Narrative Elements (project)

CountryPumpkin

Angry tropers would.

I hope that the ideas behind these categories are developed beyond them just being categories. "Having alternate endings" or "anthropomorphic robots" are really only things that happen sometimes and not narrative elements. If you elaborated as to why these things are important in the context of the game and media type, that would be more interesting.

Also, whatever happened to that music thing you wanted to do?

glennmagusharvey

Back burner, between academically prepping for heading to grad school this fall, looking intensely for housing, and doing what little I could for GOTV for the Wisconsin recall elections.  And of course, this idea here.

It would be broadly similar to this, though considering how I've used TV Tropes for music tropes, such as cataloguing instances of a particular chord progression, it might turn out more like tropes trainspotting.

glennmagusharvey

This is even draftier than before.

 

Delayed Resolution

A pacing feature wherein cause and effect are temporally separated.

Generally speaking, cause and effect are closely linked in narrative.  To highlight this link, cause and effect are often presented close to each other--usually one after the other, sometimes even using flashbacks to facilitate this proximity.

However, sometimes they are separated, during which time the audience may forget the cause or effect (whichever was presented first) and fail to link the two.  Foreshadowing is a general term for information revealed in a narrative that, in the broadest sense, relates to important narrative details later.  In a more specific sense, it is a term for information that draws the audience's attention now that relates to important narrative details later.

The Cliffhanger is an element that is used to strengthen the audience's memory, making the linkage easier when the second piece is presented later.  The cliffhanger presents something particularly dramatic, curious, or otherwise attention-grabbing, before a separation forced by the nature of the medium.  Cliffhangers are typically used in two circumstances:
1. Between sections of a work, where the nature of the medium forces a separation.  For example, TV broadcasts of TV shows and movies have commercial breaks, stage performances have acts and intermissions, etc.; cliffhangers may be used to keep the audience's attention until the next section begins.
2. At the ends of whole stories, such as whole novels or movies, to tie in sequels (which may or may not yet exist, but are or will be presented as otherwse completely separate works).

While the Cliffhanger is meant to aid the audience's memory, Chekhov's Gun highlights the audience's lack of attention, and the Brick Joke exploits the audience's forgetfulness.

Chekhov's Gun introduces information that is not immediately relevant, either directly to the narrative or to the audience's understanding of it.  After some time, during which the audience has most likely forgotten the information, it becomes relevant for a new detail, causing most audience-members to scratch their heads and then come to a belated realization.  This element occurs anytime information previously thought to be irrelevant by the audience (note: NOT necessarily by the characters themselves) suddenly turns out to be relevant.

Chekhov's Gun is an example of Conservation Of Detail.

The Brick Joke is a humorous narrative meant to amuse the audience primarily through use of Chekhov's Gun.  It generally follows this form:
1. Present one narrative where Conservation Of Detail is violated because there is an unused piece of information.
2. Present a second narrative where that piece of information is unexpectedly used.

 

I just kinda wrote this up, without style guidelines in mind.

glennmagusharvey

Would it be better to organize the "elements in this work" info into text paragraphs rather than alphabetized lists?  Make the paragraphs describe the work itself--the characters, the plot, the reception and metacontext--but basically label (by crosslinking) every element that comes up.

Also, I just realized that attaching reader vote records to each crosslink is going to basically mean storing every crosslink with its own vote data.  And we need to make it revertable, in case someone vandalizes the page.

Could do something like make a markup indicating instance number.  for example,

Alice has "What's on, yo?" as her Catchphrase{1}, while Bob has "Sweet monkey poo!" as his.

 

Again using Cave Story as an example:

The plot begins in medias res{1}, though not in the usual way: instead of the main character being aware and retelling the story, the story leaves the main character unaware and gradually discovering the backstory and setting details, as the player does the same.

The main character, at first unnamed, wakes up in a cave with no knowledge of anything.  The character first steals a gun from a sleeping gunsmith, then falls into a town in the midst of an argument between two characters--the first hint that there's something going on already.

And each of those {1}'s (or any other number) is a separate instance you can upvote or downvote; there should be a vote widget/thingy/Idontknowwhatitshouldbecalled next to every such link.  With one exception: the {0} means an element that's just being referenced, but it NOT represented in this work.