Writing Consistent Stories based on Structured Multi-Authored Narrative Spaces

Abstract

Multi-authoring is currently a common practice in the field of contemporary storytelling but producing consistent stories that share a common narrative space when multiple authors are involved is not a trivial task. Inconsistencies, which are not always well-received by readers are sometimes expensive to fix. In this work we attempt to improve the consistency of stories and narrative spaces by introducing a set of rules based on a formal model. Such a model takes into account the reader’s concept of consistency in storytelling, and acts as a framework for building tools to construct stories grounded in a common narrative space with a reinforced sense of consistency. We define a model (the Setting) and deploy it through a tool (CrossTale); both based on previous research, and discuss some user evaluation, with an in-depth analysis of the results and their implications.