Programming Narrative

With the introduction of the computer, narrative experiences can be found in new media applications as diverse as MUDs, arcade games and 3D immersive environments and new applications are being created all the time. The form these narrative experiences take are as diverse as their mediums: from the experiential stories of MUDs to the intricate branching plot paths of adventure games. But like with the introduction of television after decades of radio, a new medium calls for a new aesthetic, a new method of writing for that medium. Good functional models are needed to help define this aesthetic and specialized tools required to help build the work. The writing tool described in this paper, Agent Stories, is software currently under development for visually designing non-linear cinematic stories for new digital media. Fiction writing is largely a process of creating believable characters and events within established narrative structures and contexts, often for the purpose of communicating a set of ideas or feelings. Rewriting is the process whereby the writer clarifies, intensifies or refines the ideas or feelings within the work, while also taking the work closer toward a structure familiar to the writer and often connected to the writer's culture. On the other hand, to program a computer is to use a linguistic representation of certain computational elements and actions (nouns and verbs) to describe a series of logical executable operations. The purpose for program execution is usually to communicate an idea, frame human user thought [7] 1 , or perform some computational task. With each linguistic computational representation comes a vocabulary and syntax structure particular to the programming language used. Revising or debugging computer programs can require anything from vast changes in structure in order to approach a problem a different way, to minute syntax or vocabulary changes. Thus, the writing and rewriting processes are much like the computer programming and debugging processes. Both include a certain amount of recognition and implementation of established structures, both include making structural changes on an abstract level, as well as making detailed changes on a more minute level. Structure, such as that used in narrative construction or computer programming, can be well represented using graphical tools. Illustrations of building structure in the form of blueprints, narrative structural models such as the Vertag triangle [13], software flowcharts, and visual programming languages (VPLs) such as Prograph CPX [10] are all examples of graphically represented structure. …