# Misbelief, Desire, and Worldview — Story Genius

## The Misbelief

The misbelief is a false conclusion about how the world works, rooted in a painful past experience, that governs the protagonist's behaviour. It is the internal problem the novel will force the protagonist to confront.

### What the Misbelief Is
- A **coping strategy** that once made sense given the protagonist's history
- Not a personality flaw or character trait — it is a worldview
- It **protected** the protagonist once; now it imprisons them
- It feels exactly like truth to the person holding it
- It actively shapes every subsequent decision, relationship, and interpretation

### What the Misbelief Is Not
- A generic flaw ("she has trust issues")
- A surface-level problem ("he's afraid of commitment")
- Something the protagonist is aware of as false
- Static — it must have deepened over time through reinforcement

### Requirements for a Story-Worthy Misbelief
1. **Specific** — traceable to a concrete origin experience, not a general tendency
2. **Earned** — the reader can understand why the protagonist reached this conclusion
3. **Active** — currently shaping decisions and relationships (not sitting inert in backstory)
4. **Challenged by the What If** — the story's premise must directly threaten it
5. **In conflict with the desire** — desire and misbelief are locked in permanent tension

### Examples of Misbelief Specificity

**Too vague**: "She doesn't trust people."
**Specific**: "She believes that letting anyone see her real feelings will get her abandoned, because that's exactly what happened when she was twelve and told her mother the truth about her stepfather, and her mother chose him."

**Too vague**: "He's afraid of failure."
**Specific**: "He believes that any visible imperfection will be used against him, because his father publicly humiliated him at age eight for coming in second at the science fair."

## The Desire

Something the protagonist has wanted, perhaps for years, that they may have suppressed, rationalised away, or convinced themselves they don't need.

### The Desire-Misbelief Tension
- The desire and misbelief are in **permanent conflict**
- Every time the protagonist moves toward what they want, the misbelief sabotages them
- Often the sabotage is unconscious — the protagonist doesn't recognise what they're doing
- This tension is what creates the internal urgency that carries the reader through hundreds of pages

### Requirements
1. The desire must be something the protagonist genuinely, deeply wants — not a surface goal
2. It must be directly blocked by the misbelief
3. The reader must be able to feel both the pull of the desire and the grip of the misbelief
4. The novel's job is to force the protagonist into a situation where maintaining the misbelief becomes impossible — where they must change or be destroyed by their own false worldview

## The Worldview

The complete subjective interpretive filter through which the protagonist processes every experience.

### What Worldview Is
- The specific, idiosyncratic lens ground by the protagonist's past experiences
- Determines what they notice and ignore, what frightens them, what they refuse to see
- The brain's prediction engine — it constantly uses past experience to generate expectations about the present
- The novel is the story of what happens when reality refuses to match these predictions

### What Worldview Is Not
- A bird's-eye view of the story's setting
- Point of view (the narrative perspective — first person, third person, etc.)
- General philosophy or political outlook
- Personality — worldview is specifically the protagonist's belief system about how the world works

### Three Common Misconceptions
1. **Worldview is backdrop** — No, it is the foreground of all meaning
2. **Worldview is static** — No, it must change (or there is no story)
3. **Worldview equals personality** — No, it is specifically the belief system about how the world works, shaped by specific past experiences

## Excavation Process

To develop misbelief, desire, and worldview:

1. Start with the What If — what internal conflict does the premise imply?
2. Ask: who would be most affected by this premise, and why?
3. Identify the desire: what has this person wanted for years?
4. Identify the misbelief: what false conclusion prevents them from getting it?
5. Trace the misbelief to a specific origin experience
6. Verify the tension: is desire in direct conflict with misbelief?
7. Check that the What If directly threatens the misbelief
8. Write the origin scene (see story-genius-origin-scenes.md)
9. Write escalating backstory scenes showing the misbelief deepening
10. Return to step 4 and deepen — each pass reveals more

The process is iterative. Expect to revise misbelief, desire, and worldview multiple times as you learn more about the protagonist through writing.
