I’ve got a few interesting links to post today.

First, from A List Apart, a journal for people who make websites, are a couple articles on building narrative into websites. Not necessarily websites that are intended as narratives, but just about anything: online stores, company sites, news sites, etc. In Beyond Usability: The Narrative Web Mark Bernstein writes:

We want to see narrative everywhere. Stories are fun, exciting, comforting. This isn’t just a matter of bedtime stories and art. The saga of the Great Browser War, the Open Source tales, the stories of Bill (Gates) and Steve (Jobs), populate our work life and our weblogs. So, too, do tales of Rise and Fall – of individuals, companies, and websites.

The point is not that we should add stories to our sites to ensnare narrative-starved readers. The point is that the reader’s journey through our site is a narrative experience. Our job is to make the narrative satisfying.

He then goes on to describe some high-level methods of doing so.

Then in A Case for Storyteling Curt Cloniger discusses the need for web makers to develop a narrative voice in site design, bridging the gap between style and content.

During the work day, mere data is exchanged. This work-day data exchange might be analogous to a multi-user, Lotus Notes(tm) collaboration. But at night, around the fire, stories are told. It’s the stories that the cowboys will remember after the drive, not the daily exchange of data. Data is denotative. Stories are visceral and emotional. Stories effect our entire beings, not just our minds.

And which stories will be remembered the longest? Which stories will be loved the most? Which stories will “succeed?” For the stories to succeed they first have to be interesting (read: good content). For the stories to succeed, they also have to be told in the native tongue of the listeners (read: no JavaScript errors). And finally, for the stories to succeed, they have to be told well, in a compelling, mature, engaging narrative voice.

He goes on to compare the web with television advertising in the 1950’s, and how commericials have evolved into 60-second narratives that make us laugh, cry, and watch the Super Bowl even though we hate football. And he compares a web development conference to a novel-writing seminar where the bulk of the time is spent on teaching you how to write neatly. But of all the worthwhile points Cloniger makes in this article, the one I find the most relevant personally is this: “The more power a user has to control the narrative himself, the more a user will “own” that narrative.”

Of course, one of my driving interests is interactive narrative, and that’s an important rule to remember. The idea that users – or players, when we start talking about games – want control over the narrative is understood if not overtly stated in the article Foundations of Interactive Storytelling, which discusses methods of allowing true interactive experiences in a gaming experience. The author briefly traces the evolution of interactive storytellling starting with tabletop RPGs and then segues into methods designers can use to add interactivity to a story via plot, characterization, or theme. There are some good basic principals here, with a reasonable balance in the presentation between the artistic and the technical merits of each method.

Finally, here’s a new twist on the granddaddy of all interactive storytelling: Choose Your Own Adventures. Ryan Macklin is putting together a book he calls Choose Your Own Fate, which is really just a collection of endings that maybe could have appeared in the original series.

If you’ve ever read Choose Your Own Adventure books, there were generally a number of ways that you would die or fail. This project is a collection of unconnected short stories in a style that emulates those horrible fates. The idea is that each story is completely contained in two facing pages, so that a reader can flip to a random page in the book, and in that way choose their fate.

Best of all, the proceeds will go to the Red Cross Katrina relief fund, so not only would it be fun, if you choose to submit, but it will be for a good cause.