Narrative Structure in New Media Mark Green School of Creative Media

Introduction  One of the most controversial areas of new media theory  One of the most important areas  Some people think this is the main difference between new and old media  The re-thinking of how we tell the story - narrative

Narrative  What is narrative? Telling a story Telling a story How a story is structured for a particular media How a story is structured for a particular media The story telling process The story telling process  Each media develops its own narrative structure, how stories are told in that media

Linear Narrative  Old media uses linear narrative  What do we mean by this?  In its purest form linear narrative is the chronological telling of a story  Start at the beginning and work to the end, telling the story in the order it occurred  An accurate time line of events

Linear Narrative  Many forms of linear narrative don’t stick to a true time line, events aren’t always shown in the correct order  For example, the use of flash backs to show what has occurred before  Modern films tend to skip back and forth along the time line

Linear Narrative  Now means the story unfolds in one way  There is only one path through the story  No matter how many time you see a film, it is always told the same way, no variation  Older forms of narrative aren’t bound by this strict repeatable structure, they have some room for variation

Linear Narrative  Oral story telling has more freedom in the ordering of events  The story teller is free to move some of the events around, change it from telling to telling  The overall structure of the story stays the same, just the details move around  Still called a linear narrative

Linear Narrative  Two major forms: Books Books Films, plays, etc Films, plays, etc  Main difference is in length and how it is presented  Films are relatively short, a few hours in length and aren’t interruptible, meant to be viewed in one sitting

Linear Narrative  Books can take a long time to read, much longer than a film  Books are rarely read in one sitting, usually read over a longer period of time  Authors have more freedom in how they develop the story, more details  Will concentrate on the film version of linear narrative

Film Narrative  There are two important parts of film narrative of interest to us, arise due to short nature of a film: Causality Causality Tension Tension  Both of these are important in new media theory as well

Causality  Events don’t happen at random, they must be caused by something  Something happened because someone caused it to occur  Characters are developed to cause events, to move the story forward  Viewers want to have a reason for everything that happens in a film

Tension (Freytag 1860s)  Tension or complications develop over the time span of the film  Start with calm, tension builds as events occur  Tension peaks just before the end of the film  Then goes back to its original level

Tension Time Tension

Non-Linear Narrative  More than one way to view the work, the events don’t need to occur in the same order each time  The work can be viewed multiple times, each time the story can be told in a different way  The story is the same, just the way of telling it changes

Non-Linear Narrative  Film is linear, there is only one way to show the film in the projector  Can’t skip back and forth in a film  The computer gives us the ability to do this  Not new, could do this with oral story telling  Computer gives us a way to automate and record the process

Non-Linear Narrative  What do we do with this ability?  Does it even make sense?  These are important questions and well worth investigating  We could just take a random film, cut it up into 3 or 4 minute segments, and then show the segments in a random order

Non-Linear Narrative  Randomly rearranging the material doesn’t make much sense, we won’t get much of a story  Need to remember causality, it must look like events have causes, there is a reason why they occurred  So how can we think about non-linearity?

Non-Linear Narrative  Example, C1 causes two events E1 and E2  These events are unrelated and occur at the same time  But we need to present them in some order C1 E1 E2

Non-Linear Narrative  In a linear narrative we would choose one ordering, say E1 followed by E2, always use this ordering  In a non-linear narrative we can change the ordering each time, as long as E1 and E2 come after C1 everything is okay  We preserve causality and the viewer is happy

Non-Linear Narrative  We can divide the story into a number of segments based on events in the story  Determine which events cause other events  Use this to determine which segments should occur before other segments  This won’t give a unique ordering, we are free to change the order of some segments

Non-Linear Narrative  Divide the story into scenes, higher level structures that are fairly independent  Can vary the order of segments within each scene, but keep the scene order the same  May even change the scene order, but this may be harder due to causality

Non-Linear Narrative  So far we show all the material all of the time, only the order is changed  Construct a new linear narrative each time the story is told out of the same material  Example, Archeology of a Mother Tongue, the viewer controlled the order of the scenes, but the material is always the same

Non-Linear Narrative  Another possibility is to have more material than we need and select from it each time the story is told  that is, not all segments will be shown each time the story is viewed  the segments shown will depend on the viewer’s actions, the decisions they make during viewing

Non-Linear Narrative  The author needs to create more material than they would for a linear narrative  this is more work for the author and they have to plan the material more carefully  for each segment, need to know the segments that cause it, the causality relationship amongst the segments

Non-Linear Narrative  To make sense, a segment can only be viewed if a segment containing its cause has been viewed  at certain points in the story the viewer can select the next segment to be viewed  author controls the set of segments the viewer can select from, must make sense at this point in story

Non-Linear Narrative S1 S2 S3 S4 S5 S6 S7 S8

Non-Linear Narrative  The viewer will select one path through the story  if we are not careful we will end up with a lot of extra material the viewer never sees  another thing to observe is that paths can merge, two paths merge at S8  this can save a lot of work

Review  Review our model: story divided into segments story divided into segments each segment has one or more events each segment has one or more events each event has a cause (another event) each event has a cause (another event) can only view a segment if the causes of its events has been viewed can only view a segment if the causes of its events has been viewed at the end of each segment the viewer/system can select the next segment at the end of each segment the viewer/system can select the next segment

