Generally, an instance is a reference on an indivdual or an object in the real world, e.g. a person or one examplar of an object. This means also an object in a fictional world. An instance is unique in an ontology and represented as a child of a class of an ontology. Addtionally, an instance can get properties which are bounded to the class. In this way, the properties which an instance can get are restricted. If a property is set for an instance the property can be filled with a value. Values can have different data types, e.g. string or boolean values.
In this ontology an instance is defined one event of the analysed character. Thus, a literary character is represented by several instances. This differs from other ontologies because there, an individual is represented as one instance. But this ontology represent a feature of a literary character as one instance. Otherwise, it is not possible to include all facets of a character. See also Help for creating an instance.