Deconstructing Stories
Red Riding Hood in the woods
Sees a wolf
Wolf eats and dresses as Grandmother
Red Riding Hood gets to Grandmothers house
Wolf eats Red Riding Hood
Woodsman arrives
Wolf is killed, Red Riding Hood and Grandmother saved.
I have chosen to use the Brothers Grimm fairy tales as a starting point for my digital narrative concept. This is because the stories are widely recognisable which means they should remain identifiable even if they are reduced to key themes and rearranged.
(right)
We Tell Stories
A project headed by Penguin UK, 'We Tell Stories' looked at creating stories that are designed to be viewed on the internet in
collaboration with Six to Start. One of the stories, entitled Fairy Tales, looked at recreating the stories of Kevin Brooks so that they allowed a greater level of
participation from the reader, who reads the text and then makes selections on elements of the story, such as what kind of person you meet on your travels.
When the seven static points are put into a flow chart this is the result.
(right)
In order to make this into a digital narrative I had to include multiple paths for the story. This meant adding additional plots into the story. To this, the sections that included Red Riding Hood (from the diagram on the left) were mapped out and at each point a second option was added with end points being displayed in red boxes. The result of this is shown on the right. The arrows only point in one direction, this is because I chose not to include the ability to move backwards which increases the importance of each decision and concealing the unchosen paths as was pointed out by Espen J. Aarseth in Cybertexts: “Each decision will make some parts of the text more, and others less, accessible, and you may never know the exact result of your choices” (1997)
(right)
Continuing to add to the original story I mapped out what would happen if the story revolved around the wolf. Including this means that the story can be followed from two points rather than just one.
(right)
The final step of mapping the story was to combine both flow charts into one diagram, showing all the options that would be available to the user.
(above)
A similar diagram has been created by Msulek who chose to represent it in the form of a timeline.
The story that I chose to focus on war Red Riding Hood. The first stage was to identify key sections and turning points in the original story. This was done to allow me to condense the story down to its main structure. This resulted in seven sections at which something important happens.
Little Red Riding Hood