[LONG] Layered Narration Exposed

[gas]

Hello! I wasn't sure to write this piece as I'm not a native english and probably this totally mess up the complex concepts I'm trying to explain.

Also, sorry for the assertive tone, it does come from my language too, so if you read "things are this way" you should read it as "let's debate if things are that way...".
Anyway I felt the urge of expose what came out from studying VNL stories from a novelist perspective, with some insight about actual narrative technique.

I think that a lot people there are quite misleaded and try to come with an anime/manga script or a kind of "strange novel with graphics" or "movie with still frames" (I've seen quoted HARRY POTTER and STAR WARS somewhere T_T) and so a lot of VNL potential got wasted.
In fact VNL are really an unique media on their own, a media with unique expectional powers that no other media can replicate! Let's see if we can put them into good use.

The story concept (and concept of story)
The story is the core of any narrative driven game, you can add whatever graphics or voicing, the story is what sell the game. So, if I have to invest 90% of my time, I’ll invest into devising a compelling story and a good ‘layered narration’.

That’s why you can see sometime both a “scenario writer” and a “story writer” in a development team, or more than one of these figures. Writing a good structured plot isn’t a everyday task.

What you’ll read in a moment is the “secret” behind winning stories, with a lil more focus on interactive fiction. Probably you’re aware that a story was good for you, but you can’t tell what exactly made a story so good in the first place. Characters? They look so similar to another shonen! Plot? No one wrote a new plot since Omero.

What made a story a good story is how the writer was aware of your brain quirks and abused of them!

A good writer is “out of the story”, he doesn’t “like” characters or plots (they are just narrative devices for him) and do a simple trick – he try to find what happen in the mind of the readers when they read. Like a baker try to find what pastry is most appealing to the mouth of customers (not his own...).
What’s make a compelling story are not the elements of the story and not even an “hero's journey” – and don’t believe ones that tell “we know how to write blockbusters already” (and then quote movies T_T). What make for a good story is how you narrate it, and so how you play on top of human perceptions.

So forget about your cute sprites, japanese schools and evocative music. Let’s see the real deal.

A layered structure (and some truth about narrative no one told you)
Let’s first analyze how human brain perceive stories and why it does like them so much.
The storyteller give you “unrelated” pieces of informations driven by a narrative motivation (the “premise”).
The premise include an uncertain goal – for example, go back to home after a war. So the reader knows at least where the story should lead and start to “listen”.

The storyteller use the premise as an excuse to continually throw at you pieces of unrelated (or misleading, or incomplete) informations that your brain passively collect in his memory drawers.

The brain collect such pieces and immediatedly begin to create on his own a “meta context” and a game of guesses, trying to combine such pieces to find a plausible “truth”. That’s true for mistery, thriller, fables and romance… it’s only natural for the brain to contextualize and order data. It’s that guessing game that make a story compelling.

A Djinn exit from the lamp and grant you 3 wishes. While Aladdin think of it, in fact your mind is fizzling with questions – why a Djinn? He’s really evil? What Aladdin will ask? Surely money! I’ll ask for money! Or becoming UltraInstinct!

Then the Djinn tell that after the third wish, Aladdin wil be killed! What? So it wasn’t good to find the lamp! Well… maybe I have an idea… no,silly… Wait! Gotcha!... not again…

The more this “game of guessing” is engaging, the more the story is compelling for our brain. Mind that the storyteller didn’t even ASKED you to guess, he just told something – this is where the narrative art come in.
Storytellers (true ones, not “web indie marketers”) always embrace this mechanic, while sometime unaware of it or working by a template. That happen often with mangaka, that barely own academic backgrounds and use verified storyteller templates.

As everything else in human culture, also storytelling evolved. Not only by fitting language (in fact the language is again just a simple tool), but increasing the strenght of the narration on human brain. For example, early writers liked to stage long setting premises. Today we learned that the setting could be generated by some early tense and further "on stage" indepths, and the readers brain seems to be more engaged this way, deciphering the context step by step.

One of the most important modern findings was that the brain actually don’t care of the cronological order or continuity of information pieces.

