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Defining Story
By Corvus | September 22, 2008
This has been an excellent visit back to Minnesota. Unlike previous visits, I’m feeling very relaxed and able to fully enjoy spending time with loved ones. I am however, beginning to feel a bit bereft due to the sense of being completely isolated from you, my online community. Not only has my blogging been off course, but my blog reading, twitter parsing, and feed reading have suffered as well. I look forward to finding a place in Portland and letting things settle back into a better balance.
I’ve been busy this trip. I attended a wedding, I’ve watched many of my friends interact with the children they didn’t have the last time I saw them, and watched others interact with the young adults their children have become. I’ve had conversations with people who are at critical junctures in their relationships with themselves, their careers, and their partnerships. I’ve seen hope, doubt, joy, uncertainty, confidence, and even a measure of fear. Underlying it all is a path of growth that is more obvious to me, since I’ve not been present along every step of those paths for the last five or six years. It’s been a fascinating meditation on relationships, both the ones I watch around me and my own.
Okay, what does all of this have to do with defining story? Well, I have talked before about how important relationships are to good storytelling. Intriguing characters, exotic locales, and fascinating technology–all these things are irrelevant if there aren’t compelling relationships between them. Notice that I do not limit the concept of relationship to… um… active agents, but expand it to include environments and social forces as well. Furthermore, it’s entirely possible to take a seemingly uninspiring character, place her in a featureless room, and create a compelling story based upon her relationship with her own subconscious, past, life goals, etc.
It occurred to me this weekend that my belief in the importance of relationships to good storytelling goes much deeper than, “you really ought to focus on it.” In fact, my entire belief about the importance of storytelling is hinged upon the idea of relationships. After all, community, one of the three primary components of my study (story, play, and community) is just another way of saying relationships.
So I’m exploring a definition of story that highlights the essential nature of relationships to the storytelling process. This definition will help inform and guide all discussion of game mechanics as metaphor, and gameplay as expression of story, so it’s important that I get it just right. At the moment it looks a little like this:
Story is the shared exploration of a relationship over time.
Exploration might be the weak word in that definition. I’ve played with a handful of other words, including telling and presentation. What do you think? Is the core idea too far flung? Is a clarifying definition only going to cloud the discussion, or does it play nicely with the the existing definitions of story? Let me know your reactions in the comments!
Tagged:community, participatory-storytelling, relationships, storytelling. | 8 Comments »
September 22nd, 2008 at 11:05 am
Perhaps ‘development’ or ‘evolution’ might be a better word than ‘exploration’. Additionally, because both of these words imply time, they would allow you to trim your definition down.
September 22nd, 2008 at 11:32 am
Glad to hear you’re enjoying your holiday safari. I don’t think I have any better ideas than you on this subject. I probably don’t think about story half as much as you. Keep on thinking and we’ll all benefit from your ideas, I’m sure!
September 22nd, 2008 at 2:59 pm
Hopefully the bugs haven’t been too thick up in the land of 10,000 lakes.
“Notice that I do not limit the concept of relationship to… um… active agents, but expand it to include environments and social forces as well.”
I wonder about this a little. If it’s possible to have a relationship with, well, basically anything then does defining story in terms of a relationship really say much?
Rereading your definition, I just realized I misread it the first time. Initially I thought it said “… exploration of relationships” instead of “a relationship.” That makes quite a bit of difference actually and may assuage some of my concerns. I’ll have to mind-chew on this some more, but it’s definitely a laudable achievement towards an ambitious challenge.
September 22nd, 2008 at 3:58 pm
@Sparky Do you think those words are more evocative the experience of the relationship itself, rather than the observation and discussion of it later?
Neither sound closer to the mark. Perhaps I need to use more words, not less. Thanks for the suggestions. Every new word sheds more light on the potential failings of the current wording.
@Ben Thanks for the flattery!
@Nelsormensch I hear what you’re saying, but I think approaching the environment with the idea that it is defined by the character’s relationship with it, and not simply as a mere backdrop, significantly changes the way you think of it. The same applies to social forces, and even objects.
@maharet The problem isn’t the ease or availability of access, but having the time and focus to adequately assimilate the information presented. Thanks for the suggestion, though. I’ll check it out… once I have more time. (-.0)
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:07 pm
Maybe I’m missing something really obvious, but between whom is the exploration “shared”? It’s a bit “tree in the woods”, but if I write a story and no one besides me reads it, is it still a story? It’s not being shared, unless there’s a connotation or implication that I’m missing.
“Development”/”evolution”/etc. implicitly convey the idea expressed by “over time”; “exploration”, on the other hand, more clearly avoids connotations of directionality (which I would count as a plus). In my opinion, though, any of those words communicates your idea.
I agree that relationships are a defining characteristic of stories, though it may be helpful to for your argument if you can categorize the types of participants in a story relationship (living actor, self/mind, environment, etc.).
“Relationships over time” is about as fundamental as it gets. Dynamism is what separates story from snapshot. The changes over time allow us to say that a dance, musical work, film, or novel tells a story; otherwise, we’re left with a story-less instant: a pose, a chord, an image, or a verbless phrase. Any story that comes from those latter things exists purely by extrapolation, such that the audience becomes a secondary author.
But I’m no expert by any means. I just hope that my thoughts stimulate you somehow.
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:53 pm
@Cyranix And stimulating thoughts they certainly are.
Arguably, the act of writing in a journal could be considered sharing. You may not show the journal to anyone, meaning you’re not fully utilizing the sharing portion of the process, but you are, at very least increasing the share potential by externalizing the story. Still, this definition would seem to rule out daydreams and woolgathering. I might ultimately be all right with that, but it’s something that certainly requires some thought.
I do like exploration as it assumes an active role on behalf of storyteller and audience in the process of storytelling. I also would rule out a well crafted snapshot or portrait, just because the “over time,” element is entirely in the hands of the audience.
September 22nd, 2008 at 11:14 pm
Stephen Totilo in his most recent game diary said something that made a light go on for me.
“I will play more “Wario Land: Shake It” tonight, I think. I’m only five levels into the last Nintendo Wii game of the year that will have an ending.”
This got me thinking about how many genres there are (sports, fighting, racing, party games, sim games, sandbox games) where the story isn’t being told by the game. The story is how players interpret a series of events.
Maybe that’s not relevant to what you’re trying to do. I’m a new reader. But I thought it was an interesting high level perspective on how games and stories relate that was worth mentioning.
“So you have no frame of reference here, Donny. You’re like a child who wanders into the middle of a movie…” – Walter Sobchak
September 23rd, 2008 at 7:09 am
@Blain Welcome to MBB and thanks for commenting. That’s exactly what makes video games such a powerful storytelling medium. Unlike movies or books where players must establish their fabula based exclusively on details provided by the author, video games invite the audience to build a fabula based upon their actions. You might be interested in reading my white paper, followed by a recent post talking about the changes I’ve made to my theory since writing it.