Writing Consistent Stories based on Structured Multi-Authored Narrative Spaces

Multi-authoring is currently a common practice in the field of contemporary storytelling but producing consistent stories that share a common narrative space when multiple authors are involved is not a trivial task. Inconsistencies, which are not always well-received by readers are sometimes expensive to fix. In this work we attempt to improve the consistency of stories and narrative spaces by introducing a set of rules based on a formal model. Such a model takes into account the reader’s concept of consistency in storytelling, and acts as a framework for building tools to construct stories grounded in a common narrative space with a reinforced sense of consistency. We define a model (the Setting) and deploy it through a tool (CrossTale); both based on previous research, and discuss some user evaluation, with an in-depth analysis of the results and their implications. 1998 ACM Subject Classification H.1.1 Systems and Information Theory, H.1.2 User/Machine Systems, H.5.1 Multimedia Information Systems, H.5.2 User Interfaces, H.5.4 Hypertext/Hypermedia, J.5 Arts and Humanities