How to get INCLUDEd variables to be written by state.ToJson

Greetings,
I understand the basic idea of how to write/save a Story state. Namely:
...state.ToJson()

However I just discovered that variable brought into the Story object via an INCLUDE do not seem to get saved! I looked at the json produced to confirm this. Variables coming from the master file that called the INCLUDE do get written. Just not the ones in the INCLUDE. This is extremely unfortunate as we isolated all our variables across multiple Story(ies) in an INCLUDE. Is there some way to signal to 'To.Json' to include all variables? Namely and especially the INCLUDEd ones?

Thanks in advance.
Luke Hughes
lead (Burden of Command)