SOSX®, AI-enabled systems thinking, for any sector.
The SOSX book series
Redstring: Worlds That Hold Together
For storytellers, world builders and brand narrators
Written for storytellers, world builders and brand narrators. It accompanies Redstring.
A companion to Seeing the Whole System, applied to a single field: building story worlds, keeping them consistent, and, because a brand is a story world too, writing commercial copy that holds together.
It opens with the soap opera test: the moment a long-running world contradicts itself and the audience notices before the writers do. From there it treats the story world as a system: characters, factions and places joined by typed connections that carry tension, stakes and power. It shows how plot holes, pacing problems and canon drift are structural: findable, and fixable, before the audience finds them.
The shape is the series' shape: the craft first, the machine last. Parts I and II are the practice (the canon workshop, arcs and dependencies, the cast read as stakeholders, the plot-hole hunt, pacing as behaviour over time, what-if writing and keeping canon alive across seasons and sequels) all of it doable with index cards and a wiki. Part III turns the same eye on brand narrative. Only Part IV reaches the machine, and it is careful about it: what the machinery does, what stays the writer's, and Redstring, which delivers the whole discipline as a product.
It is written for storytellers, world builders and brand narrators, and it stands on its own; you do not need the central book first, though the two are better together.
Inside the book
Part I, Story worlds as systems
Chapters 1–11. The street as a system; typed connections, betrays, protects, rivals, loves; the flows a story runs on, from emotion and tension to stakes and power; feedback loops in plot; emergence; the iceberg of backstory; leverage points in canon; the thirteen political games as a faction plot generator; masks and scripts, and why characters stay themselves; cultures with different physics; and the moral-dilemma engine of right against right.
Part II, The craft
Chapters 12–21. From premise to world model; the canon workshop; arcs and dependencies; the cast as stakeholders: who can actually stop the story; the lore bible as a derived artefact; the plot-hole hunt; pacing as behaviour over time; what-if writing; reverse-modelling a story that already exists; and keeping canon alive across seasons, sequels and DLC.
Part III, Brand stories are story worlds too
Chapters 22–25. The brand narrative as a story system: message architecture as canon, copywriting through systems eyes, and consistency by construction for marketing teams.
Part IV, The machine
Chapters 26–29. The six-step flow retold for a story world; grounded research that gives fiction real-world texture with receipts; what the machinery carries method by method, and what stays the writer's; and Redstring, powered by SOSX: what it does and who it is for.
Plus a glossary and further reading in the appendices.
From the series’ shared figure library, the same illustrations you’ll find in the book.
And for the whole argument in one place, start with the central book: SOSX: Seeing the Whole System.