Examples  How can this model be used  hypertext fiction: story with multiple paths  at the end of each page or chapter the reader selects the next piece of text  selection could be random, or based on what the reader would like to happen  the reader can choose the outcome of events

Examples  Has been tried with printed books, each choice gives a page number where the story is continued  easier to do with web and hypertext links, can just link to the next section of the story  these works are usually completely text based, like a normal novel, but with choice

Examples  Few examples of success, some early attempts but now not very popular  why?  People tend to read a story only once, some stories are re-read, but then the reader wants the same story  longer time to read, more of a commitment on the part of the reader

Examples  Author must do a lot of extra work  must write all of the segments, could be much more material than a regular book  must plan how the segments will link together  must be able to trace all the possible paths to current segment to see if it makes sense

Examples  Many games and multimedia pieces use this type of structure  good example is adventure games  users can only solve a puzzle if they have the right information or have picked up the right item  this keeps track of the user’s path through the narrative structure

Examples  In games dead ends are acceptable, the user can retrace his steps and try a different approach  there can be many ways through a level, but all of them lead to a common exit  can have many branches in a level, but they all collapse at the end  controls the amount of material that must be developed

Examples  Users willing to play a game multiple times  play until they master the game or get tired of it  typical game played for about 30 hours, so there is the opportunity to see most of the material

Summary  The success of non-linear narratives seems to depend on at least two factors: the genre, does it make sense to view the story multiple times, is it easy to back up and try again the genre, does it make sense to view the story multiple times, is it easy to back up and try again can the amount of material be controlled, if the author has to produce too much material the quality will suffer can the amount of material be controlled, if the author has to produce too much material the quality will suffer

Tension  How do we deal with tension?  In a film its fairly easy, there is a single story line, so we pick up the pace as we reach the end  can we do this with multiple story lines?  It should be possible, if we make a few assumptions about the narrative structure

Tension  Assume there is only one (or a small number) end segment for the piece  this is where the tension is resolved  search backwards through the story, the segments leading to here must have the most tension  we can continue working backwards assigning a tension level to each segment

Tension  Once we have a tension level for a segment we can produce material to give that tension  we can adjust the pace of the music, etc to give an appropriate tension level  will this actually work?  It all depends upon the structure of the piece

Tension  What happens if we can get to a segment along several different paths?  Its tension level could be different along each path, what do we do in this case?  What happens if certain paths should produce more tension than others?  Maybe there isn’t an absolute tension value

Tension  Games make good use of tension regardless of the path followed  tension is usually a function of the amount of time the player has been in a level  tension is low at the start of a level and builds as the player approaches the end  somewhat independent of the path the player takes

Back Story  Used in linear narrative, but more important in non-linear  this is the background to the story, usually not told in the story itself  the things that occurred before the start of the story  the history of the characters involved, how they behave

Back Story  Some book authors spend a lot of time on the back story before they start writing  important if there will be several books  why is this done? Consistency: easier to maintain consistency, predict how a character will behave Consistency: easier to maintain consistency, predict how a character will behave Motivation: easier to write a story once the background has been sketched out Motivation: easier to write a story once the background has been sketched out

Back Story  In non-linear narrative consistency is a major problem, multiple paths present story in different ways  need to maintain consistency of paths  careful planning is important, but background information is also helpful  provides global context for all of the actions

Back Story  If the individual segments are consistent with the back story, more likely to have consistent paths  expose different parts of back story along different paths to make up for the material that the viewer has missed

Narrative?  Does narrative play an important role in new media?  Some have argued that it has no role  we need to look at both sides of the issue  story telling is an important part of human culture  it appears in all art and media forms, so it is probably important

Narrative? Pro  Story telling is important for many forms of new media  but, narrative now has a more restricted meaning: how the story is told or structured in a particular medium  concentration on film and TV, some on literature

Narrative? Pro  Film has developed a particular way of telling a story  relies on both visual and dialogue  an evolution from literature where the concentration was on text, introduction of visual element  is new media the next step, highly visual with almost no dialog?

Narrative? Pro  If we take this view film narrative is important as a starting point at least  it moved from the text to the visual as an equal partner  now we want to go further, largely remove the dialogue and work in terms of the visual  the visual elements of film could be quite important here

Narrative? Pro  The argument is that we should not through away years of human development, instead build on it  this seems like a reasonable argument, and should be accepted as at least partially true  narrative also gives us a way of structuring and developing our content, a way to think about producing media

Narrative? Pro  Without narrative how would we organize new media?  What other theories can we draw upon for structuring the experience?  Narrative theory may not be ideal, but its all we have to help us with structuring our stories, we had better use it

Narrative? Con  We have a new media, we should be free to explore it, not make a copy of previous media  new media is different, it is interactive, etc, it doesn’t need the old theories  where is the story in Quake? How does it use narrative theory? We can have successful new media without narrative

Narrative? Con  Narrative is a static idea, we should think about dynamic things, like character development and interactivity  we should look to other media, such as the theatre for our motivation, not to film  give the user more freedom to interact with the environment

