Storytron > overview > Storytronics > The Experience of Creating a Storyworld

The Experience of Creating a Storyworld

The experience of interactive storytelling is just as unique for the storybuilder as it is for the player. As a storybuilder, you seek what every artist seeks - to express yourself, to move the player's emotions, to open the player's mind, to strive towards the transcendent. In the broadest sense, your method is also the same as other artists' - to create a virtual experience that draws the audience in.

That's where the similarities end. Interactivity is such an incredible wildcard that it turns the whole concept of storytelling upside down. Yes, you are the author of the player's virtual experience, and yes, you create that experience according to the kind of emotions and thoughts you wish to stir in the player, but you must remember that, from the player's point of view, what draws them in is not your carefully construed story, but the opportunity to exercise volition in your storyworld, and the confidence that the choices they make will have dramatic significance and will result in a unique, satisfying story all their own.

If you think this is robbing you of your authorial voice, think again. Quality interactivity is an immensely powerful rhetorical tool, not least because it allows you to respond to players whose frames of reference vary widely from yours and from each others'. It also generates suspension of disbelief with unheard of effectiveness - it's very easy to believe a depiction of a person when you can talk to and act on the depiction and have it respond relevantly, emotionally and intelligently. It's also much easier to maintain the audience's interest in an interactive experience. Indeed, when you master this medium of expression, your authorial voice will not merely be heard in one story - it will boom all throughout the countless unique stories your players experience.

Not only is interactive storytelling a powerful medium, it's also quite a fascinating adventure to create in. Since a storyworld is not one story but a universe of dramatic possibilities, storybuilding challenges your creative faculties to work overtime, thinking not where the plot should go, but instead trying to imagine every possible direction it could go. It's like drawing a
map of your entire imagination, which the player then traverses. Just a small example:

Suppose you're just starting out, and you are thinking about the kinds of dramatic situations you'd want your storyworld to contain. Romance is always a good way to start, so you add to your storyworld the possibility for romance. Note that this doesn't mean any specific romance will happen in the storyworld - it means that it is generally possible for any Actor to engage in romance. But what fun is romance without adultery? And where there's adultery, there's
bound to be some hooligan Actor who would resort to murder. Now, where there's murder there are trials, and where there are trials there's incarceration. Where there's incarceration there are getaways, and those lead to refuge-seeking, which may lead to friendship, more romance or exploitation. Each of these situations can happen several times when the storyworld is played, in different orders and to any number of different Actors, so you can see that even such a small set of dramatic possibilities creates an endless variety of possible
stories. Of course, which dramatic possibilities you include in a storyworld depends on your imagination and artistic vision - which you are encouraged to explore as thoroughly as possible.

You also create all the Actors who participate in the story, defining each one's personality, which affects the way that Actor interacts with others. These interactions, of course, are what leads to the dramatic situations you've defined, so, for example, you can make certain Actors more likely to become romantically involved, based on their personality.

But you want the player to experience much more than interpersonal interaction - you want them to be constantly making interesting dramatic choices. This means that, instead of imagining dramatic situations which seem to have only one reasonable way of resolving, you try to imagine all situations in a way that will force the player to make truly tough choices.

You also want these choices to amount to a satisfying story, with a beginning, middle and end, albeit which specific beginning, middle and end those will be depends on the player's decisions. You have several tools that let you do just that - making sure, for example, that the pace stays right, that the story doesn't end before all the threads are resolved or continue after they are, that certain key events happen at designated times and so forth.

As you can see, storybuilding is nothing like any other artistic endeavor. Everything here is done at a higher level: Instead of creating a story, you create dramatic possibilities. Instead of planning a character's behavior, you imbue an Actor with a unique personality, and send them into the storyworld to behave according to it. Instead of creating a plotline, you define special principles that maintain the narrative's form. You do all this knowing that your storyworld will be played by countless people, each of which will have a unique experience on each playing. Thereby, you will reach that player on their own terms, and your impact as an artist will be stronger for it.