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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.