Narrative? Con  If we don’t use narrative how do we structure our piece?  We need to have a replacement for narrative, can’t just say it’s a bad idea  there needs to be some other theory or technique for structuring our pieces, need some assistance with design and analysis

Alternatives to Narrative  There have been several suggested alternatives, some of them are worth following up on  one suggestion is interactivity, the designer should concentrate on how the viewer interacts with the piece  the main design activity should be designing the interaction

Alternatives to Narrative  The emphasis should be on interaction, how the user controls the experience  these are good ideas, but I view interactivity as orthogonal to narrative  we need to have interactivity even if we use standard narrative theory  interactivity is an important, but independent piece of the puzzle

Alternatives to Narrative  Another suggestion is exploration  the experience should be based on exploring the environment provided by the designer  the user should be free to move through the environment with as few constraints as possible  this is definitely the case for some pieces, so it is worth some exploring

Alternatives to Narrative  For some games the user spends a considerable amount of time exploring, these games typically have little story  an educational multimedia piece may have the same structure, the viewer is exploring a topic  what is the story behind learning arithmetic?

Alternatives to Narrative  Other pieces don’t fit into the exploration theme  even most adventure games that appear to be about exploration have a strong narrative structure  exploration works for some pieces, but its not a general solution

Alternatives to Narrative  Another suggestion is to concentrate on character development  the interesting part is interacting with the characters in the piece  some people have suggested this is more of a theatre metaphor than a film metaphor  there is some merit in this suggestion, I think theatre is important for new media

Alternatives to Narrative  Only a few pieces have concentrated on the interactions with characters  without a story line the interactions soon become quite boring, something needs to happen  again this seems to be more of an addition to narrative than a replacement

Alternatives to Narrative  Character development is an important part of new media, probably more so than film  with multiple paths strong characters help establish the story and maintain consistency  less emphasis can be placed on events, and more on how the characters interact with each other, what drives the story

Alternatives to Narrative  Others have suggested the development of an open ended world that the viewer can expand  the designer provides only part of the story, the viewer expands on it  this can be seen in many of the construction games for children, the designer really provides no narrative

Alternatives to Narrative  Construction games: designer provides: back story back story pieces that can be used to construct the viewer’s own story pieces that can be used to construct the viewer’s own story  this actually works reasonably well  another approach used in a lot of games now is to allow the player to provide his or her own content

Alternatives to Narrative  Players can design their own levels, characters and weapons and add them to the game  tools provided to make this relatively easy  gives the player more control over the game, a way to extend the story and add their own parts to it

Summary  Narrative is an important part of new media  we need to figure out how it will work in new media pieces  non-linear narrative is a start, but we still need to develop the equivalent of film theory  few alternatives have been developed

Another View  Some people apply a rather primitive theory of narrative to new media  Based on the narrative forms used in other forms of media  Narrative theory provides a much richer structure  View narrative on multiple levels, theories vary from 2 to 4 or more levels

Narrative Theory  What does a typical two level theory look like?  It is based on two components: 1. The abstract story, what is to be told 2. The concrete discourse, how it is told this time  This separates how a story is told in a particular media, from the events in the story

Story  This is the set of events that has occurred  The abstract version of the story that is independent of how it is told  This is in the story teller’s mind, no way to know what it really is

Discourse  How the story is told a particular time  In a novel or film it will always be told the same way, but the novel and film could be different  In oral story telling it can vary from one telling to another  The way the story is told also depends upon the media

New Media  How does this apply to new media?  The discourse level will be different in new media, but the story can still be the same  For new media, we need to know how to convert the story to discourse  New media hasn’t developed enough to have a complete discourse level, but in time it will

More Levels  What happens when we have more the two levels?  We get into the issues of interpretation  How does the viewer interpret the discourse?  They hear the words, but they may put an different interpretation on the words than the story teller

More Levels  More complicated: How does the teller interpret the story?  Can they know the story without converting it into discourse?  Need to use words to express it, but now we are getting into discourse again  This leads us to belief theory, which I’m not going to get into

Agency  This leads us to a more behaviour based view of new media  We still need a story, but we use characters to drive the story  These characters could be either computer generated or human viewers  Discourse may be different each time the story is told, depends upon viewers

Agents  The computer controlled characters  Author defines the behaviour or personality of each agent  Also defines the basic flow of the story, but not the details  Story driven by changing character behaviours over time, trigger reactions in other characters and viewers

Agency  How the viewer participates in the story  Viewer has a role to play in the story, their part of the story  Viewer may not know what this role is at the beginning  Works best if this role is consistent throughout the story, and user can identify with it

Agency  The viewer is given a set of things they can do in the story, affordance  This must agree with the viewer’s role: Must be able to do the things that are required by their role Must be able to do the things that are required by their role Must not be able to do the things that are inconsistent with their role Must not be able to do the things that are inconsistent with their role  Convince the viewer they are really part of the story

Conclusions  Need to take a more sophisticated view of narrative, not just the narrative forms that are used in a particular media  Need to develop the discourse for new media – still quite primitive  Agents/agency may be one way to develop this discourse