Lecture 2 CS148248: Interactive Narrative

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Lecture 2CS148/248 Interactive Narrative

• UC Santa Cruz
• School of Engineering
• www.soe.ucsc.edu/classes/cmps248/Spring2007
• michaelm_at_cs.ucsc.edu
• 10 April 2007

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Drama

• McKee describes the dramatic story, the story
  told by Hollywood screenplays and
  non-experimental stageplays
• Well formed plot arcs (structure)
• Intensity (nothing extraneous, distilled, boiled
  down)
• Mimesis (telling a story by showing)
• For many of us, our implicit model of what makes
  a good story is informed by our experience of
  cinema
• Drama is communicated through action
• Why might this be a useful model for interactive
  narrative?

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Dramatic structure

• Drama selects key moments from characters life
  stories
• The story told vs. life story
• Distillation of the essence of life
• Structure is a selection of events from
  characters life stories strategically composed
  to express specific emotions and points of view
• Story event
• A story even turns (changes) a story value
• Story value
• Universal binary qualities of human experience
• Alive/dead, love/hate, freedom/slavery,
  courage/cowardice, wisdom/stupidity,
• Conflict
• Change in the story value is achieved through
  conflict values shouldnt change through
  accident or coincidence

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Scenes and beats

• Scene
• A story event that changes at least one value
  (from negative to positive or vice-versa)
• No exposition information should always be
  communicated through value change
• Test of sceneness could the story event be
  expressed in a unity of time and space?
• Beat action/reaction pairs that shape the
  turning of the scene
• The smallest unit of value change

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Sequences, acts and stories

• A sequence is a series of scenes (typically 2 to
  5) that culminates with greater impact than any
  previous scene
• Each scene turns its own value
• The sequence turns a greater value that
  subordinates the others
• An act is a series of sequences that peaks in a
  climactic scene causing a major reversal of
  values, more powerful than any preceeding scene
  or sequence
• The story, in the story climax, brings about
  absolute and irreversible change
• The audience cant imagine any change past this

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The Protagonist

• The protagonist is the central character,
  providing a point of view and motive force for
  the action
• The protagonist might be plural (e.g.
  representing a whole social class) or multiple
  (intertwining multiple points of view)
• The protagonist must be willful no passive
  protagonists
• Has a conscious, and potentially an unconscious
  object of desire
• The protagonist must have the capacities to
  pursue the object of desire and must have at
  least a chance
• Without the possibility of achievement the
  audience looses interest
• The protagonist has the will and capacity to
  pursue the object of desire to the limit
• The story will build to a final action beyond
  which the audience can not imagine another

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Empathy and identification

• The audience must be able to empathize with the
  protagonist
• This is not the same as sympathy doesnt mean
  you like the character
• In Aristotelian drama, empathy results in
  identification the audience experiences what
  the protagonist experiences
• The drama takes the audience on an emotional
  journey through the values explored by the story
• The audience then experiences catharsis (a
  purgation of the emotions)

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Conflict

• The will of the protagonist must be resisted
• The protagonist takes the minimal, reasonable
  action to achieve her goal, but provokes
  antagonism
• This is different from real life most of the
  time our actions dont provoke antagonism (though
  we may encounter resistance)
• Inner conflicts
• Mind, body, emotions
• Personal conflicts
• Family, lovers, friends
• Extra-personal conflicts
• Social institutions, individuals in society
  (social roles), physical environment

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The gap

• Conflict happens where the subjective and
  objective realms touch
• The protagonist has an expectation of the results
  of her action, but the provoked conflict violates
  expectations
• The first action of the protagonist results in
  this gap the second action now involves risk
  (theres something to lose)
• As actions result in gaps, the ante must be
  upped, with the minimal and reasonable action
  becoming bigger and more being put at risk
• The characters desire must be strong enough to
  take us to the end of the story (maximum risk,
  irrevocable change)
• To create emotional truth for your character, you
  must write from the inside out, asking yourself
  if I were this character in these circumstances,
  what would I do?

