The past two decades have witnessed a great flowering in writing about narrative and the effort by a wide variety of scholars to incorporate it into their disciplines. The study of narrative in fiction has, of course, long been central to literary theory. More recently, however, narrative study has moved out of English Departments to take on new prominence in psychology, philosophy, semiotics, ...

In many computer games, narrative is a core component, with the game centering on an unfolding, interactive storyline which both motivates and is driven by the game-play. For larger games, however, narrative size and complexity makes analysis difficult, and while formal approaches to assessing game narratives and identifying flaws have been proposed, scalability remains a barrier to practical u...

This paper describes the design and implementation of IceBound, an indie game that uses dynamic story techniques. Storygames with high narrative process intensity (where story is generated or recombined in algorithmically interesting ways, rather than being simply pre-authored) are still rare, in part because story creators are hesitant to cede control over output quality to a system. As a resu...

Abstract Reading fiction has been associated with improved social and imaginative reasoning that could lead to critical thinking. This observational study investigated the relationship between nonfiction exposure, narrative transportation, factors of thinking (critical disposition, epistemological orientation). Self-selecting participants ( N = 335) completed an online survey including author r...

This essay seizes upon the tension between two senses of “eventuality,” as concerning staple narrative, events, and kind contingency that remains unassimilated by narrative sense. Contingency is a manifestation gap systemic complexity temporal phenomena reductive heuristic mode cognition. Sophisticated forms however, may choose to confront this rather than merely exhibit it, part their continua...

This article reports the findings of first large-scale study into how dementia is depicted in minds fictional characters. Dementia increasingly prevalent and, absence a cure, requires better societal and cultural awareness. Literary representations offer readers opportunity to ‘try on’ minds, understand alternative cognitive experiences. Stylisticians have explored ‘mind styles’ characters with...

Literatronic is an adaptive hypermedia system for hypertext fiction. Its adaptive features are based on an algorithm that simulates a Hamiltonian cycle on a weighted graph. The algorithm maximizes narrative continuity and minimizes the probability of loosing a reader’s attention. The metric for this optimization is defined as the minimization of hypertextual friction and hypertextual attraction...