Study Task 4 - Introduction

I first wrote brief overview of my proposed research topic, "Can interactive story-telling efficiently tell astory?":

I plan to explore interactive storytelling and how it conveys a story and how this different form of delivery makes or breaks a story. I plan to look at the one of the main key mechanics of interactive storytelling - choice. I intend to explore the value of giving readers a choice, or at least the illusion of choice and how this affects the overarching story experience. Some other mechanics I will look at are composition, pacing and ethics/morals. I aim to look at a multitude of interactive story templates and mediums; visual novels, ‘Choose-your-adventure’ books, interactive comics and video games are a few mediums I plan to recreate short stories in. I will recreate the same story in these mediums and plain text as a control to experiment with which works best. My final product could be an interactive story told using many mediums.

I then rewrote it into an introduction/summary for this project:

Ever since early-man gathered round a fire to tell stories of harrowing experiences and thrilling wonders, storytelling has evolved exponentially. It has, in essence, become an art form in itself. Story is an age-old, generally recognized key factor of narrative-driven animation and has the ability to make or break an animation. That said, there are still innovations happening in story, literature and animation. One such modern development of storytelling is the ability to give the reader limited control over the direction of the narrative. It is a storytelling technique that the reader can interact with. Since the first ‘Choose-your-own-adventure’ book in 1976 by Edward Packard, interactive stories have been adapted to fit modern formats.

Interactive storytelling can take on a range of media and formats such as text-based ‘Choose-your-adventure’, visual novels, interactive comics, and choice-driven, point-and-click video games. Over the past few years, it’s popularity has grown but traditional narrative still remain mainstream. Is interactive storytelling a viable competitor to traditional storytelling? To what extent does interactive storytelling tell a story efficiently? This project aims to explore the various methods of presenting an interactive story and how they are different, for better or worse, compared to traditional storytelling.

One of the main mechanics looked at is the presentation of choice, or the illusion of choice. The value of giving readers a choice will be assessed for how much it contributed to making a narrative immersive, interesting and memorable. The moral and ethical aspect of choices too will be explored by use of prototyped interactive stories that will act as polls. The final outcome of the project would be a polished narrative told in different interactive mediums, to gauge which works best and why.

This then continues on to triangulate my finding on the aspect of choice in interactive storytelling.