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Poor mans semiotics

• Semiology is concerned with the phenomenon of
  meaning how it is that something (e.g. a mark on
  a page, an article of clothing, a dish in a
  meal), can have meaning for somebody
• A sign is the fundamental unit of meaning and
  consists of two parts the signifier and the
  signified
• The signifier is the uninterpreted object or
  sensory impression that, by convention, means
  something
• The signified is the meaning, which is always a
  mental representation
• In written language, cat is a signifier, and
  the mental image those marks bring to mind the
  signified
• In the language of highway codes, the color red
  is a signifier, and the mental image of stopping
  a vehicle the signified

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The sign
signified
signifier


cat
Plane of Content
Plane of Expression
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Syntagm and paradigm

• Signs can be combined into complex configurations
  call syntagms
• Linguistic signs can be combined into sentences
  and paragraphs
• Cinematic signs can be combined into scenes
• A paradigm defines a potential structure of
  associative fields each field defines signs
  that can play the same role within a syntagm
• Example The Food System
• Syntagms are specific meals
• The paradigm groups foodstuffs into entrees,
  deserts, salads, etc.
• A sign system defines the legal syntagms that can
  be constructed includes the paradigm

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Connotation

• Connotation occurs when one semiotic system
  becomes the expression plane of another

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Meta-language

• Meta-language occurs when one semiotic system
  becomes the content plane of another

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Poor mans narratology

• Narratology a structuralist analysis of
  narrative
• Enabling move separating the objective story
  from the presented story
• Story/fabula The objective sequence of events
  that constitutes the story
• Discourse/sjuzhet The presentation of the story
  (always involves manipulation)
• Diegesis The story world, the time-space
  continuum of the story (the story is a sequences
  of events in the diegetic world)
• Narration the mechanics by which the discourse
  is produced from the story (e.g. third vs. first
  person etc.)

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The narrative situation
Diegetic universe
Story
Focalization
Discourse
analepsis (flash-back)
prolepsis (flash-forward)
Interpretation
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Narrative, Media, Modes

• In order to be able to talk about interactive
  narrative, one must be able to talk about
  narrative in different media (since various forms
  of interactive narrative will constitute new
  media)
• Classical narratology tends towards privileging
  specific media
• Radical media relativism argues that signifier
  cant be separated from signified therefore
  theres no way to talk about narrative in the
  abstract
• Other theorists have so generalized the notion of
  narrative, that it ceases to form a coherent
  category
• Narratives of identity
• Grand narratives of history
• Cultural narrative
• Ryans goal in this chapter is to define a notion
  of narrative powerful enough to define a coherent
  category, but general enough to be medium
  independent

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Narrative dimensions

• Consider narrativeness a scalar value (more or
  less narrative) rather than a boolean value (is
  or is not a narrative)
• Do this by defining 8 narrative dimensions if a
  specific media instance strongly has all these
  properties, then it has very high narrativeness
  (a classical story)
• Subsets of the dimensions can be considered for
  specific purposes
• Spatial Dimension
• Narrative must be about a world populated by
  individuated existents
• Temporal Dimension
• The world must be situated in time and undergo
  significant transformations
• The transformations must be caused by
  non-habitual physical events

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Narrative dimensions (continued)

• Mental Dimension
• Some of the participants in the events must be
  intelligent agents who have a mental life and
  react emotionally to the states of the world
• Some of the events must be purposeful actions by
  these agents, motivated by identifiable goals and
  plans
• Formal and Pragmatic Dimensions
• The sequence must form a unified causal chain and
  lead to closure
• The occurrence of at least some of these events
  must be asserted as fact in the story world
• The story must communicate something meaningful
  to the recipient

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The cognitive skills of narrative interpretation

• Understanding a narrative involves the exercise
  of multiple cognitive skills
• Focusing thought on specific objects cut out from
  the flux of perception
• Inferring causal relationships between states and
  events
• Situating events in time
• Reconstructing content of other peoples minds
  based on their behavior
• But the exercise of these cognitive skills alone
  does not make something a narrative only when
  all of these skills come together to construct a
  stable mentall image do we have narrative

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Narrative modes

• In order to develop a media-free narratology, we
  need to understand the various mechanisms by
  which narrative scripts can be evoked
• A narrative script is the mental image of the
  narrative
• The standard way of evoking narrative scripts is
  for someone to tell someone else that something
  happened (narrating a story)
• A narrative mode is a distinct way to bring to
  mind the cognitive construct that defines
  narrativity
• Ryan defines a number of dimensions that
  characterize different narrative modes
• These dimensions are not completely independent

