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interactive narritive construction from point of view
by devin hunt

The interactive narrative is a recent development, coming to fruition in the digital age of rapid prototyping and verbose visual systems. Interactive narratives, as an emergent form, encompass a huge clutch of media types: from videogames to nonlinear novels. The creation of an interactive narrative from a fairytale is an interesting bridge between an old and new information structure. The fairly tale is by far one of the most defined linear story archetypes in modern language; having been defined hundreds of years ago by, among others, the Brothers Grimm.

To create an effect interactive narrative from an already established story raises a grave issue: should the new narrative accomplish the same end as its inspiration or should a completely new experience emerge from the recreation of the story. The purpose of a fairytale is twofold: to capture the imagination of a child and to teach a lesson. If a user who is uniformed of a fairytale's purpose constructs a wholly new narrative there is a great change that the original message of the tale will be lost in the new construct; rendering the purpose of the original tale mute. This is the decision that must be made by the interactive designer: will the user learn of a tale through interaction or formulate a new one in a fairytale's universe.

As many will remember from there childhood, the tale of Hansel and Gretel follows the plight of two children who are forsaken by the mother in the forest not once but twice. While the children were crafty enough to find their way home the first time they become hopelessly lost the second time around. The stumble across a house constructed entirely of sweets and are lured in and captured by a wicked witch. The Hansel is then locked in a cage to be fattened while Gretel, under the witches spell, must slave away preparing her brother to be eaten by the witch. Gretel outsmarts the witch and bakes here alive. The children escape the house with the witches wealth and return to there father.

The message of faithfulness and courage contained within the Brothers Grimm's Hansel and Gretel is too poignant to destroy with a complete deconstruction. This therefore bares the user from constructing a new tale from the universe. The tale does plead for separate viewpoints, though, as each of the main characters – Hansel, Gretel, and the Witch – experience different scenarios during the rising action and climax of the tale.

One solution would be to separate the actions and dialogue of each character into a linear timeline. This timeline would allow the user to easily when a character performs meaningful events. Then the timelines of each character would be placed next to each other thus illustrating how the action is exchanged between characters and when two characters interact with each other. Users would then have the ability to switch point of views (POV) between characters when they come in contact. This interaction is easily facilitated with the linear layout.

Press play to start the demo. Click on different players to swap the view point and watch the plot line build at the bottom. This is an omnipotent view of how a POV story would build.

Using this omnipotent control system the user now has control over which characters viewpoint the story is told from. This allows the user to tailor the story he is experiencing while still maintaining the core fairytale proper: a successful interactive narration of a classic.