The three “realities”

Stories sit at the intersection of three “realities.”

• the world as it is,
• the world as we perceive it, and
• the world as it could be.

I call these the real world, the perceived world, and the imagined world.

Every narrative lives in the tension between these three, because that’s where we all live.

We can see the distinction most clearly by starting with physical reality. We’re sitting on a small ball of rock spinning at 1,674 kilometres per hour, hurtling through space at 107,000 kilometres per second. And yet we are not clinging on for dear life. We feel still. Stable. Grounded.

That gap — between what is and what we feel — is our everyday experience.

Stories – all stories – work the same way. Like Pong, they come alive by bouncing between three walls:

• what characters believe,
• what is true, and
• what they fear or hope the world could become.

The Three Realities

Reality as it is.
The world’s underlying structure — physical, social, and emotional. Personal identity – where it is solid.

The “facts” the story world is built on. (And yes, is there such a thing as ‘objective reality’? I don’t know, but I do know that in my experience, something keeps bumping into my perceived reality.)

Reality as we perceive it.
Shared assumptions, private distortions, cultural habits, emotional filters. Characters operate from this reality, whether it’s accurate or not.

Reality as it could be.
The world of possibility and imagination — hopeful or catastrophic. Characters aren’t driven only by what they want to get; they’re also driven by what they’re trying to avoid. “What could be” includes both.

Every story, consciously or not, sits in the dynamic between these three layers.

In every moment of a story, every character has a worldview. They perceive the world a certain way. They perceive physical reality, social reality, political reality, emotional reality and psychological reality. And they perceive these through the four arenas where conflict can occur: the uncaring universe, society, intimate relationships, and personal identity.

Then they take their needs and desires, filter them through their imagined world of what could be – both good and bad – and decide how to pursue them.

Inevitably, this forces them to modify their worldview.

• Perhaps I’m too scared of rejection to ask him out.
• Perhaps she’s still angry with me, even though I thought she didn’t really care.
• Perhaps the neighbours will complain if I play music loudly at 2am.
• Perhaps the police will actually arrest me if I drunkenly dismiss the complaint.

The worldview that informed their choice turns to sand in their hands, and they have to revise it so they can try again.

And so on. It’s constantly happening to us in our lives, and needs to happen to your characters too.

A character tries to make the world the way it should be (or avoid what it could be), within a worldview that is incomplete or skewed. So, every time they try to create the imagined world, or prevent it, they run up against a new reality that they have to take into account.

Even in stories that argue there is no objective truth, the narrative still follows a progression that shuffles between versions of reality: a character begins with one understanding of reality and ends with another, and has to operate from that new reality.

Stories constantly bounce between these versions of reality: what is, what is perceived, and what is imagined.

Stories as Arguments About Change

At heart, most stories are arguments about whether change is:

1. Impossible — We have no real agency. Society won’t change. Deep down, people don’t change. The best we can do is defy fate or laugh in its face. If the response is heroic defiance, you get a tragedy. If it’s naively optimistic incompetence, you get a comedy. If it’s exploitation of others, you get a satire.

2. Inevitable — Change happens regardless of our choices. Systems grind on. The already powerful try to grab more power. Somebody invents something, and we lose all our privacy. All we can do is hang onto the raft, ride the rapids, and behave honourably towards the other passengers. Many epics take this form. ‘The Sands of Time’ stories. (And yes, I am saying that one kind of change (the accumulation of wealth in fewer hands) is inevitable because another kind of change (human greed) is impossible. Depends on how you tell the story.)

3. Possible but difficult — We can change ourselves, our relationships, and our world, but it takes work — and the work usually begins with us. Classic Contemporary Drama.

Each of these story types expresses a possible stance on the relationship between what is, what is perceived, and what could be.

Culture and Assumptions of Agency

You may not consciously choose which kind of story you gravitate to. It often emerges from the culture you grew up in, your temperament, and the kinds of stories you trust.

The hero’s journey paradigm currently dominates Anglo-Saxon cinema. So much so that it is often taken as the only viable form, when history tells us it is only one of three primary forms.

Is it a coincidence that this story paradigm came to dominate Anglo-Saxon cinema at the same time as neo-liberal capitalism, aka Reaganism and Thatcherism, came to dominate Anglo-Saxon politics?

Different cultures carry different assumptions about agency — and you can often see it in the sports they gravitate towards.

Cultures that believe personal effort determines outcome tend to prefer high-scoring sports. Basketball. AFL. Sports where skill has the time and space to assert itself. The worthy competitor usually wins. And, conversely, the loser is by definition unworthy. Until next time, perhaps.

Cultures with a more fatalistic view of agency often gravitate toward low-scoring sports like soccer, or sports with elements of ‘one fatal error’ like cricket. Games where luck, chance, timing, and tiny accidents have disproportionate influence. Winning or losing can be out of your hands, so while it’s better to win than to lose, neither makes a definitive statement about you.

The higher the scoring system, the more likely the “better” player wins.

The lower the scoring system, the more power luck has over agency.

Stories operate on the same principle. What your narrative rewards — skill, luck, effort, fate — shapes the kind of world your characters inhabit.

Why This Matters for Writers

Every story quietly makes an argument about:

• what reality is,
• how perception distorts it,
• what the world could become, and
• whether change is possible.

Understanding where your story sits and, more importantly, where you sit, with these questions, is key to the sort of stories you are drawn to. And will probably write.

Because, in the end, stories are our metaphoric messages to the audience about navigating the world. And every metaphor has a worldview embedded inside it.