In the Middle the story develops through a series of complications and obstacles, each leading to a mini crisis. (Great stories often begin at Plot Point 1, thrusting the main character right into the thick of things, but they never really leave out Act 1, instead filling it in with back story along the way.) Plot Point 1 is a situation that drives the main character from their “normal” life toward some different conflicting situation that the story is about. In the Beginning you introduce the reader to the setting, the characters and the situation (conflict) they find themselves in and their goal. In a series of articles describing the ‘design’ of a novel, the following summary of the three act structure is provided ( Conflict and Character within Story Structure: The Basic Three Act Structure): Trivially ordering the story into three acts – the beginning, the middle, and the end – the three act structure One of the most widely used patterns is the three act structure, which will be familiar to any budding film critic. In many storytelling traditions, certain tried and trusted story arcs – or character arcs (that is, the emotional rollercoaster that the lead character lives through) – can be seen again and again in many different stories, and across many different storytelling forms (traditional (oral/spoken) storytelling, theatrical plays, short stories, novels, film screenplays, and so on). Use of the word ‘arc’ evokes the visual idea of a curve, and with it the sense that the story arc takes the player on an emotional journey through the story – an emotional rollercoaster, maybe… To contrive an example, a series of inevitable points in a foldback story structure can be used to construct the story arc that plays out through a game as a whole. Using television or radio soaps as an example, (or equally, serialised comic book stories, or game and film franchises/sequels) a story arc is an extended storyline that may weave several consecutive episodes together in narrative terms, whilst still allowing each individual episode to explore its own, ‘local’ storyline. Just to round off the current series of posts on the story structure (or narrative structure) of a game, I think it’s worth mentioning a few more terms that you’re likely to see if you explore this topic in further depth.įirst up is the idea of a story arc – this is the principle storyline/narrative thread in a game, (although it may also be refer to one of several coherent storylines in a game, as for example in a game with a threaded structure).
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