Idea that the challenges a story’s protagonist faces, in overcoming their central dilemma, are analogous or even the same as, the challenges the story itself faces in being brought to a conclusion.
Or this way: the author’s writing struggle correspond’s to the character’s fictional struggle. Oedipous in Oedipous Rex faces the same hurdles as Sophocles writing Oedipous Rex. (What suggests this? How would you test this? How do you compare these — fictional action and real writing? And by ‘real writing’ I suppose we refer to the intellectual labor an author undertakes?)
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