Argax Project

Theory: A Poetics of Interactive Narrative

The Structure of Narrative

Before we can make a narrative interactive, we must first understand what a narrative is. Furthermore, our model must include a sense of how interaction affects that narrative.

Within the interactive drama community, such a model already exists. Aristotle's Poetics has served as the basis for understanding interactive drama since Brenda Laurel proposed her neo-Aristotelian model in 1991. Laurel's model is based largely on the work of Sam Smiley (1971). Michael Mateas (2004) has recently extended Laurel's model to include an explanation of how user interaction fits into the model.

Works Cited

• Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. S. H. Butcher. Ed. Francis Fergusson. New York: Hill and Wang, 1961.
• Laurel, Brenda. Computers as Theatre. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1991.
• Mateas, Michael. "A Preliminary Poetics for Interactive Drama and Games." First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Eds. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. Reprinted at: <http://www.electronicbookreview.com/thread/firstperson/mateas>
• Smiley, Sam. Playwriting: The Structure of Action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1971.

Argax Project : Dissertation : A Rough Draft Node http://www2.hawaii.edu/~ztomasze/argax

Last Edited: 08 Apr 2011 ©2007 by Z. Tomaszewski.