should it be designed?
Rebecca Phillips
BA (Hons) Interior Architecture & Design Final Year
Research Project
'We are, as a species, addicted to story.'
(Gottschall, J, 2013. p. xiv.)
The Storytelling Animal, 2013. Online.
Humans create stories and stories are involved in every aspect of our lives. We read books, watch films, see plays. We listen to our friends tell us stories of their days. We listen to the sports reporter telling us the story of the star player. Even when we are asleep, our brain shows us stories through our dreams.
Gottschall (2013) concludes that there is no noble reason why we indulge in a story. We do it for the sheer enjoyment. Story has no biological purpose, and yet we haven’t evolved past it. If anything, stories make us weak. ‘When we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to leave us defenseless.’ (Gottschall, J, 2013. p. 152.)
- Jonathan Gottschall, 2013, p.29
An experiment by psychologists Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel, 1944.
Heider & Simmel (1944), Online.
After showing this film to research subjects, Heider and Simmel gave them a simple task: “Describe what you saw.” It’s fascinating to note that only 3 of the 114 subjects gave a truly reasonable answer. These people reported seeing geometric shapes moving around a screen, and that was all. But the rest of Heider and Simmel’s subjects were like me; they didn’t see fleshless and bloodless shapes sliding around. They saw operas: doors slamming, courtship dances, the foiling of a predator.’
(Gottschall, J, 2013. The Storytelling Animal. USA: Mariner Books. p. 106.)
As explained in the film Video Games: The Movie (2014), novels have been around for centuries, and therefore writers have tried and tested the techniques for what makes a successful story. Video games are only a few decades old and designers are still trying to understand them as a storytelling form, but Miller, C.H (2004) explains that when embarking on a new interactive project we can learn from previous storytellers (novelist, playwrights, screenwriters). We will have to manipulate those techniques to work in digital entertainment but it is about combining the old and the new.
Below are extracts from Writers Digest, written by Orson Scott Card (2010), explaining the four elements that determine the structure of a story. They explain that while all of them appear in every story, one will generally be the dominant element.
STRUCTURE 1:
THE MILIEU STORY
‘The milieu is the world—the planet, the society, the weather, the family, all the elements that come up during your world-creation phase. Every story has a milieu, but when a story is structured around one, the milieu is the thing the storyteller cares about most.’
‘Regardless of how much we’re drawn into those events, the real closure we expect at the end of the story is the main character’s departure.’
‘When writing a milieu story, your beginning point is obvious—when the character arrives—and the ending is just as plain: when she leaves (or, in a variant, when she decides not to leave, ending the question of going home).’
‘Such stories are typically most effective when seen through the viewpoint of the arriving character, as she’ll be surprised by and interested in the same strange and marvelous (and terrible) things that engage the readers.’
STRUCTURE 2:
THE IDEA STORY
‘Idea stories are about the process of seeking and discovering new information through the eyes of characters who are driven to make the discoveries. The structure is very simple: The idea story begins by raising a question; it ends when the question is answered.’
‘Most mysteries follow this structure. The story begins when a crime takes place. The question we ask is, “who did it and why?” The story ends when the identity and motive of the criminal are revealed.’
STRUCTURE 3:
THE CHARACTER STORY
‘Character stories focus on the transformation of a character’s role in the communities that matter most to him. Sure, in one sense, stories are almost always “about” one or more characters. In most stories, though, the tale is not about the character’s character; that is, the story is not about who the character is.’
‘Take, for example, the Indiana Jones movies. These are not character stories. The story is always about what Indiana Jones does, but never who he is. Jones faces many problems and adventures, but in the end, his role in society is exactly what it was before: part-time archaeology professor and full-time knight-errant.’
‘The structure of a character story is as simple as any of the others. The story begins at the moment when the main character becomes so unhappy, impatient or angry in her present role that she begins the process of change; it ends when the character either settles into a new role (happily or not) or gives up the struggle and remains in the old role (happily or not).’
STRUCTURE 4:
THE EVENT STORY
‘In the event story, something is wrong in the fabric of the universe; the world is out of order. ‘
‘The event story ends at the point when a new order is established or, more rarely, when the old order is restored or, rarest of all, when the world descends into chaos as the forces of order are destroyed. The story begins not at the point when the world becomes disordered, but rather at the point when the character whose actions are most crucial to establishing the new order becomes involved in the struggle. ‘
‘Almost all fantasy and much—perhaps most—science fiction uses the event story structure.’
- Jonathan Gottschall, 2013, p.52
Fiction is about trouble, states Gottschall (2013), stories all around the world are almost always to the tune of a person (or personified animal) with a problem, and it is about their efforts to get what they desire. He recites the views of another author, ‘Janet Borroway’s Writing Fiction is adamant on the point: “conflict is the fundamental element of fiction… in life, conflict often carries a negative connotation, yet in fiction, be it comic or tragic, dramatic conflict is fundamental because in literature only trouble is interesting.”’ (Gottschall, 2013, p.52)
Miller, C.H. (2004) writes about Aristotle’s influence. His observations of Greek theatre led to his work the Poetics and the ideas within are still holding up in present day. The principles have been applied to stage plays, movies, TV shows and most recently, interactive narratives.
Aristotle realised that effective dramas were based on three-act structures (beginning, middle and end), and today it is still widely accepted by Hollywood. Miller, C.H (2004) continues to explain that this three-act structure has also found a place in games, although because of the element of interactivity, new models work in conjunction with the classic three-acts.
‘Aristotle believed that there are two types of human motivation… one comes from the heart, the other from the head.’ (Miller, C.H., 2004, p.76)
Motivation is extremely important in interactive media as it is what pulls the player through and ‘by understanding motivation, we can create more compelling works of interactive entertainment.’ (Miller, C.H., 2004, p.76)
Introduced in 1979, these children's books allowed the reader to change the route of their story by making choices. This early, paper based form of interactive media is not dissimilar to how video games operate, the story can branch out in a variety of ways depending on the users decisions.