Narratives and Non-Linear Media

Say, for the sake of argument, that you have a story you want to share with the world. Or, at least, there is a story you are contractually obligated to share because of graduation and/or payment for services rendered. Either way, depending on the genre and complexity of the story and characters, you’ll most likely have a method of approach and structure (both for you as a writer and it as a story) that makes sense and has served you well. What happens, however, when you cannot guarantee that your “reader” will follow along the breadcrumbs that you have so carefully laid out in text, or in a scene, or in a lyric? Not to belabor my own point and keep you (and me) circling around the actual topic: The answer is, honestly, just reformat the structure in a way that is “linear” again.

Before I expand on the “reformatting” bit, I do want to point out that most of the other techniques you’d use for story telling or world building still work here. When you create a character, plot-impactful or not, you still want to build them organically rather than plot-purpose driven. By that I mean you sculpt out a three-dimensional personality, letting them fill in the spaces and gaps of their own volition (“How would they approach this? Why would they do it like that? What may have caused that type of approach? What was their homelife, or childhood, or work-life like to make them this way? Etc. Etc”), and then ask the now “fully built” character what they would do in each scene or plot point. Yes, this is basically how George R.R. Martin also writes his characters but, unlike him, I do not have a pile of HBO money to lounge on while I wave at the deadlines chugging on by.

So, you have your classic three act structure of plot important junctions, with setup, rising action and climax, and denouement. You have your cavalcade of (nice and three-dimensional) characters that you could drop down in any “scene”, and you’d feel fine writing how they’d react and interact with whatever obstacle is happening then. Great, let’s look at it from a linear vs non-linear perspective now:

Excluding the games that literally railroad you towards your destination (and no hate towards them, I love a game that knows exactly what it is trying to say and how to say it), it can be hard as a storyteller, and a player operating as both the protagonist and the one consuming the media, to anticipate what routes and sequences go where. I bring up the player/”reader” side of the equation as I know I can’t be alone in agonizing over every fork in the road; worrying that one way is hard progression and the other is side story content (and lore) that I may miss out on.

I can’t do anything to help the player in this situation (unless you have a “companion” traveling with you; if you hear, “Hey! Where are you going?!” then you know you’re set to explore), but in reality the narrative branching that one suspects is happening is little more than smoke and mirrors. Even games lauded for their branching storylines and quests do what I’ve done for Boogie Beyond; simply put, you make hard plot nodes that act as a funnel for all branching sequences, and, simultaneously, keep track of any world/game state variables that may have been triggered by the player prancing off in a random direction, intentional or otherwise.

So, using Boogie Beyond as an example: We know that the first Act is “cleared” once the player has won in a dance battle versus Heathers. We also give the player and their avatar free reign of the Club Cosmic once they launch the game, and try our best not to put a giant, flashing sign over Heather’s head saying, “This Is The Way”. So, we write in a myriad of little circumstances and interactions that, subtly (I hope), guide the player around and through the world in an interesting yet organic way, and during that process we are always hinting at how to get a dance with her AND keeping track of what and who the player has already interacted with. You’ll notice in the little diagram that we take into consideration the player’s agency in checking out all the little potential plot/story/lore road markers in Act 1, and we make sure to update the other markers accordingly so they are not taken out of the immersion by someone, or something, referencing a point that has already happened OR the player lacks context to understand. As long as you keep track of the various “game state” updates you can balloon the Act-internal non-linearity to your hearts content. Just, be aware that “NPC Amnesia” is an absolute sure-fire way to kill a player’s ludo-narrative resonance and immersion.

As a side note, if you have ever had any desire to play or run any tabletop RPG (like Dungeons & Dragons, for example), this non-linear linearity is basically how all campaigns are run/written. If your players never open the door to the merchant and potential love interest that you spent all of Sunday writing and designing, who cares? Just transplant that NPC into another house and your players will never the know the difference. Remember, as a creator and a writer you have an entire world to work with. In contrast, the reader, or player, has only their own restricted slice of plot in which to engage the story. Utilize the non-linear aspects of the world to give them an immersive, agency-driven experience while, simultaneously, delivering a well-crafted story in a seemingly organic way.