A New Book: A Model for Interactive Narrative.

Pillsbury, Christine

Create an interactive narrative environment where the user's behavior (clicks - quantity and quality) has a direct affect on the delivery, representation, and navigation of the story itself in a manner that reinforces the messages/themes of the plot.

Content
Narrative structure and system rules planning based on the book "The rules of attraction" by Bret Easton Ellis. Note: My intention is not to take a story that already exists and make it interactive. I am merely using this content as a departure point in order to prove my concept.

Why this book. Why this type of plot?

1. It's a kaleidoscopic story told from the different points of view of the three main characters. I want to further the ideas that I have used from project 1 - that a user's active participation, deciding one character's POV over another, has an impact on how the events of that narrative are inevitably perceived (more uniquely tied to user's interests, etc..)


2. The story's plot is one of descension. The three, seemingly apathetic main character's are self-absorbed moral wastelands, a theme played out by their interactions with each other. But what the story is really about is how the characters attempt to assert control over everything in their lives by being "unattached" to everything human. The irony is that the very things they exercise (over indulgence in decadence) to maintain their own sense of control are the very things that destroy them.


3. In this story, the variables that cause the character's descent are very clear and definable - Drug use, Reckless sex, and unhealthy introspection. They are so clear that they become measurable.
4. 
   
5. So here's the analogy. The more a user asserts control over the navigable elements of the experience the more they lose control eventually over those aspects. Relating back into the storyline - over indulgence leads to a loss of control over those elements.
   For example, the more I make choices to follow character X's drug "events" the harder text becomes to read (bluriness, opacity, font size, this is just to start with) in future events - the user can no longer "enjoy" the high of that character's drug dialog.

Structure and system rules
There will be qualifying segways between scenes as the narrative progresses.
A user can choose 1 of these 3 possibilities to move forward in time.
The 3 possibilities represent the 3 variables of the story - drug use, reckless sex, introversion.
Making a choice "scores" a point for that character's variable set. Each score level corresponds to a gradated visual representation of that type of content for that character. (Refer to chart above as example)
The user's behavioral impact on the story will be cumulative as the narrative progresses.
Over indulgence in a particular topic area will eventually bleed over and affect other aspects of that character's life - for example, too many drugs may inhibit the user from accessing "happy" moments in the character's stream.
As these expressive interpretations of the story play out the user will initially have control over "fixing" them, but that will diminish over time according to user behavior as well. Using the drug example, a user notices the drug dialog of a particular character is degrading, but they used to be able to just roll over it and fix it, but that stops working gradually as well.

Project Date: 2003