In the last ’90 a lot of novels started in the middle, continued with the premise and ended… without an ending. The brain was able to rebuild the entire story the same. Much more: the reader felt more attachment to this kind of stories, in the end. That’s cause brain did something active: it rebuild the entire story on his own.
The mind seems to accept JUST THE RAW INFORMATIONS, not the order you collect them or the wholesome continuity.

I can do a practical example on the fly.

• An origami is lying on the ground at midnight.
• Mary feel guilty at 18:50 in face of a dish in a restaurant.
Well, just informations. Your brain store them.

• Mary was working up to 18:00 wth a very exctied mood, and then meet Greg, gifting him with an origami.
• When asked by Greg at 19:00 about her mood, she ask a moment to call Lucy by phone.
• Mary is totally unable to make an origami, and spent from 10:00 to 16:00 to figure out a possible gift for Greg, that love origami so much.
Stop a bit right now. Your brain is doing guesses about such unrelated informations. Why Mary feel guilty? Why she call Lucy? As you can see the narration is sparse, not linear, but your mind is doing guesses the same, following his need for rational explanations.

• Mary call Lucy at 19:00 and she explain feeling guilty.
• Lucy made an origami at 15:00 and leave it on her desk.
Now your mind is doing the correct guess, right? Mary stolen Lucy origami to gift Greg.

• At 18:00 Lucy origami is on the desk again
What? That piece of information contradict what we knew… ! The brain work out a solution!

• At 19:30 Lucy enter the restaurant, crying and accusing Greg of having broke her heart!
Oh, well, ok it was about the date entirely! Lucy was the GF of Greg! Now we understand why Mary felt guilty for real. And that’s why the origami was thrown away… Your brain is rebuilding the story on his own with that new deciphering key. As you can see I’m not telling what happen, you are using your memory bits to figure it out on your own!

• At 18:30 Mary followed an online guide and created the same origam as Lucy on her desk, while some guilty feeling begin to rise on her.
And that’s how a simple stupid story became compelling by letting your brain have an active role on it.

Compelling stories are the one that let the reader brain do some active work. This active role of the brain it’s more powerfull than early writers figured out.

This finding was very important for the VNL community, ‘cause practically speaking interactive fiction (and VNL on top of it) are the only media that can fully benefit of such mechanic. Really! It's the only media that can naturally show different perspective on the same elements continually breaking continuity and without any linearity.

How VNL abuse of layered structure
This is the most common paradigma and you can see it put on use on 99% of modern successful VNL. It’s easier to understand from the player perspective and then you can try to retroengineer it. Please read the whole thing and then do some insight, as the process is linearly perceived by theplayer but not from the writer perspective.

The premise
The main character is called to solve a problem, let’s call it The Duty. That’s quite obvious from the early graphics, tenses, intro dialogues and the game title too. You’re a private eye called to solve a robbery case.

The first challenge
The player is facing the game the first time and his goal is to solve somehow the Duty. Based on his choices he does reach an ending that concern the Duty.
Mind that there are two possible kind of endings. The “Pitfalls” are sudden game overs like falling into a trap or being defeated in combat. They aren’t computed in the plot logic and they’re here just to prolongate the game experience. What the player aim for is to collect a “Normal Ending” – one that solve for good or bad his Duty.

Anyway, that first Normal Ending is not completely satisfactory (a secret: not even one Normal Ending is really satisfactory ;D).

The second challenge
Aware that the game offer more (that “gallery” hint for more endings, and maybe one is satisfactory!), the player aim to collect all Normal Endings.

Doing so, mostly unaware of it, is collecting different hints about something. The player is able to collect different perspectives about the same fact. This doesn’t contradict how his brain collect informations and make guesses.

For example, in a branch you can see that character X is found dead, but in another branch you can state character y can’t be the culprit ‘cause he was oversea that day, EVEN if in this route you never experience X death. This is a “digital memory”, order doesn’t matter. You only collect such data in sparse order. Your mind do guesses and try to create a wholesome plausibility for the whole set of data.

