Developing Practice:- Project Proposal 1.


Learning Outcomes:

During this module you will apply your knowledge of research and pre-production developed in your previous modules to develop and realise a completed short project or prototype for an interactive artefact based on a negotiated topic, issue or text.


My initial idea for this project is also what I plan to do for my final practical MA project. My interest lies in interactive narrative or modular narrative, the techniques needed to create an interactive story or novel. My first thoughts on this has of yet not been fully realised, and I am struggerling to come up with the right kind of narrative that would work on this genre. Comics, hypertext novels all try to achieve this, and personally I do not feel that any research I have done has satisfied me on how narrative can be broken up and retold successful in an interactive capacity. Comics obviously have been experimented with for a number of years; however I still feel that they have yet to be implemented on the web in such a way that you are not left feeling like you could have experienced that in book form, whilst lying on the sofa with a cup of tea- instead of been perched on an office chair bolt upright, blinking against the computer screen, and getting an increasingly bad headache. As of yet I don’t feel that interactive narrative on the web is successful and until someone figures out the correct formula for this type of story telling ( which I am in no way qualified to do) I think audiences will continue to be disappointed and left feeling like they don’t know what is going on and did they miss something important on that one hyperlink they failed to link to.

My first thoughts, combined with my research module, “To look at the effect of new media of the transmission of fairy tales.” Is something which has interested me for some time; however I am not sure that there is enough scope or really any point in creating an interactive fairytale? You could look at is there any point in creating anything interactive should I be thinking along those lines. However I feel that fairytales have been retold and retold, and although I would go back to the original source of fairytales, creating an interactive fairy tale might go against the premise and the point of them. That is the moral implications and the lessons that you are supposed to learn. Now that I am writing this down this might be perfect? Could the reader only get to the end of the fairy tale if they take on board the moral lessons that are supposed to be learned? This creates the problem of these tales been so well known that reader will know what they are supposed to be thinking and thus would navigate themselves through the piece with this in mind. One way to get around this would be to write a fairytale that follows the conventions and rules so to speak and not actually call it a fairytale. Thus the reader might get a feeling of the background to the text but would not know for sure.


Within this project I would like to combine narrative and illustration and perhaps a bit of animation to create a kind of hypertext novel/comic/romance. Romance being the 16th century preferred form of reading in which the novel was broken up into segments, in which the reader could choose which parts they read and which they missed. They were broken up in such a way that the reader could finish at any point and still feel a sense of closure, they were not copyrighted so should I go down this route the only problem is getting hold of a copy. Due to there excessive length apparently no body has ever finished reading one! This makes me think that these texts would be perfect for the internet. I do think studying the techniques used in this type of narrative would be a good starting point, whether I decide to look at fairy tales or some other form of narrative.

Here I’ve enclosed an extract from an essay completed for my BA in which I looked at the works of Madeleine De Scuderie:-

“Romance novels were very long made in volumes and could often extend to 10-12 volumes at a time. You could read them separately and still have a sense of closure at the end of each volume, this obviously was due to the modular structure, and relating back to today’s ‘Interactive narratives’ the use of a modular structure is needed so that you can end the experience at any time without missing the feeling of completing something. However if you read more than one, you realised that they did link together. They could be read in any order apart from the last one, which had to be at the end, which would conclude all the past volumes. As they were so long people didn’t finish them very often, they might read four of the volumes and then the concluding part, one such Romance by Madeleine De Scuderie, ‘The Map of the Kingdom of Tenderness’ is an allegory which distinguishes the different kinds of tenderness, which are reduced to esteem, gratitude and inclination. The map represents three rivers, which have these three names, and on which are situated three towns called Tenderness; Tenderness on Inclination; Tenderness on Gratitude, they are situated at Pleasing Attentions, or Petit Soins.


‘La Carte De Tendre’ or ‘The Kindom of Tenderness’ made its first debut in the first volume of ‘Clelie’, 1654. However it started its life off as a ‘Salon Game’ that was fast becoming all the rage in the 17th century, Parisian salon society. And is in my opinion the predecessor of many board games, and foreshadows certain contemporary computer games, and interactive narratives. The idea was that a group of people met and held these imaginary games. There was always a person in charge who read the narrative, and who usually had written the narrative. Romance novels were perfect for this as they didn’t have to be read in order, so one volume would be read, and on the instruction of the person playing the game would lead to another volume. ‘La Carte De Tendre’ was no exception to this. Each Pretendent, Male or Female began the journey to ‘Tendre’ at ‘New Friendship’, located at the Southern mid- point of the map and then follow one of three routes first travelling north towards ‘Tendre’. One might follow the route of ‘Inclination’, and arrive in ‘Tendre- Sur- Estime’ or the route of ‘Recognition’, and arrive at ‘Tendre-Sur-Reconnaissance’. A person might choose the wrong route, for example, and wonder into the lake of indifference, or into forgetfulness. On the opposite side of the map one might choose more wisely and wander through Submission, Obedience, Sensibility, or Constant friendship and might find oneself arriving in ‘Tendre’ more rapidly then expected. The author was always the one in charge of the narrative, the authorial voice, describing the route that had been followed, and making sure that the path they had chosen would lead to the correct part of the narrative.


Although they neither could change, nor interfere in the main narrative, participants would choose their fate and where they would lead. Participants were encouraged to enter into the realm, to explore the countryside, to dream the authors dreams with them, but the author never let them enter into her dreams. As you can see, the resemblance to interactive narrative is there for all to see. A narrative made to be broken up, yet leading to different points or different endings, memory required to remember the places you have been and the consequences of your actions. All this seems to have the same rules and strategies of interactive narratives. When Scuderie first brought out the book ‘The Kingdom of Tenderness’, there was much debate on the structure of these narratives. Critics disliked this new novel, and like we are doing today discussed whether this was narrative, however they proved to be bestsellers. One does wonder at why they stopped, or that until quite recently this style has only just been adopted again. One suggestion is that people found them exciting and new, but fundamentally a bit of a gimmick, they soon bored of them.


In De Saudrys case, they allowed her to describe her feelings about fellow players without insulting them. Rather then saying that they simply bored her, she could say that they had fallen into the lake of indifference or forgetfulness. This seems to suggest that she did move around narrative to suit her own prerogatives. She was the game master and ultimately the goal was her “friendship”, I put this in inverted commas, however this was actually the prize. Many of her friends were ‘test driven’ through the salon games, if they completed in a way in which Madeline De Saudry thought honourable she made them a personal friend. The game was there to give a lesson of how to treat women, and how to give tenderness without physical interaction. This seems to give the impression that these salon games’ narrative was more interactive than ‘interactive narratives’ are now. She could change the plot when she wanted, to lead her participants where she wanted them to go, she taught them a lesson and if they did not take the hint they were led away from Tendre. Like interactive narratives today you are given a kind of route, your helped along in the direction that would be best, if you wander off this then you come into trouble, or discovered red herrings, or find the really interesting stuff! Like ‘Interactive narratives’ someone was, and is in control however much the word interactive tries to persuade us other wise. There is a structure and if there is a structure then there must be a narrative.”


My thoughts for the next few weeks is to get to grips with the type of narrative I am going to use, and the best way in which to make it interactive. As this project is a lead up to our final project, the mistakes I make and the lessons to be learned will be implemented on the final project when hopefully I will have a better understanding of what makes narrative successful on the web and interactive. My choice of program will probably be Flash using HTML for a database.