experience limits access and what the audience can know.", "findings": [ { "id": "distribution-of-narrative-access", "name": "Distribution of narrative access", "description": "Record changes in narrator, focalization, narrative level and disclosure as distinct operations where the chosen framework distinguishes them.", "questions": [ { "text": "Who speaks or presents, whose perceptions or knowledge constrain access, and what information is withheld from whom?", "kind": "definition", "id": "distribution-of-narrative-access-q01" }, { "text": "What evidence distinguishes a narrator change from a focalization shift, or unreliable reporting from merely incomplete knowledge?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "distribution-of-narrative-access-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "occurrences-and-interpretation", "name": "Occurrences and interpretation", "description": "Connects a technique-level description to inspectable uses and competing readings.", "rationale": "A named technique needs evidence of its operation in a particular narrative, including evidence that could challenge the identification.", "layers": [ { "id": "occurrence-evidence", "name": "Occurrence evidence", "description": "Locates the candidate use and records the cues and context needed to assess it.", "findings": [ { "id": "anchored-identification", "name": "Anchored identification", "description": "Record locators, observable cues and the surrounding material needed to infer the technique.", "questions": [ { "text": "Which passage, shot sequence, panel arrangement, performed segment or interaction path exhibits the proposed operation?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "anchored-identification-q01" }, { "text": "What is the smallest span that supports identification, and what earlier or later context must also be inspected?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "anchored-identification-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "alternative-readings", "name": "Alternative readings", "description": "Tests ambiguous identifications and distinguishes textual evidence from claims about creative intent.", "findings": [ { "id": "interpretive-tests", "name": "Interpretive tests", "description": "Record plausible alternative classifications, discriminating evidence and whether an intention claim has independent support.", "questions": [ { "text": "What alternative technique or ordinary narrative convention could explain the same cues, and what evidence would separate the readings?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "interpretive-tests-q01" }, { "text": "Is deliberate use documented by the creator, inferred from the work or unknown?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "interpretive-tests-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "application-and-composition", "name": "Application and composition", "description": "Records how to deploy a technique and how it interacts with other storytelling choices.", "rationale": "Application requires preconditions, placement and control over combinations, not just a technique name.", "layers": [ { "id": "deployment-conditions", "name": "Deployment conditions", "description": "Connects a proposed operation to the narrative material and audience knowledge it needs.", "findings": [ { "id": "actionable-deployment", "name": "Actionable deployment", "description": "Record the intended storytelling objective, prerequisites and concrete changes required to implement the technique.", "questions": [ { "text": "What audience knowledge, temporal reference or narrator arrangement must already exist for the proposed use to be recognisable?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "actionable-deployment-q01" }, { "text": "Which material should an agent move, repeat, omit, disclose or reframe to implement the operation?", "kind": "action", "id": "actionable-deployment-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "combinations-and-revision", "name": "Combinations and revision", "description": "Tracks reinforcement, interference and revision consequences among techniques.", "findings": [ { "id": "interaction-aware-revision", "name": "Interaction-aware revision", "description": "Record how a technique depends on or changes other operations, such as a perspective shift revealing information needed by a later surprise.", "questions": [ { "text": "Which co-occurring techniques reinforce this operation, depend on it or undermine its intended function?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "interaction-aware-revision-q01" }, { "text": "After applying or removing it, which disclosures, temporal cues and narrator-knowledge constraints must be checked?", "kind": "action", "id": "interaction-aware-revision-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "effects-and-medium-transfer", "name": "Effects and medium transfer", "description": "Assesses audience outcomes and the conditions under which a technique can be realised in another medium.", "rationale": "Technique labels do not guarantee effects or identical implementation across written, audiovisual, oral and interactive narratives.", "layers": [ { "id": "audience-effects", "name": "Audience effects", "description": "Separates intended effects from interpretations and observed responses.", "findings": [ { "id": "effect-claims-and-evidence", "name": "Effect claims and evidence", "description": "Record proposed outcomes such as suspense, surprise, intimacy or disorientation with their audience, context and evidential basis.", "questions": [ { "text": "Is the claimed effect a creator's intention, an analyst's interpretation or an observed audience response?", "kind": "provenance", "id": "effect-claims-and-evidence-q01" }, { "text": "How was the response assessed, and what evidence separates the technique's contribution from story content, prior knowledge and other techniques?", "kind": "measurement", "id": "effect-claims-and-evidence-q02" } ] } ] }, { "id": "medium-specific-realisation", "name": "Medium-specific realisation", "description": "Examines how medium resources and audience control enable or alter the operation.", "findings": [ { "id": "transferable-operation", "name": "Transferable operation", "description": "Record the operation to preserve, the medium-specific means of realising it and any changes caused by audience control over sequence or pace.", "questions": [ { "text": "Which part of the technique depends on verbal grammar, editing, panel layout, live delivery or interaction rules?", "kind": "boundary", "id": "transferable-operation-q01" }, { "text": "How can an agent preserve the relevant time, perspective or disclosure relationship in the target medium, including across available interaction