Interactive Storytelling
Communicative effect = effect in the interactor’s mental state; a cognitive or affective effect.
Behavioural effect = observable by others; often linked to communicative effects.
—> An Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN) will always have intended communicative effects but
can lack intended behavioural effects.
Historical context: storytelling is a long and rich tradition.
—> Aristotle’s Poetic: tragedy versus comedy, narrative forms (epic/dramatic), dramatic structure.
—> Narratology including French structuralism: discipline studying narrative principles and
narrative representations.
Russian formalism: a new view on the structure of stories. It divided the story into 3 layers:
1. Fabula: logically and chronologically related series of events caused or experienced by the
characters in the storyworld.
2. Sujet: the finished arrangement (i.e. the plot) of the narrated events as they are presented to the
reader.
3. Media/text: the surface of the story expressed in language signs.
The structuralist approach of Russian formalism led to different models, one of which is Vladimir
Propp’s analysis of Russian folktales and its characters.
There are many definitions of a narrative, but ours is that it represents a specific chronological
event sequence as experienced by specific persons in a specific spatiotemporal setting.
—> A narrative consists of a story and discourse (its telling).
—> Story: the ‘what’; content; chronological sequence of events of a timeline (plot, fabula, arc). It
has a connotation, sometimes a negative one (as if you are making something up, such as a lie).
—> Discourse: the ‘how’; expression; (re)presentation of the story, which is the result of the act of
narration. For example, Harry Potter books but also movies, games, etc.
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,Story structure = plot = sequence of events on a timeline = event structure.
—> Event: a change of state, something happening, usually involving a character.
—> Plot event: a plot event is an event that is dramatically significant.
—> Plot event = plot point = narrative turn.
—> Oftentimes, there is causality: ‘a cause-and-effect chain of events’.
—> Manifold story: if the story can be different in each play by the interaction.
Discourse structure: the order in which the events are told.
—> For example, it can be chronological, in medias res (starts right in the middle, oftentimes
detective stories, and then goes back to the past), flashbacks, flash forwards…
—> It can evoke certain emotions, such as suspense, surprise and curiosity.
Freytag’s dramatic arc (‘pyramid’): has an initial situation, rise, climax, fall and catastrophe.
—> Complication increases after the initial situation has been exposed, often accompanied by an
exciting force (or an inciting incident). The rising action increases the complication and drama,
until it peaks out in a climax, which is followed by a counteraction leading to a fall.
—> The dramatic arc has had a strong influence on the Western theatre. It has been seen as an ideal
structure for well-formed plays, films and later even video games.
Other examples of story structures: Aristotle (beginning - middle - end); three-act structure; Labov
& Waletzky’s story structure, including an evaluation; Campbell’s hero’s journey (also called
monomyth) which we elaborate on below.
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,Campbell’s hero’s journey: this monomyth is a symbolic representation of the passage from
childhood to adulthood through departure, initiation, and return.
—> It is a cycle of 17 stages from the innocent world of childhood to the freedom to live at the end.
The hero’s journey has 3 phases:
1. Separation from the world of childhood when an adventure calls the hero: initially, the hero
refuses, but with the help of a mentor, the hero finally leaves and faces the threshold of the
knows and unknown worlds. The hero is caught in a ‘belly of a whale’ marking the separation
from the known world.
2. Initiation and descends into the unknown world: the hero goes through trials. The ‘meeting
with the goddess’ leads the hero into temptation, which threatens the progress. Having
overcome this, the hero meets the abyss (e.g. the actual villain) but suffers a defeat (= lowest
point of the story; the turning point of the story because the hero learns). At ‘apotheosis’, the
hero is ranked among the ‘gods’ and receives the ultimate boon to bring back to the inner world.
The phase ends when the hero refuses the call to return.
3. This phase begins with a flight: the hero is chased by forces in the outer world towards the
inner world. Towards the end of the story, the hero has become a master of both inner and outer
worlds. This grants the hero the freedom to live and the story to end.
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, Labov and Waletzky’s story structure: inherent structural order of narratives. It goes like this:
Tellability: the newsworthiness, reportability, the ‘raison d’être’ of the story.
—> A tellable event: the critical event in the story structure.
—> There is an event that makes the story worth telling and worthy of the audience’s attention.
Something extraordinary, remarkable, unexpected…
—> Finding a tellable event is the starting point when you determine a story structure.
Evaluation: the narrator’s comments on the significance and meaning of the events.
—> It is not an event itself. It answers questions like ‘what does this all mean?’ or ‘so what?’.
—> Functions to make the point of the narrative clear, including the take-home message.
—> Often explicitly present throughout the narrative.
! Story structure: events function as either kernel or satellite.
—> Kernel: obligatory event that guarantees the story’s coherence/logic; the essential content of
the story; part of a story’s identity; initiates, increases, or concludes an uncertainty, so it advances or
outlines a sequence of transformations; plot points; you really need it for the plot.
—> Satellite: serves to embellish; it is the basic plot; content that can be omitted without changing
the identity of the story; amplify or fill in the outline of a sequence by maintaining, retarding, or
prolonging the kernel events they accompany or surround; pinch points.
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