Story-processing systems have to deal, or avoid dealing, with INFERENCE CONTROL..6, 11, 13; when designing one such system2, we were greatly helped by the "(ERC)RC" expression for connotation1. Our system is specialised in multifaceted descriptions of characters (not, however, in the most difficult problems of beliefs about beliefs4 and 8): here we present another aspect of the story character processing, namely the recursive EXPLANATION of inconsistencies appearing in the description of a character.We give a very schematic system overview, then some details about the CONNOTATION rules and an example of their application to a story.