Mind that the player is actually focused on The Duty and most probably will try to find coherence of such data inside the frame of the Duty. So, for example, if the Duty is to find a culprit of robbery, all the various perspectives are read in that context –everything wil be about robbery and guilty people. This is a good trick for the later Revelation – it’s really hard that the player will try to add casual elements on his own out of thin air. If all victims show a mark on their hands, the player will probably tthink of a conspiration or criminal gang…

One clever example of it is how HOMURA act in MAGICA MADOKA – she seems just like an oppositive individual. As the only elements so far are about the magical pact, you always read this behaviour in that frame. Only when you’re aware of her time travel ability you can decipher her behaviour for real! Good writers are excellent at creating this kind of ambiguity and you should try for such ambiguity the same. Other examples of renown are The Kid identity in Ever 17 and DDLC glitch thing.

Mind that the writer is actually delivering you the correct data, but as you’re focused on the Duty, you can’t do the correct guess. Just after the Revelation all those data pieces we’ll be put on the correct meaning (and mind also that the brain should do it on his own – don’t “tell” the real meaning, that should come naturally on his own).

**ANYWAY** not even one of all the Normal Ending should totally solve the mistery in a full satisfactory way. The player should feel that he just “survived” (or died) but he doesn’t actually won the day. Some mistery isn’t solved or you don’t get full duty resolution, or the feelings are mixed. That’s important to give him impulse to continue (and later, to make the Revelation more plausible and functional).

The third challenge
The player collected all the Normal Endings, but one again is missing. He become aware that this ending is hiding in the sequence of his choices, so it “stop to follow” the plot and try instead various combo of choices. The more he does, the less he does impersonate in the main character, but something happen: he become “responsible” of the story. It became something more personal. He probably does guesses about the story as a whole.

Then, something happen. After collecting all normal endings (all pieces of informations) AND making a given sequence of choices, the story reach an usual ending… but doesn’t stop. There’s something that continue the story onward. The player entered the True Route.

It’s important that the True Route satisfy both condition (all Normal Endings collected + the correct sequence) as you don’t want that the True Route can be found at random. You should also be sure that the player collected all the possible perspectives. So, more probably, until he didn’t collected all the Normal Endings some choice is locked out or some scene jump is different, locking out the correct sequence until the collection is done.

Anyway, as stated, the game instead of ending as usual, continue onward. For example, most of the Normal Endings stopped by having a culprit prosecuted and jailed. This happen the same, but now… the culprit misteriously disapper out of thin air from a closed cell! What’s going on? The inspection continue further…

The fourth challenge
The True Route is usually linear, but with a number of “pitfall” (choices that lead to a sudden Game Over) and can even last as much as the plot so far (practically speaking, half of the story was hidden). What happen there is the player become aware that the character Duty was just a fragment (sometime related, sometime not) of something bigger. It’s the True Premise. So, for example, behind the robbery there was… a bigger alien invasion!

As a rule of thumb in narrative, the True Premise is about something happened before (or long before) the main character call of Duty.

Now, by “being able” to find the True Route and find himself cheated by unawareness of the real plot, the player feel a total immersion in the story, to the point of identifiy to the subject of the story! Things become “personal” between himself and the story.

This is how the good storyteller prepare you for the real deal. YOU are “playing”, so the feelings are much more intense. You’re wide open and totally inside the context.

And then, in a moment of the True Route, the Revelation hit you.

The Revelation is the climax of the whole story. What happen is that you receive a key that totally reshape the story you was creating in your brain by your guesses. And such key is totally unpredictable, but totally plausible. Due your focus on the Duty or the ambiguity of such informations, you weren’t able to guess the actual truth behind. This key will explain everything in a way you couldn’t have guessed.

As said in the Second Challenge, you were collecting partial data from different perspectives, and you naturally put them in relation with the duty or set on an hold until further connections. So, for example, all victims had a strange mark on their hand – that could have you lead to think about a serial killer. You can’t predict is the aliens removing the control chip!

A real good writer play a lot with this and set a lot of such ambiguity in the previous routes. Once the Revelation is dealt you smack your face and think “Hey, all hints were here! How I can’t figure out the whole thing on my own!!”.
What make this thing really compelling is how the mind of the player can take unrelated pieces of informations and join them to justify this bigger plot. The mind of the player automatically made guesses about such informations, trying to use a rational method all along the game. Being cheated this way is, strangely, really engaging from a player perspective, as he “learned” something (or his mind think so). He does feel cheated only if the key isn’t plausible or contradict collected elements, but as long as this key is plausible, the mind feel a sense of incredible wonder. The revelation, while being a “cheat”, is in fact perceived as a stroke of genius and the mind feel gratified the same (it’s able to rebuild the story on his own, anyway).

