Stimarco - I would not agree that a history of the British isles was a story, or that any non-fiction was a story. I see story as being a subset of fiction; I would say that even if you wanted to turn real events into a story you would have to fictionalize them at least a little to do so. Which goes back to Wai's point that the term 'story' does not really have a solid definition, different people believe a story is different things. I believe that anything which does not have an ending which presents a judgment is not a story but instead some other type of text. If you believe any description of a sequence of events, that's obviously a different definition of story. And since these definitions are a matter of belief, not a fact we could scientifically test, arguing about them is like arguing about religion, the argument won't accomplish anything. It was interesting hearing your perspective though.

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Original post by Takaloy D&D simply allows players to 'create their own story' while interacting. They are interacting to the game to create a story - which in this case they remain mutually exclusive.

I wouldn't say they are mutually exclusive - shaping the story is part of the game. The players can make decisions about the next action of the lead characters of the story which the DM can incorporate into the next part of the story. The interaction between player and DM is a core element that determines the story.

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Original post by sunandshadow Stimarco - I would not agree that a history of the British isles was a story, or that any non-fiction was a story. I see story as being a subset of fiction; I would say that even if you wanted to turn real events into a story you would have to fictionalize them at least a little to do so. Which goes back to Wai's point that the term 'story' does not really have a solid definition, different people believe a story is different things. I believe that anything which does not have an ending which presents a judgment is not a story but instead some other type of text. If you believe any description of a sequence of events, that's obviously a different definition of story. And since these definitions are a matter of belief, not a fact we could scientifically test, arguing about them is like arguing about religion, the argument won't accomplish anything. It was interesting hearing your perspective though.

After reading through all the posts, I was going to post almost exactly the same thing [smile].

I don't think all non-fiction could qualify as a story; I think there's an element of structure involved that separates the stories from the chronicles. But as I've written before, I can't put my finger on exactly what that property is to define a "Grand Unified Theory of Stories"; I'm not knowledgable enough about this area to know if it is even possible for anyone to define.

But it is interesting reading everyone's different perspectives on stories - I'll have to mentally add "story" to my mental list of game design elements that have widely differing definitions (is there anything in game design that doesn't? [grin])

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Original post by sunandshadow Stimarco - I would not agree that a history of the British isles was a story, or that any non-fiction was a story.

I'm curious how you came to this view and what reasons you have for supporting it. It's far from usual and the OED is certainly very clear on the subject.

The etymology makes it clear that "Story" and "History" were originally one and the same thing.

I shall call upon the mighty Oxford (albeit their US dictionary as it's conveniently built into OS X)...

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story 1 |?st??ri| noun ( pl. -ries) an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment : an adventure story | I'm going to tell you a story. a plot or story line : the novel has a good story. a report of an item of news in a newspaper, magazine, or news broadcast : stories in the local papers. a piece of gossip; a rumor : there have been lots of stories going around, as you can imagine. (informal) a false statement or explanation; a lie : Ellie never told stories —she had always believed in the truth. an account of past events in someone's life or in the evolution of something : the story of modern farming | the film is based on a true story. a particular person's representation of the facts of a matter, esp. as given in self-defense : during police interviews, Harper changed his story. [in sing. ] a situation viewed in terms of the information known about it or its similarity to another : having such information is useful, but it is not the whole story | many children with leukemia now survive—twenty years ago it was a very different story. ORIGIN: Middle English (denoting a historical account or representation): shortening of Anglo-Norman French estorie, from Latin historia (see history ). (Source: New Oxford American Dictionary.)

It is clear from the above that the word isn't specifically tied to fiction and I see no vantage to be gained in arbitrarily redefining it to make it so.

Most stories at the time of the Normans would have been more documentary or religious in nature. People didn't consider their religion's sacred scriptures to be anything other than absolute truth.

Regards,

Regular dictionaries are generally useless for looking up definitions of jargon and technical terms. That definition is for the common usage of the word 'story'; this discussion is about the technical definition of the specific object 'a story', particularly as it applies to games.

