Story-Narrative Design

Mark Greenspan started things off by asking who in the audience would describe themselves as storytellers. Just before the panel, Mark had confided that he expected very few would but to our surprise almost everyone raised their hand.

The ensuing discussion focussed more on the 'role' of newmedia narrative rather than on the technicalities of how experiences are created, which was interesting given that FITC has in the past tended to feature a lot of technical presentations.

Norma Toraya and Donna Leishman described the narrative arc as a birth/life/death cycle, which made for a nice counterpoint to Brooke Burgess who viewed the arc in sexual terms.

On the use of unconventional or non-linear narrative structures, Brooke spoke eloguently about the importance of classical narrative structure, quoting Shigeru Miyamoto from Nintendo –- the world’s greatest game designer –- who said that you cannot give the user COMPLETE freedom if you wish them to experience a story. You can give them a 'wide road' but it still must travel in a specific direction.

Several people after the panel said how refreshing it was to have visible/predominate female voice on the panel. More about this in the Design Futures post.

some current narrative approaches, all at iamstatic.com:
Norma V. Toraya
Marty Spellerberg
Anton Sakara
Rogier Hendricks

seminal stuff:
short definition of non-linear narrative:
http://www.nyu.edu/classes/keefer/TimeSpace/tsnon.html
early non-linear writer Shelley Jackson, e.g. see Patchwork Girl
http://www.ineradicablestain.com/
Einstein's Dreams: The Miracle Year, created by Daniel Canty and DNA Productions.
Alex Mayhew and Real World Multimedia produced the cd-rom Ceremony of Innocence (1997)

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