Operationalizing Narrative Entropy (Sn) - A Two-Scene Registered Pilot Report and Pre-Validation Protocol - Version 2.1 (revised)

Sep 15, 2026

Uploaded by Aria

Narrative Entropy (Sn) is a proposed quantitative descriptor in the Bulut Doctrine that models how strongly a narrative text increases a reader’s interpretive and informational processing load. Prior to this work, Sn was theoretical and not operationalized on real texts. This registered pilot report operationalizes Sn on two manually coded narrative scenes and scores them via Sn = If × Cb × t, then specifies in advance how the next stage will test construct validity without claiming Sn is validated.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages9

Reading Time23 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

1 Introduction

1.1 The construct and the gap

1.2 The triggering objection

1.3 What this report is, and is not

2 Operational Definitions

arXiv : 2608 . 18 109v 1 [cs .CL] 20 Jun 2026 Operationalizing Narrative Entropy (Sn ) A Two-Scene Registered Pilot Report and Pre-Validation Protocol Version 2.1 (revised) Levent Bulut Independent Researcher ORCID: 0009-0007-7500-2261 [levent@leventbulut. com](levent@leventbulut. com | leventbulut.com)[ |](levent@leventbulut. com | leventbulut.com)[ leventbulut.com](levent@leventbulut. com | leventbulut.com) June 2026 Document type: Registered pilot report (pre-validation stage, v2.1) Framework: Bulut Doctrine / Objective Projection Version 2.1 Note. This version (v2.1) preserves the v2.0 pilot report in full and adds two pre-registered components in response to feedback received after v2.0 release. The additions are:(i) Section 4.5, acknowledging that the divergence reported in v2.0 as “contrary to expectation”is in fact consistent with the architectural framework of the Bulut Doctrine (Bulut, 2026a) which already privileges inferential reconstruction over surface declaration—the author’s v2.0 expectation was naive intuition, not theoretical prediction; (ii) Section 5.2.5, pre-registering a construct validity test for Information Friction (If ), motivated by the observation that the two scenes’ If values were nearly equal (1.71 vs 1.58) despite the headline divergence in Sn. No claims of v2 .0 are retracted. Section numbers from v2 .0 are preserved; new content is appended within the same numerical structure. Abstract Narrative Entropy (Sn) is a proposed quantitative descriptor within the Bulut Doctrine, intended to capture the rate at which a narrative text imposes processing load on a reader. To date the construct has been defined theoretically but not operationalized against real texts. This report documents the first such operationalization (the v2.0 pilot): two narrative scenes—the opening restaurant scene of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs screenplay and the opening interiormonologue block of Raymond Carver’s short story Cathedral—were coded manually by a single rater and scored with the candidate formula Sn = If × Cb × t. The result was a divergence from the author’s naive intuition. The single-voice monologue block (Sn = 30 .0) scored higher than the nine-character rapid-dialogue scene (Sn = 18 .8) . We treat this divergence not as a result to be explained away but as the central finding of the pilot, and we deliberately refuse post-hoc adjustment of the formula. We present three competing interpretations of the divergence—formula incompleteness, genuine high-load prose, and measurement error—and we specify, in advance of data collection, the design that would discriminate among them. This v2.1 revision adds two components: (i) explicit acknowledgement that the divergence is infact consistent with the pre-existing architectural framework (which privileges inferential reconstruction over surface declaration), and that what was called “contrary to expectation” in v2.0 reflects the gap between the author’s anticipatory intuition and the methodology’s own predictions; (ii) a pre-registered construct validity test for If, motivated by the observation that If values were nearly equal across the two scenes despite the headline divergence in Sn—suggesting that the formula may have produced the correct ordering by a mechanism (topic-shift counting) different from the one named in its theoretical motivation (inferential load) . This document functions simultaneously as a pilot report (n = 2) and as a pre-registration of the next-stage protocol. It explicitly does not claim that Sn has been validated. Keywords: narrative entropy, operationalization, pilot study, pre-registration, falsifiability, construct validity, Bulut Doctrine, computational narratology, processing load 1 Introduction 1.1 The construct and the gap Within the Bulut Doctrine, Narrative Entropy (Sn) is proposed as a measure of the rate at which a narrative imposes interpretive and informational load on its reader. The constr

FAQs

What is Narrative Entropy (Sn) and what does it attempt to measure?

Narrative Entropy (Sn) is a quantitative descriptor intended to capture the rate at which a narrative text imposes processing load on a reader within the Bulut Doctrine framework.

How is Sn operationalized in this pilot report?

Two narrative scenes are manually coded by a single rater and scored using Sn = If × Cb × t, where If is Information Friction, Cb is Causal Branching, and t is elapsed time.

Does this document validate Sn?

No. It serves as a registered pilot report (n=2) and a pre-registration of the next-stage protocol, explicitly stating that it does not claim Sn has been validated.

Sep 15, 2026

Uploaded by Aria