I completed chapter two of Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames edited by Chris Bateman last week. Below are my notes.
Topics:
- Aristotle’s Poetics
- Plot
- Character
- Remaining Aristotelian Concepts
Models:
-
Plot
- Freytag’s Triangle/Pyramid
- Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey Model
- Syd Field’s Screenplay Model
-
Character
- The various Archetypes
- The Threshold Guardian
- The Tricker
- The Herald
- The Shapeshifter
- The Shadow
- Other Archetypes
-
Remaining Aristotelian Concepts
- Theme
- Diction and Pattern
- Spectacle
Game development<->literature concept I already know:
- The reliance of RPGs and MMORPGs on the Hero’s Journey narrative structure.
Thought-provoker: Pg31-32: Pointing to alternatives-the bending or breaking of narrative models.
- The ideas of multiple viewpoints overlooking a situation
- Playing with expectations.
- Using observers
- Dream structure
- Non-chronological sequence.
- Anti-heroes
- Memento style “forward flashback.”
- Working time in both directions from the center.
- Replay narratives
Required Reading
- Brenda Laurel’s Computers as Theater.
- Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
- Chris Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey.
The stages of the Hero’s Journey (Basic):
- Departure
- Ordinary World
- Call to Adventure
- Refusal of the Call
- Meets a Mentor
- The First Threshold
- Threshold Demon
- Initiation
- The Road of Trials
- Allies and Enemies
- Inmost Cave
- Supreme Ordeal
- Return
- The Road Back
- Resurrection
- Returns with Elixer
The stages of Campbell’s Hero’s Journey (really basic)
- Departure
- Initiation
- Return
Important to the Industry
- Syd Field’s three act structure. (30-31)
Amusing Anecdote
- Using Star Wars to illustrate classic hero’s journey narrative. It follows it quite well.
Further Notes:
This chapter was quite interesting, I’d known some elements of the various narrative structures but this was a useful overview, showing off some new things and refreshing some old ones. A very good chapter considering my recent ruminations on narrative.
