Narrative Theory Series
The Structure of Narrative Time
Designing Games & Interactive Stories
Time as we usually think of it is linear. In other words, there is a direction to time, sometimes called “time’s arrow,” which is the name of a Star Trek episode, a story collection, and a general concept of physics. So, ‘the arrow of time’ is a cool term that’s found all over the place, and it described the linearity of time and its flow in a single direction (noting of course that Star Trek episodes can reverse, invert, flip, bend, warp and distort time based on the screenplay at hand).
Another term to use here is linearity. That is, an effect follows a cause, and itself becomes another cause for the next effect, because they happen in a fixed unalterable sequence (unless time traveling interventions are employed). Also, many media are linear, such as books, music and films, because they fix the order of events:
Books are linear media because one reads them one page after another.
Films are linear media because they progress one frame count at a time.
Music is linear because you hit Play and it runs in a timeline to the End.
Comics are linear because like books they have pages, but also nonlinear because often one can look through the image panels in different order without altering the story.
Most of what we would call ‘traditional media’ are linear media. However, one can also find examples of linear narrative in other environments that one wouldn’t normally think of as narrative. For example, in churches one will find The Stations of the Cross images which tell a biblical story through visual panels arranged linearly along the wall.
Another example of linear narrative in this same context is the Rosary Prayer Links, where one counts along the beads of the rosary and says a specific prayer at a certain bead in the sequence. However, note that these forms are highly narrative in character compared to, for instance, Tibetan prayer wheels, which are based on repeating and focusing on mantras and various concepts which are more abstract.
By contrast, interactive interfaces allow us to reconfigure spaces so that we can experience them based on our choices and the affordances of the medium, constructing the narrative events via our navigation of the presented content.
Sectioning Time
Linear narratives are often understood to have three recognizable sections to them, which can be understood in the following ways:
Beginning — Middle — End (Aristotle)
Past — Present — Future (Everyday sense of time)
Equilibrium — Disruption — New Equilibrium (Todorov)
Memory — Experience — Anticipation (Everyday sense of consciousness)
Retention — Attention — Protention (Phenomenology)
Aristotle’s Poetics is the first work of literary theory in the Western world, in which he set out a model on how narratives are constructed. He famously noted that all stories have a beginning, a middle and an end. However, not all stories need to progress in this order. Many Greek plays often start toward the end, at a moment of crisis, then the beginning is told later through flashbacks (how we got to this crisis moment…). Starting at the crisis can be a very dramatic way to begin a narrative, but usually you have to go back and recount at some point how you got there.
This basic form of narrative of course accords with our usual categories of Past, Present and Future, which are cognitively mapped into our subjective states as Memory (of the past), Experience (of the present), and Anticipation (of the future). The philosophical discipline of phenomenology has fancier terms for this subjective aspect of consciousness: Retention, Attention and Protention.
Finally, the Russian formalist literary theorist Todorov used a systems theory model of narrative, claiming that narratives tend to begin with Equilibrium (everything is calm, normal, in balance), then something comes along to Disrupt the Equilibrium (e.g. Trump gets elected), then Equilibrium is restored by the end of the narrative (e.g the Trump coup fails!).
Time, Media & Choice
Linear narratives are told in linear media, because the medium itself constrains the flow of narrative information. A book doesn’t force you to read from page 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 — you could start on p. 321, then go to p. 11, then jump to p. 299 — but probably you wouldn’t. When you go to see a film, you sit back and relax while in the projection booth, someone presses Start and the film runs out along its timeline.
Linear Media are media that control the unfolding of events in a strict sequence of time. Flashbacks, time travel or dreams of the future do not violate this principle, since those moments still are determined by the fixed linear sequence imposed by the medium.
Just as we saw above in the example of the short ad based on the gap filling activity of mental and interpretive Story construction, we often find narrative theories built into mediated narratives. Here is a clever reference to linear narrative construction from the film, No Country for Old Men, emphasizing the role that cause and effect play in constructing linear narrative time.
BELL You wouldn’t think a car would burn like that.
WENDELL Yessir. We should a brought wienies. Sheriff Bell takes his hat off and mops his brow.
BELL Does that look to you like about a ’77 Ford, Wendell?
