Introduction
In the realm of digital storytelling, presenting nonlinear narratives can be particularly challenging due to their complex structures and the intricacies involved in their visualization. The paper „Visualizing Nonlinear Narratives with Story Curves“ introduces an innovative approach to tackling this issue through the development of story curves and the Story Explorer tool. As I move on into the creation of my prototype, the insights from this paper will be instrumental in shaping the way I visualize and manage nonlinear narratives. By integrating story curves into my prototype, I aim to enhance the user’s understanding and interaction with complex storylines, providing a more intuitive and engaging experience.
Summary
The paper introduces story curves, a visualization technique designed to reveal patterns in nonlinear narratives by mapping events in a two-dimensional plot based on their chronological and narrative order. The core component of this system is the Story Explorer, an interactive tool that allows users to curate and explore the chronological sequence of scenes in a movie script. The Story Explorer parses scripts to extract scenes, characters, and metadata, presenting them alongside the story curves for a comprehensive view of the narrative structure.
A schematic diagram showing how to construct a story curve from a sequence of events in story and narrative order (left). An example of a story curve of the movie Pulp Fiction (right) showing characters (colored segments), location (colored bands), and day-time (gray backdrop). A nonlinearity index is calculated based on the degree of deviation of narrative order from actual story order.
User tests were conducted to evaluate the readability and learnability of story curves. Participants were asked to answer questions regarding pattern recognition within the story curves, and the results indicated a generally high level of comprehension, with an average correctness rate of 80%. The tests highlighted some challenges, such as the simultaneous interpretation of both story and narrative orders, but overall demonstrated the effectiveness of story curves in conveying complex narrative patterns.
The goals of these tests were to assess the practicality of story curves in real-world applications and to identify areas for improvement. The results showed that story curves are a valuable tool for screenplay analysis, education, and film production, offering new perspectives on narrative structures that were previously difficult to visualize. The feedback from professional writers and scholars further emphasized the potential of story curves to revolutionize the way nonlinear narratives are understood and created.
My conclusions
Story Curves are a type of narrative visualization that is able to help both novice and experienced storytellers build a coherent non-linear narrative in, potentially, any kind media of their choice (ARG, video, web, installation, etc.).
With an improved version of Story Explorer new narrative patterns could arise due to new variables, such as media and readers interaction with the story. Adding new feature related to the challenges of multiple media and community creation would be a very interesting topic to explore and could be the ground for my digital prototype.
References
N. W. Kim, B. Bach, H. Im, S. Schriber, M. Gross and H. Pfister, „Visualizing Nonlinear Narratives with Story Curves,“ in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 595-604, Jan. 2018, doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2017.2744118.
