Summary & Extensive Lecture Notes of Interactive Storytelling

Lecture notes Interactive
Storytelling
Lecture 1 – Defining Storytelling and Narratives
Historical context - Long and rich research tradition
 Aristotle’s Poetica: tragedy versus comedy, narrative forms (epic/dramatic), dramatic
structure
 Russian formalism: e.g., Vladimir Propp’s character roles |Viktor Šklovskij: fabula vs.
sujet vs. media/text
 Narratology including French structuralism: discipline studying narrative principles
and narrative representations (e.g., Seymour Chatman’s kernels vs. satellites, Gérard
Genette’s focalization)

Definitions
 Laypeople’s use of the word story
 “Narrative refers to the unchangeable material presented to the interactor [ ...] a
solidified rock”
(Adams, 2013, adopted by Smed et al., 1.1.2)
 “a story [...] means now all the events that the interactor can experience in the course
of playing the work”
(Adams, 2013, in Smed et al., p.7)
 “Narrative [is] a forgiving, flexible cognitive frame for constructing, communicating,
and reconstructing mentally projected worlds”
(Herman, 2002 – optional source)
 “A narrative is a representation of events or a sequence of events that is independent
of medium and form (audio, visual, symbolic, in real actions)”
(Kinnebrock & Bilandzic, 2006, citing Abbott, 2002, p.12 – also in Smed et al., 1.1.2)
 the story is “the content plane of narrative as opposed to its expression plane or
discourse; the ‘what’ of a narrative as opposed to its ‘how’”
(Prince, 1987, in Smed et al., 1.1.2)

Narrative – our definition
Story
The “what” / content
Chronological sequence of events on a
timeline (plot, fabula, arc) | Kernels
and satellites – Characters | Character
roles
Narrative
Discourse
The “how” / expression
(Re)presentation of the story | Result
of the act of narration
Discourse structure (a.k.a. sujet) |
Focalization | Point of View (PoV) |
Voice

Note: Russian formalism distinguishes three layers: fabula, sujet, and media/text (Smed et
al., intro 2.1.3). Kinnebrock and Bilandzic (2006) distinguish three layers as well: story,
discourse and structure. We combine RF’s sujet and media/text and K&B’s discourse and
structure in our discourse layer.

,Defining narrative and storytelling
The term narrative includes both a story and its telling (discourse)

Defining a narrative
A narrative consists of a:
 Story: A chronological event sequence
Event 1  Event 2  Event 3  Event n
 Transmitted through a discourse: the (re)presentation of the story, which is the result
of the act of narration/telling

Story structure, events and discourse structure
Story plot = Sequence of events on a timeline = Event structure
 Event = a change of state, something happening, usually involving a character
 Plot event = plot point = narrative turn | dramatically significant
 Causality: “ a cause-and-effect chain of events”
Discourse structure – the order of narrated events
 e.g., chronological, in medias res, flashbacks, flashforwards
 Discourse structures can evoke certain emotions: surprise, curiosity and suspense

Story structure (plot)
Freytag’s dramatic arc (“pyramid”)




Other story structures:
 Aristotle: beginning - middle – end
 Three-Act structure
(Smed et al., 2.1.1.3)
 Campbell’s hero’s journey (‘monomyth’)
(Smed et al., 2.1.4)
 Labov & Waletzky’s story structure, including an Evaluation
(K&B, p.7)
o Orientation - Opening storyworld: who/what/where/when
o Complicating actions - Sequence of unfolding events, moving the story
forward
o Critical event - Tellable event, central in the story
o Resolution - Outcome of the story: how did it end?
o Evaluation - Comments on the significance and meaning of the events – the
take-home message
o Coda - Transition to the here and now

Tellability

,  Newsworthiness / reportability / the “raison d’être” of the story
 A tellable event is the critical event in the story structure (see previous slide).
 The event that makes the story worth telling and worthy of the audience’s attention.
o Something extraordinary/remarkable/unexpected/wonderful.
 Finding a tellable event starts when you create your story structure.
 Examples of tellable events:
o being acquitted in court after having left your child in a car on a hot summer
day
o finding a medicine curing the medical condition you have been suffering from
for years
o being taken under the wing of a humanitarian organization while fleeing from
Syria under terrible circumstances

Evaluation(s)
 Also part of Labov and Waletzky’s story structure
 The narrator’s comments on the significance and meaning of the events
o Not an event itself
o Answering questions like “what does this all mean?” / “so what?”
 Functions to make the point of the narrative clear, includes the take-home message.
 Explicitly present in the narrative

Story structure: kernels vs. satellites
Events function as either kernel or satellite:
 Kernel: obligatory event that guarantees the story’s coherence/logic | 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
 Satellite: serves to embellish 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




Increasing narrativity
Narrativity = an attribute of the text
 “we define narrativity as the presence and interaction of a set of textual elements
that distinguish narrative texts from non-narrative texts and that constitute the
potential of a text to create a rich mental representation of the story and to generate
transportive experiences.
 Narrativity is not a dichotomous characteristic – a text is not either narrative or non-
narrative –, but a continuous attribute that can be found in almost any text – but to a
varying degree”
Kinnebrock & Bilandzic, 2006, p. 5

, Narrativity factors (NFs)
Narrativity factor ≃ narrative elements
Both at story and discourse level

Narrativity factors related to the character
Character(s) experiencing the events
 Transactiveness: character plays an active role in the events – makes the events
happen
 Transitivity: character interacts with other characters – having conversations,
performing actions together, discussing possible solutions, etc.

Round vs. flat characters
Characters: a continuum from flat to round
 A flat character has only one distinctive characteristic, exists only to exhibit that
characteristic, and is incapable of varying from that characteristic – a one-
dimensional.
 A round character is multi-faceted. Psychologically more lifelike. Develops/changes.

Propp’s character theory
 Hero (protagonist)
 Helpers
 Dispatcher
 Donor
 Villain (antagonist)
 False hero
 Princess

Voice
Who is the narrator? Who tells the story? Two types:
 Intradiegetic narrator: narrator = character
1st or 2nd person perspective (“I’ or “you”)
 Extradiegetic narrator: narrator ≠ character, above the story
3rd person perspective (“he/she/they”)

Focalization (Genette, 1980)
Through whose senses do we perceive the events? Two types of focalization:
 Internal focalization: character and focalizator know the same - invasion into internal
world of the character (getting to know the character’s thoughts, feelings)
 External focalization: character knows more than focalizator – demonstration of
character’s actions and external appearance – no insight into the thoughts and
feelings of the character

Narrator (voice) versus focalizator (“perceiver”)
 Who tells the story? (”voice”)
 Who sees/feels/smells/hears/thinks?