WENDELL It could be.
BELL I’d say it is. Not a doubt in my mind.
WENDELL The old boy shot by the highway?
BELL Yessir, his vehicle. Man killed Lamar’s deputy, took his car, killed someone on the highway, swapped for his car, and now here it is and he’s swapped again for god knows what.
WENDELL That’s very linear Sheriff.
Multilinear (or alternately, Nonlinear) media allow for different configurations of event sequences, typically through either interactivity, generativity or some combination of both. Interactive multilinear media provides users with an interface through which they can make choices to produce new sequences of events with each choice. Generative multilinear media uses a database to automate the events in new sequences.
The term ‘nonlinear’ simply means ‘not linear’ and to define something simply by what it is not is often not very useful. The term multi-linearity captures more of the positive side of interactive narrative. Multi-linearity emerges because a) the physics of time is a constant and we cannot escape its linear physical flow, and b) each time we engage an interactive narrative, the sequence of events will be different.
Thus, ‘multi-linearity’ respects the linear flow of time, and also highlights that event sequences will change in every instance of engaging an interactive narrative. It also highlights that designers of interactive narrative need to imagine the main multiple-linear possibilities of their interactive narrative and plan for all the multiple storylines that can emerge.
To summarize our new definitions:
Linear Narrative: the medium itself restricts the sequence of events, so that one event precedes or follows another in a defined order (page after page, frame after frame)
Multi-linear Narrative: the medium allows for a different sequencing of events each time the narrative is engaged.
Games construct multi-linearity by allowing complexity to be explored through playing out alternate If/Then constructions of event sequences. The effects of causes are more difficult to predict, since there may be multiple players involved, rather than a single author carefully laying out events in a strict linear sequence.
These if/then constructs are activated by the game’s mechanics, the rules and affordances which decide what you’re allowed to do in the game — that is, how you can act, and often, how you must act!
If your roommate is reading a novel, you wouldn’t ask, “Hey, what’s your score?” You wouldn’t even ask, probably, what page they are on. You probably also wouldn’t wonder if, in reading a story, they are winning or losing. Nor would you introduce randomness by suddenly flipping a bunch of pages on them and say, “Ok, random throw. Start reading here now.”
These game mechanics would produce odd linear narratives indeed! But in a digital narrative, it might be odd not to have some game mechanics because otherwise the narrative might seem too aimless and lacking in structure.
Also, it is impossible to program every possibility into a computer and so all choices for interaction have to be constrained by some factor. Game mechanics offer a set of plausible constraints so as not to call too much attention to the fact that the virtual world one is immersed in is highly lacking in possible activities, objects, people, dialogue, spaces and outcomes. Game mechanics limit expectations of interaction so as to enrich the highly limited set of programmable media possibilities.
Sometimes people confuse or use interchangeably the ideas of Multilinearity and Interactivity. These terms do not mean the same thing. Interactivity just means that you allow a user to produce some effects via an interface. Multilinearity means that sequences of events can play out differently in the same medium and same narrative — so for example there can be different endings, beginnings or middles of a narrative each time it is engaged. Moreover, these differences can be produced generatively, e.g. by a computer program, or interactively, e.g. through use of an interface controlled by a user. So to clarify the difference in these terms:
Interactivity: the medium allows for different sequences of events based on choices expressed through manipulating the interface
Multilinearity: each presentation of a storyline can be different and needs to be designed in such a way that this is taken into account
Linear and multilinear media are not always separate but can be combined. A good example of this combination is cut scenes, or the short animated films that separated different levels, worlds or challenges in a video game. A cut scene is a bit of linear narrative embedded in an overall interactive form.
There’s a parallel here that you may have noticed with the discussion earlier about narrative incorporating anti-narrative. Just as a continuity-styled film or tv narrative can contain its logical opposite, montage, by identifying appropriate roles for it, similarly interactive narrative can make use of linear narrative — in this case, cut scenes — to propel the game play forward.
Related Articles
Narrative in Analog & Digital Media
Narrative Continuity vs Poetic Montage
The Structure of Narrative Time
The Fourth Wall & Direct Address
Fact, Fiction & Narrative Contestation
Character Interactions and Narrative Progression
Agency in Interactive Narrative
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