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Narrative modes (continued)

• External/Internal
• In external mode, narratives are encoded in
  material signs
• Internal mode does not involve textualization
• Fictional/Nonfictional
• Whether the narrative involves this world or a
  possible world
• Representational/Simulative
• Representational mode encodes a fixed sequence
  (isolates a fixed possibility)
• Simulative mode is productive of multiple
  possibilities
• Diegetic/mimetic
• In diegetic mode, the narrative is communicated
  through telling
• In mimetic mode, the narrative is communicated
  through showing

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Narrative modes (continued)

• Autotelic/Utilitarian
• In autotelic mode, a story is told for its own
  sake
• In utilitarian mode, a story is subordinated to
  another goal
• Autonomous/Illustrative
• In autonomous mode, the story is new to the
  receiver
• In illustrative mode, the story retells and
  completes a story, depending on the receivers
  previous knowledge
• Scripted/Emergent
• In scripted mode, story and discourse are fixed
• In emergent mode, discourse and some aspects of
  story are created live
• Receptive/Participatory
• In receptive mode, the recipient plays no role in
  discourse or story
• In participatory mode (subcategory of emergent),
  the active participation of the recipient
  actualizes and completes the story on the level
  of discourse and/or story

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Narrative modes (continued)

• Determinate/indeterminate
• In determinate mode, the text specifies enough
  points along the story arc to form a definite
  script
• In indeterminate mode, only a few points are
  given the recipient fills in the rest
• Retrospective/simultaneous/prospective
• The recounting of past, current, or future events
• Literal/metaphorical
• In literal mode, the narrative satisfies most or
  all of the 8 definitional dimensions
• In metaphorical mode, there are violations of a
  number of the dimensions
• The goal of this distinction is to recognize the
  expanded notions of the term narrative without
  sacrificing the precision of the core construct

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What are media?

• Two contrasting views the pipe vs. language
• The pipe view enables transmedial analysis but
  ignores the affordances of different media
• E.g. TV a transmissive medium, but has its own
  affordances
• The language view admits the affordances of
  different media, but risks radical media
  relativism
• The language notion of media is primary theres
  nothing to transmit through a pipe unless it has
  first been encoded in language
• There may be no pure pipes things that look
  like pipes mall all have language-like
  affordances
• Since the language view is primary, Ryan wants to
  find a middle ground that recognizes the material
  support of semiotic languages, will avoiding both
  the media relativist and pipe views

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Three ways to analyze media

• Media as semiotic phenomena broad categories of
  sign systems
• Language
• Images
• Music
• Media as technologies
• Allows us to drill in on specific material
  supports fractures broad categories of sign
  systems into specific subtypes
• E.g. Ongs analysis of the shift from oral
  culture, to writing, to printing
• Media as cultural practice (communities of
  practice)
• Lack a distinct semiotic and technological
  identity (e.g. newspapers vs. books)
• Evolution of media forms depends on cultural
  pressures

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Narrative differences across media

• Narrative differences across media play out in
  three different narrative domains
• Semantics (plot or story)
• Syntax (discourse)
• Pragmatics (uses of narrative)
• Plot or story
• Film prefers dramatic narratives structured by
  Aristotelian arc TV prefers episodic narratives
  with multiple plot lines computer games prefer
  quest narratives with a single plot line divided
  into multiple autonomous episodes
• Discourse
• Comics represent time via space usng distinct
  frames, film presents a continuously moving image
  with edits
• Uses of narrative
• Blogging (posting of private diaries), tabletop
  RPGs (group improvisational stories)

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Genre vs. medium

• A medium is defined by a semiotic language and a
  technological support that provide specific
  expressive affordances
• A genre is a set of explicit rules for using a
  medium in a specific way
• The distinction can be fuzzy
• A medium is defined by cultural forces, but so is
  a genre (genre can reside in communities of
  practice)
• Different media employ different semiotic
  languages, but genre conventions can be
  understood as semiotic sub-languages
• Examples
• The print novel is a medium horror stories and
  detective stories are genres
• Film is a medium the light romantic comedy and
  the road movie are genres