Narrative Theory Series

Designing Games & Interactive Stories

I confess I find the concept of “the rhetoric” of Narrative to be a bit too all-encompassing in theoretical literature, since it is defined as “all those elements of the text that produce the many strong or subtle combinations of thought and feeling we experience as we read” (Cambridge Introduction to Narrative). First, keep in mind that when narrative theorists use words like “text” or “read” and “author,” we should keep a medium-neutral perspective and not take them literally as referring to books but that the ideas also apply to games, movies, comics, music etc. Second, the definition, such as it is, seems to include pretty much anything in the narrative that makes us feel or think something, which is anything that’s there, so it feels imprecise and not very helpful for elucidating anything of import.

The value of the concept of “narrative rhetoric” might be more to ask us to analyze in detail any particular moment in a text which produces a relatively strong feeling or presents a major idea, because then one can ask about how it is that the narrative produces that particular strong thought or feeling. Then, the concept seems a bit more useful and less vague. For example, what causes us to really feel emotions of fear towards a killing alien/monster/slasher Character in a filmic narrative? A major part of the ‘rhetoric’ of that fear production has to do with light and sound. Most films of the ‘something’s killing people’ type hide that murdering thing in shadows where we can’t see them, and they are indicated only by sound initially.

In the shadows of a house or space ship’s cargo hold, we hear footsteps or alien teeth rattling or scraping of a knife, but cannot see the threat. The way such films work over the course of their events is that gradually we see more and more of the threat. An hour into the movie, we glimpse an alien limb or murderer’s grimace. By film’s end, we see them in their bodily entirety, which is useful because once you can see them, the heroes can defend themselves properly and fight back with clubs or flamethrowers. The filmic rhetoric of fear in this kind of example is a gradual progression from darkness to visibility, which is also a transformation of the antagonist from seeming to have great power (unseen, only heard) to being easy to shoot at (ah, now we see their full form, and that visibility makes them vulnerable to attack at the narrative climax!).

So, that’s how I would suggest you might understand this concept of the ‘rhetoric of narrative,’ the particular devices used to make you feel and think certain things. Rhetoric generally refers to persuasion so you can ask, what specifically persuaded me in the narrative to think or feel that thing?

No matter how wild the narrative might be in terms of its realism or fantasy or magic or science, the events produce an overall sense of normalization because they are depicted as being causally connected. A lot of what occurs in narratives are from a logic perspective totally absurd, but we accept these events as normal because they are so within that narrative universe.

What causes thunder? That’s obviously Thor’s hammer hitting something. It makes so much sense, when Vikings say so in the night, with firelight and music and while drunk on mead. One aspect of myths is that they purport to explain real things. The sun rising in the East and setting in the West? That’s obviously Apollo’s horses dragging a sun chariot or something. The myth explains causality and normalizes anything within its force fields of narrative coherence.

Normalization also works on the level of perception. As soon as we see an image, we project meaning into it. Rorschach tests are based on this, and a lot of abstract art, as is the comic caption contest in The New Yorker magazine which is based on the idea of providing a still image to the contestants who have to come up with a clever textual component as a caption that makes it funny or ironic or more interesting.

Editing and montage often builds on the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, i.e. when we see that one thing or event follows another, we naturally assume that the prior thing/event caused the later thing/event.

A version of this is pretty common in suspense films, where you see a stationary character in a space, and another character progressing through a space. The way the scenes are cut, you expect the moving character to be approaching the stationary character, and emotions rise. Just as the moving character breaks through a door, and you think the stationary character is about to be found, it turns out that the moving character has been moving in a totally different space and you were being tricked by the editing to think the two characters’ spaces were the same one.

I confess that I sometimes rely on one of these logical fallacies myself! I’ve read that mountain bikers put eye stickers on the backs of their helmets to keep cougars from attacking them, the logic being the cougars will think you can see them and so they won’t attack if they can’t sneak up on you unwittingly. I know this trick works because none of the mountain bikers with eye stickers on the backs of their helmets have ever been attacked by cougars! And neither have I! Narrative makers play with causality all the time and in lots of different ways, such as when Batman and Joker (in Batman, 1989) debate about who made who.

