Effective Story

  • Multimedia elements
  • Links to past exp. of audience
  • Message Deeply crafted into audiences mind

Digital Story

  • IT elements
  • Enhance user exp.
  • Doesn’t improve story content

Interactive Story

  • Story backbone is built but have multiple endings
  • Users get to chip in to alter the story path

7 Elements of Effective Story (P.P.P.E.V.E.D)

  1. Point of view (POV) – Message to be delivered
  2. Emotional Content – Happy / Sad
  3. Voice – Tone: Conversational / Narrative
  4. Power of Soundtrack/music – Enhance emotion
  5. Economy – KISS (Keep it short simple)
  6. Pacing – Rhythm of the story
  7. Dramatic Questions – Tension of Conflicts, Plot

4 Types of Conflicts (P.S.N.S)

  • Person vs Person (Protagonist vs Antagonist)

  • Antagonist stop the protagonist from achieving goal

  • Person vs Society / Establishment

  • Protagonist against the norm of our common understanding

  • Person vs Nature

  • Protagonist try to survive in native challenges (e.g. man vs wild)

  • Person vs Self

  • Focus on internal conflicts within the protagonist

  • Changes within the protagonist happen (e.g. Black swan)

5 Types of Characters

- Protagonist

  • Centre of the story
  • Can be good or bad person
  • Could be person/animal/thing
  • Described with personal qualities

- Antagonist

  • Someone/Something goes against the protagonist
  • Prevent protagonist from achieving goal
  • Not necessary a bad guy

- Stock Character

  • Stereotypical character shaped by common perception

- Anti-hero

  • A type of protagonist but does not possess noble-quality

- Symbolic Character

  • Existence represent some major idea or an aspect of society
  • Can be any major/minor chars

4 Types of Stories

- Character Story – Story about someone

  • Why is he/she so importantto you?
  • What is your relationship to the protagonist?
  • Anyevents worth to mention?
  • Any lesson learnt from this character?
  • What would you say to the characterif you’re got a chance?
  • Any memories worth to treasure?

- Adventure Story – Life changing process

  • What makes you leave your comfort zone?
  • What so attractive in the new perspective?
  • What have you changed?
  • What lesson you have learnt?

- Accomplishment Story – desire -> struggle -> realisation -> achieving goal

  • What was the event?
  • What was your relationship to the event?
  • With whom did you experiencethis event?
  • Was there a defining moment in the event?
  • Any Lesson Learnt?
  • How this event changes your life?

- Story about my place – Place you known well and was special to you

  • How would you describethis place?
  • With whom did you share this place?
  • Any Special events?
  • How this place been changed?

5 Themes of Story

- Monster in the House – supernatural monster in a closed space

  • Monster x 1/more
  • House x 1
  • Victims x 1/more
  • Sin manifested in Monster arrival x 1
  1. Monster appears…run
  2. Victims got killed or injured… run
  3. Realization of sin… run
  4. Final battle

- Golden Fleece – quest myth

  • Quest x 1
  • Prize x 1
  • Road x 1
  • Incidents x many
  • Character x 1
  1. Giving a quest to the protagonist awarded with an irresistible price
  2. Creates incidents that help the protagonist grow(internally)
  3. Protagonist become different when achieve the goal

- Out of Bottle – magic isn’t everything

  • Wish x 1
  • Incidents x many
  • Reflection (good moral) x 1
  1. The protagonist has an unrealistic wish
  2. Wish come true all of sudden
  3. Incidents happening after wish comes true
  4. Self-reflection – normal is good

- Rites of Passage – slow realization on the problem

  • Life problem x 1
  • Wrong ways of handling the problem
  • Realization
  1. Hero is facing a life problem that cannot escape from
  2. Hero denies the problem and attempt to handle problems in wrong ways
  3. Situation worsens
  4. Accept fault in order to overcome the problems

- Whydunnit – dark side, human nature

  • Detective x 1
  • Secret x 1
  • Dark turn x 1
  1. Problem appears, protagonist traces the problem
  2. Discovers out that something secret is happening out there
  3. Attempts to deal with people behind the secret

7 Stages of Freytag’s Pyramid

  1. Exposition - Setting : Time/Place/PPL
  2. Inciting Moment - The moment where story begins
  3. Rising Action - Incidents to increase the tension, conflicts between protagonist, antagonist
  4. Climax - Turning Point
  5. Falling Action - Incidents preparing for the final battle
  6. Resolution - Head to head battle, reveal the final result
  7. Denoument / Concluding - Tying untied strings, describe where will characters go or end up

Story Design

  • First-Person POV – narrator is the protagonist

  • Pros: Enable audience to see, think and feel what the char is experiencing.

  • Cons: No full picture, quite subjective.

  • Second-Person POV – makes the audience you a character in the story

  • Pros: Reader has control over what happens, multiple endings

  • Cons: difficult to write

  • Third-Person POV – narrator is outside the story

  • Pros: know more than 1 char is feeling, writer has more freedom

  • Cons: less intimacy for reader, cannot feel the char, risk of confusion

Interactive Story

  • Story backbone is built but endings could be different
  • Some story has ne ending, but user experienced could be different.

Story Develop Strategies (Interactive Story)

3 Strategies that FAIL to develop an interactive story:

  • Branching – too much effort, too less meat
  • Foldback – bad exp. for player, feeling cheated
  • Environmental Strategy-Attempt (more props, agents, mini-games)

Story Design – Setting

  • Real Setting

  • Pros: save effort from explaining story setting

  • Cons: less creative, too local

  • Virtual Setting

  • Pros: Fresh to audience

  • Cons: Author have to pay effort to explain setting

Character Design

Process to Character Design

  1. Research
  2. Design theory
  3. Sketching
  4. Refinement
  5. Creature Creation
  6. Handle legal matters

Starter Character Qualities

  • Type of being or creature
  • Scale of Size
  • Costume
  • Props
  • Emotion
  • Surface texture
  • Colour
  • Locomotion capability and mode
  • Gender issue
  • Style issue

Scenario Control vs Interactivity

Abstraction

Introduce laws to confine the available options to players

Control Plot vs Interactive Plot

  • Control Plot – Fixed sequence
  • Interactive Plot – replace control plot with a web of possibilities

Thinking

Data-Intensive vs Process-Intensive

  • Data-Intensive – Control Plot
  • Process-Intensive – Interactive Plot

Noun Thinking vs Verb Thinking

  • Noun Thinking – specify things, about existence
  • Verb Thinking – Describe events, about action

4 Basic Requirements of Personality Model

  • Behavioral Completeness – must address all possible character behavior
  • Conciseness – keep the personality model as little as possible
  • Orthogonality – personality traits must not overlap each other
  • Tied to behavior – must be created towards the behavior

5 Types of Personality Traits

  • Intrinsic – Basic personality (greed, integrity, pride, virtue)
  • Mood – Emotional States (angry, joy)
  • Volatility – the rate of change of mood
  • Relationship – relationships between actors
  • Accordance Variable – Gullibility - Suspicious