I voted for "essential to the story" -- it seemed closest to what I was thinking. And we may be working from different definitions of "introspection" too... I'm counting any time there's any glimpse into the characters' heads. Like in my Lois example above. And I'm having a hard time envisioning a story without a shred of that kind of thing. OTOH, if we define "introspection" to be para after para of navel-gazing
then no, I wouldn't say that's essential.
I'll have to dig out some of my B7 fanzines, and see what the norm was there...
PJ
