An Anomaly-Integrated Consistency Model for Complex Narrative Worlds

Abstract

This project develops a unified structural framework—Consistency Theory—for understanding how narrative worlds maintain coherence through the integration of anomalies, cognitive fluctuations, cultural distortions, and multi-directional causal structures. Rather than treating contradictions, gaps, or irregularities as failures, the model interprets them as structural resources that enrich narrative meaning and reflect the complexity of real human cognition and cultural evolution. The study synthesizes insights from narratology, cognitive science (including distributed cognition and extended mind theory), cultural evolution, and complex systems. It demonstrates that narrative consistency does not arise from linear foreshadowing or rigid causal chains, but from higher-order structures that allow causality to flow from the future, present, past, or across multiple domains simultaneously. The model explains why modern storytelling—especially long-form historical dramas, meta-narratives, and AI-era fiction—often relies on recursive representation, structural convergence, and retroactive coherence rather than traditional “foreshadowing.” A series of appendices provides detailed taxonomies of emotional variability, anomaly integration, sociological mechanisms that stabilize degraded knowledge, the role of contradiction and narrative gaps, advanced meta-narrative structures, and multi-directional causality. Together, these components offer both theoretical foundations and practical tools for authors and researchers designing complex narrative worlds.