paths?", "kind": "action", "id": "transferable-operation-q02" } ] } ] } ] }, { "id": "evidence-and-external-alignment", "name": "Evidence and external alignment", "description": "What the world already says about this thing, gathered so the model can be checked against it.", "rationale": "A model that cannot be lined up against existing standards, identifiers and practice cannot be adopted by anyone who already uses them.", "layers": [ { "id": "reported-evidence", "name": "Reported evidence", "description": "Findings from the breadth pass, kept separate from the structural claims.", "findings": [ { "id": "evidence-confidence-notes", "name": "Check these first", "description": "Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.", "evidence": [ "No sense was supplied; this description treats the term as a cross-media storytelling concept rather than a technique limited to prose fiction.", "The kinds listed are overlapping analytical groupings, not a standardized or exhaustive classification.", "Structuralist, rhetorical, and cognitive approaches emphasize different aspects of narrative; distinctions among narrator, point of view, and focalization require particular care." ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-confidence-notes-q01", "text": "Which of these check these first hold for the sense of narrative technique this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-kinds", "name": "Kinds and varieties", "description": "Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.", "evidence": [ "Temporal arrangement, including flashback, flashforward, and nonlinear sequencing", "Pacing through scene, summary, pause, and ellipsis", "Perspective and focalization, including restricted or shifting access to characters' knowledge", "Narratorial mediation, including unreliable narration and direct address", "Representation of consciousness, including interior monologue and stream of consciousness", "Framing and embedding, including frame narratives and stories within stories" ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-kinds-q01", "text": "Which of these kinds and varieties hold for the sense of narrative technique this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-real-world-use", "name": "Real-world use", "description": "Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.", "evidence": [ "Writing and revising fiction to shape suspense, characterization, and audience understanding", "Analyzing how literary narratives distribute information and represent experience", "Developing film and television scripts and editing sequences", "Designing branching stories and player-facing narrative in games", "Structuring nonfiction accounts while maintaining distinctions between documented events and reconstruction" ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-real-world-use-q01", "text": "Which of these real-world use hold for the sense of narrative technique this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-failure-modes-and-hazards", "name": "Failure modes and hazards", "description": "Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.", "evidence": [ "Unsignaled changes in time or perspective can make events and speakers difficult to distinguish.", "Withholding information without adequate preparation can make a revelation feel arbitrary.", "Unintended inconsistencies in a narrator's knowledge can undermine the narrative's internal coherence.", "Applying categories developed for one medium or tradition to another can obscure distinctive practices.", "Invented dialogue or interior thoughts presented as documented fact can mislead audiences in nonfiction." ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-failure-modes-and-hazards-q01", "text": "Which of these failure modes and hazards hold for the sense of narrative technique this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-regional-variation", "name": "Regional variation", "description": "Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.", "evidence": [ "Terminology and classification vary across languages, critical traditions, and storytelling communities; a taxonomy developed for European prose fiction is not universally applicable.", "Oral performance traditions may integrate repetition, audience participation, and performer commentary in ways that text-centered analysis does not fully capture." ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-regional-variation-q01", "text": "Which of these regional variation hold for the sense of narrative technique this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] }, { "id": "evidence-neighbours", "name": "Neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart", "description": "Recalled without web access and unsourced; every item is a lead to verify.", "evidence": [ { "name": "literary device", "difference": "A literary device can operate through wording or imagery without organizing a story; a narrative technique specifically shapes storytelling, though the categories overlap." }, { "name": "narrative structure", "difference": "Narrative structure is the resulting arrangement of a story's components; a narrative technique is a method used to produce or present that arrangement." }, { "name": "narratology", "difference": "Narratology studies narrative and its operations; a narrative technique is one of the practices it studies." }, { "name": "narrative genre", "difference": "A genre groups works through shared conventions and expectations; a technique can occur across many genres." }, { "name": "narrative perspective", "difference": "Perspective concerns the position from which events are perceived or presented; narrative technique also encompasses time, pacing, framing, and other methods." } ], "questions": [ { "id": "evidence-neighbours-q01", "text": "Which of these neighbouring kinds and how to tell them apart hold for the sense of narrative technique this model covers, and on what evidence?", "kind": "provenance" } ] } ] } ] } ] }, "openQuestions": [ "Which reference traditions should anchor the working definition of narrative technique, and where do they disagree about technique, device, strategy and form?", "Which named techniques require separate treatment because apparently equivalent labels encode different operations across languages or critical traditions?", "What evidence thresholds make disputed identifications, especially unreliable narration and ambiguous focalization, sufficiently consistent for agent annotation?", "Which claimed audience effects have empirical support, for which audiences and media, and under what comparisons?", "How should occurrence boundaries and technique identity be represented when interactive narratives let different audiences encounter different sequences?" ], "statistics": { "bundles": 6, "layers": 11, "findings": 16, "questions": 26 } }