As demonstration of the uselessness of the Oxford Dictionary's definitions of literary terms, consider their definition of plot:

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plot • noun 1 a secret plan to do something illegal or harmful. 2 the main sequence of events in a play, novel, or film. 3 a small piece of ground marked out for building, gardening, etc. 4 a graph showing the relation between two variables. 5 chiefly US a diagram, chart, or map. • verb (plotted, plotting) 1 secretly make plans to carry out (something illegal or harmful). 2 devise the plot of (a play, novel, or film). 3 mark (a route or position) on a chart or graph.

But any English teacher will tell you a plot has an initial incident, rising action, a climax, and a resolution, as shown by Freytag's pyramid. The dictionary doesn't have any of that information, and that's the high school definition, not what a literary theorist would tell you.


Now, the word for what you have been defining caling 'story' is actually 'narrative':

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“Narrative is the representation of at least two real or fictive events in a time sequence. The events must be related but neither can presuppose or entail the other.(Prince 4-5) Prince, Gerald. Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative. New York, Muton Publishers, 1982.

A story on the other hand is a unit of narrative which contains a complete plot (among other things). A story is really quite a complicated object - it's possible to spend several pages just defining it. I could dig up various definitions for you, like "A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end." but I don't know of any one complete definition, and I don't know what it would take for a definition to impress you as authoritative. The simple fact is that the technical definition of 'a story' had been evolving throughout the past hundred years and there isn't yet a consensus about how it should be defined. The definition I follow is a structuralist/ narratologist one, but somebody who happened to be a postmodernist/deconstructionist would probably tell you that there is no universal story structure and thus it is impossible to define a story in structural terms.

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Original post by sunandshadow Now, the word for what you have been defining caling 'story' is actually 'narrative':

This sounds about right from my (admittedly spotty) recollection of the more formal theories on the subject of storytelling.

The problem is I have an interest in the field of Serious Games, so I need a General Theory of Play, rather than a Special Theory that could only be applied to the games / entertainment subset of the field. I need something that covers the whole gamut from military flight simulator to Tetris.

So, yes: "Narrative" is probably the closest technical term. However, I've never been impressed by attempts to explain creative writing processes and prefer to just stick with known, concrete definitions. My personal theory is that storytelling is a direct descendant from play, so I naturally believe one cannot define the former without first defining the latter and explaining how they are related. Which is what I'm trying to achieve.

I would actually agree that storytelling is a direct descendant of play. The evolutionary theory is that storytelling evolved from charades/brag-dancing, I dunno the official name for it but before people had true language when they used gestures, costumes, props, and a few words to communicate to others something they had done, like how bravely they had speared the animal they just brought back for dinner. This served two main functions: making sure that the actor got social credit for risking himself to do something which benefited the group, and teaching hunting techniques and other survival skills to other members of the group.

Aristotle also thought literature was a type of play; in his _Poetics_ Aristotle asserted that metrical and non-metrical literature were a natural outgrowth of imitation, or mimesis, which both children and adults experienced as a playful act.

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“It is clear that the general origin of poetry was due to two causes, each of them part of human nature. Imitation is natural to man from childhood, one of his advantages over the lower animals being this: that he is the most imitative creature in the world and learns at first by imitation. And it is also natural [in other words, instinctive] for all to delight in works of imitation. …to be learning something is the greatest of pleasures not only to the philosopher but also to the rest of mankind, however small their capacity for it…. Imitation, then being natural to us – as also the sense of harmony and rhythm - …it was through [mankind’s] original aptitude, and by a series of small improvements [that literature was created].” (Bywater 11)

But that said, I think there is a vast difference between storytelling and fitting Tetris blocks together. Have you read any psychology books about what play is? I've read two on pretend play, and a history of folk games, but I haven't really read anything about non-verbal, non-pretend types of play.

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Original post by sunandshadow I would actually agree that storytelling is a direct descendant of play. The evolutionary theory is that storytelling evolved from charades/brag-dancing, I dunno the official name for it but before people had true language when they used gestures, costumes, props, and a few words to communicate to others something they had done, like how bravely they had speared the animal they just brought back for dinner. This served two main functions: making sure that the actor got social credit for risking himself to do something which benefited the group, and teaching hunting techniques and other survival skills to other members of the group. Aristotle also thought literature was a type of play; in his _Poetics_ Aristotle asserted that metrical and non-metrical literature were a natural outgrowth of imitation, or mimesis, which both children and adults experienced as a playful act.

I share the view that modern storytelling evolved from the early rituals -- usually religious -- of our ancestors.

