Today I published the STEPINQUEST® White Paper.
This document introduces a narrative genre developed through more than a decade of sustained conceptual and practical work. It emerges from direct engagement with complex structures of evidence, narrative form, and institutional processes, and from a long effort to understand how investigation can operate within these structures — and act upon them.
STEPINQUEST® is defined as an investigative narrative genre. It also establishes a conceptual, methodological, and operational framework through which this genre can be applied in practice. In STEPINQUEST®, narration does not merely represent events, but functions as an active component of the investigative process itself.
The framework integrates documentary evidence, step-by-step analytical logic, and institutional engagement into a single structure oriented toward both reconstruction and intervention. Narrative here is not a form of presentation, but a working instrument — a way of organizing evidence, articulating claims, and bringing them into contact with legal, administrative, and public domains.
Unlike conventional investigative or narrative forms, STEPINQUEST® does not culminate in a finished account. The investigation unfolds through the narrative and continues through its effects. Legal responses, institutional reactions, and shifts in public discourse are not external outcomes, but part of the process itself.
The white paper formalizes this genre as a transferable model, applicable across investigative, academic, journalistic, and media practices. It is particularly suited to cases involving unresolved, historically distant, or structurally obscured events, where evidence is fragmented and institutional response remains incomplete or absent.
This publication marks the formal articulation of STEPINQUEST® as a distinct narrative genre. It is proposed not as a closed system, but as a structure to be applied, tested, and developed in practice.
This is an attempt to define a form that was missing.
The document is available here:
https://karagodin.com/whitepaper/stepinquest
Published April 3, 2026.
Support
This work is produced as part of Denis Karagodin’s independent research and writing.
Its continuation is sustained over time through personal effort and, in part, through public support.
Further information: karagodin.com/donate
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