Thursday, May 31, 2007

Kevin Michael Brooks: Metalinear Narrative


The term metalinear narrative is used here to define a method for creating and developing multiple linear narratives from a highly structured collection of small narrative pieces, thus creating a new story form. These narrative pieces on their own do not constitute a single narrative or plotline, such as a chronological spine, but instead act as building blocks for constructing many different narratives. This new type of story defines a form which transcends linear in the sense that it is a form from which many linear stories can be made, therefore metalinear...


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Saturday, May 26, 2007

Defining terms for the sake of classification

Narrative terms

Linear: Conventional narrative structure with a beginning, middle, end and a pre-determined outcome.

Interactive: According to Chris Crawford,

"The experience of interactive storytelling differs substantially from that of a conventional linear story. A linear story 'runs on rails' from start to finish in the most powerful and expeditious manner possible. The interactive storytelling experience meanders through a dramatic universe of possibilities. It lacks the sense of directed inevitability that gives conventional stories such power. It is like a butterfly flitting across a meadow, not a hawk plummeting down on its prey. The closest form of traditional storytelling is the soap opera, which concentrates on the relationships among the characters rather than the particulars of plots."


Meta-linear
Non-linear
Multi-threaded
Procedural

Throughline
Archetypal narrative

Journalism terms

Journalism
Narrative journalism: See New Journalism
Hard News
Feature
Lede
Newspeg
Transitions
BBIS (Boring but important information)
Exposition
Closure
Call to Action

Tech terms

Agent
AI
Logic
Microformats
Natural language promising
Semantic web

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