Joseph Campbell's research supports the view that mime was a common form of what we would now term 'artistic expression', although he uses the term in a very broad sense. E.g. "The mime of the heavenly order" refers to the structures of the early hieratic city states, which made direct references to the ordering of the visible Solar System.

(I also hold the view that language came from music, so song would likely have been the earliest form of linear narrative.)

The concepts many structuralists use to define "story" (in your narrower sense) are rarely applicable across all cultures, which is another reason why I don't like to go down that road. I've certainly read fiction that would not be classified as a "story" under the definitions you posted earlier.

All that said, I won't be around much over the next few days, so I think I'll withdraw from this thread now.

Well, I'll reply to this now - you can read it whenever you're back, I'm in no hurry.

Structuralism by definition is supposed to apply across all cultures because it is based on analyzing species-wide human instincts, abilities, and behavior. And under my definition stories are a subset of fiction, so it's perfectly logical that there would be pieces of fiction which do not qualify as stories.

I don't personally believe that music has anything to do with language. For one thing, brain damage which disrupts language often has no effect on music production or enjoyment, and vice-versa. But I'll also readily admit I have never understood music. Levi-Strauss (the founder of structuralism and a scholar of myth analysis) did spend a good deal of time talking about music.

I am not a fan of Joseph Campbell because he was not scientific in his personal philosophy - IMHO his books are almost ruined by his mystical/transcendentalist view of the role of myth in human history. The heroic journey theory of writing which vogler developed from Campbell and Jung's work, while useful in some cases, is an extremely narrow way of looking at fiction, and I particularly dislike that many writers seem to get misled into thinking all or even most fiction fits into the mold of the heroic journey, because it doesn't.

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Original post by sunandshadow Well, I'll reply to this now - you can read it whenever you're back, I'm in no hurry. ...

I'm not offline yet, so...

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I don't personally believe that music has anything to do with language. For one thing, brain damage which disrupts language often has no effect on music production or enjoyment, and vice-versa. But I'll also readily admit I have never understood music. Levi-Strauss (the founder of structuralism and a scholar of myth analysis) did spend a good deal of time talking about music.

I was a musician long before I'd even heard of a computer, so I've always been surrounded by it. I have a firm belief that our facility with language evolved from an increasingly complex musical past.

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I am not a fan of Joseph Campbell because he was not scientific in his personal philosophy - IMHO his books are almost ruined by his mystical/transcendentalist view of the role of myth in human history. The heroic journey theory of writing which vogler developed from Campbell and Jung's work, while useful in some cases, is an extremely narrow way of looking at fiction, and I particularly dislike that many writers seem to get misled into thinking all or even most fiction fits into the mold of the heroic journey, because it doesn't.

I agree that Campbell's theories base on his research are flawed, although they do need to be read in the context of when they were written. When I refer to his works, I refer to the original "Masks Of God" books ("Primitive Mythology", "Oriental Mythology", "Occidental Mythology" and "Creative Mythology"), which contain his original research -- essentially an encyclopedia of world myths and legends and an attempt to trace their origins back to primitive times.

I can read through his biases as they're obvious enough and I've plenty of practice extracting objective nuggets even from heavily subjective ore. Please don't assume I'm reading his words as gospel. I don't have to agree with his interpretations to find the fundamental research useful.


The problem I have with the structural approach is that I just plain don't agree with the theories behind it.

The human brain produces complex results, but it is built from very, very simple structures. It is, fundamentally, a sequenced-memory system. Not like a computer at all, although many still try and view the mind as, at some level, fundamentally computer-like.

This is where sources like Jeff Hawkins' "On Intelligence" come in. I believe in a holistic approach to science: you either look at the _whole_ picture, or you don't get the right answer.

I do not believe it is possible to build a theory of play or story without understanding how the brain processes information. Hawkins' research suggests to me that the current structuralist approaches are barking up the wrong tree.
They're mainly attempts at trying to find the common factors in successful stories -- the "what" -- without putting any useful effort into finding the "why". It's just not good enough.

What's really needed is a melding between the fields of neurology and psychology. Both are attempts to describe the same thing, yet neither has a great track record of talking to the other.

In the meantime, I guess I'll just have to finish reinventing my particular wheel. It certainly seems to work for me, but I certainly don't claim it's gospel or even fully complete.