Just as there are many different kinds of character types, plots have types, too, only they aren’t called plot-types but instead masterplots. They are also called “story skeletons” but that sounds a bit like Halloween or something so masterplots is actually a pretty good term. It’s like a master plan for a plot. The quest, revenge, death and renewal, save the world, rags to riches, David vs Goliath — there are countless masterplots (well, maybe someone can try to count them), just as there are a cartload of character types.

Masterplots are not genres. E.g. you can have a sci-fi quest, a fantasy quest, a detective noir quest, a romcom quest. Genres are more about redefining general expectations about what a narrative is like for a typical audience demographic that likes those kinds of things. But demographics change. In 1949, sci-fi readers were 93.3% male and were an average age of 29. By 2011, the percentage of male fans was down to 59% and the average age was 43.5. Aside from demographics, we expect sci-fi to have spaceships, lasers, robots, cool tech and faster than light travel. Genres (like character types, like masterplots) can be combined with other genres, such as Western and Sci-Fi in the Westworld film and tv series.

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Bibliography & Further Reading

• A Game Design Vocabulary: Exploring the Foundational Principles Behind Good Game Design by Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark
• A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
• Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach by Michael Sellers
• An Introduction to Game Studies by Frans Mayra
• Basics of Game Design by Michael Moore
• Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made by Jason Schreier
• Board Game Design Advice: From the Best in the World vol 1 by Gabe Barrett
• Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: an Encyclopedia Of Mechanisms by Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev
• Character Development and Storytelling for Games by Lee Sheldon
• Chris Crawford on Game Design by Chris Crawford
• Clockwork Game Design by Keith Burgun
• Elements of Game Design by Robert Zubek
• Film Art by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson
• Fundamentals of Game Design by Ernest Adams
• Fundamentals of Puzzle and Casual Game Design by Ernest Adams
• Game Design Foundations by Brenda Romero
• Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton
• Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design by Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans
• Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames edited by Chris Bateman
• Games, Design and Play: A detailed approach to iterative game design by Colleen Macklin and John Sharp
• Interactive Narratives and Transmedia Storytelling, by Kelly McErlean
• Introduction to Game Systems Design by Dax Gazaway
• Kobold Guide to Board Game Design by Mike Selinker, David Howell, et al
• Kobold’s Guide to Worldbuilding edited by Janna Silverstein
• Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design, 2nd Edition by Scott Rogers
• Narrating Space / Spatializing Narrative: Where Narrative Theory and Geography Meet by Marie-Laure Ryan, Kenneth Foote, et al.
• Narrative Theory: A Critical Introduction by Kent Puckett
• Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates by David Herman, James Phelan, et al.
• Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, Fourth Edition by Mieke Bal
• Practical Game Design by Adam Kramarzewski and Ennio De Nucci
• Procedural Storytelling in Game Design by Tanya X. Short and Tarn Adams
• Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing by Wendy Despain
• Rules of Play by Salen and Zimmerman
• Storyworlds Across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology (Frontiers of Narrative) by Marie-Laure Ryan, Jan-Noël Thon, et al
• Tabletop Game Design for Video Game Designers by Ethan Ham
• The Art of Game Design, 3rd Edition by Jesse Schell
• The Board Game Designer’s Guide: The Easy 4 Step Process to Create Amazing Games That People Can’t Stop Playing by Joe Slack
• The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative by H. Porter Abbott
• The Grasshopper, by Bernard Suits
• The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media, by by Marie-Laure Ryan, Lori Emerson and Benjamin J. Robertson
• The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies by Bernard Perron and Mark J.P. Wolf
• The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory by David Herman
• The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design by Flint Dille & John Zuur Platten
• Unboxed: Board Game Experience and Design by Gordon Calleja
• Video Game Storytelling: What Every Developer Needs to Know about Narrative Techniques by Evan Skolnick
• Writing for Video Game Genres: From FPS to RPG edited by Wendy Despain
• Writing for Video Games by Steve Ince
• 100 Principles of Game Design by DESPAIN

Acknowledgement

This online courseware was co-authored with OpenAI technology in order to produce a clear, succinct writing style that will be accessible to the widest range of readers from a variety of backgrounds.

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