The True Route lead to Revelation, that lead to the True Ending, where the player doesn’t solve just the Duty and the Premise, but the whole True Premise (usually both altogether).

The final effect of this layered narration is the player perceive an actual “experience”, with both immersion, personal engagement and an active reconstruction role. The wholesome effect is incredibly powerfull, more than actual linear prose. Is what have people cry at the stroke of genius on the web, DESPITE in fact 90% of the time they simply read the same dialogues to find branches. Again, is a matter of havingthe brain workedout part of the story.

It’s hard to use such structure?
Not at all, but require for you both to find a good ideas, spending time with concept for long, be pro enough to rip out feeble ideas without regret, but mostly to check your story challenge by challenge and find a way to have EACH single phase be interesting to play and proactive to inspire indepths. You should analyze games and media and check how they make each single part interesting – everything stand in the user perspective.

For example, you need a very strong premise to have the player accept the first challenge, a powerfull incipit, an engaing plot and possibly “Not totally satisfying” normal endings that lead him to try other routes. A strong premise: your parents were killed by criminals and years later you become an obscure masked hero (really! How cool!). The duty of this single story is to stop the Penguin from poisoning Gotham City bay. You saved the city after a long streak of fights, but you don’t save the Major and the city run into chaos - and everyone think you’re guilty. Argh! There’s surely another better ending! Let’s replay this thing!
If you have a feeble premise and the Normal Ending is totally satisfying, there’s no real deal to continue playing.
Anyway, defeat after defeat, you played all Normal endings and the True Route open up... there was someone behind such dark events in Gotham.
You follow the route until a Revelation smack in your face: the culprit was the same individual that trained you years ago O_O... and you was trained to become an unaware agent of chaos, not one of justice O_O! Well, that explain all such horrible normal endings... And if the writer was good enough, the game was FULL of possible hints about, that you wasn't able to decipher so far! So you probably got a choice to redeem or embrace this role... qute interesting...

This structure can and was applied to any genre of story, and if you’re not on a rush it’s better to try it – investing on it is way much better than investing on any other possible asset. It’s what made a silly stupid indie game like Undertale a worldwide success.

You should also probably work inversely, starting by the revelation. This way you can build the story backward and put such misleading ambiguity and multiple perspective in advance. I suspect that a lot of writers work with total inversion: they first conceive the revelation and then build a back story and a setting for it. At least that sound more plausible to me... "Let's do a story where you're not aware of moving between two timelines..." should have been Ever 17 writer idea, and then the submerged station and characters were added on top of this core concept.

And that's all.

[rook17]

That was a bit of a long post, so let me react to what I think was one of the most interesting points.

I do agree that one of the most appealing aspects of visual novel storytelling is the ability to show the same sequence of events with subtle variations based on different choices. I think it speaks to a very human desire to think about what could have been different in your life if you made different choices, and if anything, many visual novels romanticize that concept to the extreme. It's certainly not the *only* medium that can speak to that experience (just look at all the movies that dabble in time loops of one form or another, all the way back to 'Groundhog Day') but it's a natural fit.

It also puts a very easy tool in the author's toolkit to create surprise and misdirection. When a reader is going back through a section they've seen before in a different route, they're already setting expectations about what they expect to happen this time, and what they expect the effect of their different choices will be. At that point, whether the story changes a little, a lot, or not at all, that's a specific opportunity in the medium to tell the reader about that causal link. For example, there's a sequence in Virtue's Last Reward (I'll be vague) where you have to try to get the outcome of a choice right by chance alone, and you lose, of course--but when you come back through and pick the answer you the reader already know is right, you lose again--and that creates a very specific shocking revelation that the game was rigged, one that can only really land that way because of the visual novel medium.

I think that's also why so many visual novels -- especially on the sci-fi side -- tend to dabble in themes of probability, causality and quantum mechanics, and why it seems to be a law that every single Visual Novel must eventually mention Schrödinger's cat. But all that said, I think the challenge there is that those topics have become so common that it's easy to become cliché -- after all, at the end of the day you still need to tell a story that's interesting; just copying interesting tricks you've seen before only gets you so far.