: Utilities of Fiction : Perceptual Fiction :
Multilinear Narrative

 

the multilinear structure of "The Flocking Party"

 Narration has a two-headed personality that rarely agrees with itself. On one side is the stern countenance of the linear story, on the other, the impish face of the nonlinear game. But their miscommunications are counter productive. If narration is thought of in terms of engagement or exploration rather than active versus passive, the two heads communicate more readily. Rather than thinking about a game as “nonlinear”, which almost sounds demeaning, we could regard the structure as a territory that prompts exploration. Nonlinear usually means mutilple pathways through an interconnected structure. But linearity has not been negated here. It simply becomes a stream on a shallow plain that more easily shifts its course. So I think it would be better to think of these structures as multilinear. This definition resonates more with the cognitive map and will help us to think about narrative media in a new way rather than a negated way, finally giving the game-face of the two-headed monster some respect.

As you have guessed, “The Flocking Party” is an example of multilinearity. Multilinearity has a wide range of potential structures. I decided on a fairly basic structure. Overall, its arrangement is linear, but there is a lot of space in the middle for multilinear navigation. It is like a fat worm, where a network is squished into a linear form, but the connections inside still won't allow it to stay flat.

One reason for making a simpler multilinear form is the roadblocks that pop up when introducing something that no one knows how to use yet. People are most familiar with narratives in a linear form, because of books, movies, and television. Even most games go from beginning to end. Some writers and directors have begun to challenge this structure. American books like David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Neal Stevenson's Cryptonomicon or movies like Christopher Nolan's Memento, Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, and Richard Linklater's Waking Life have brought the form of multilinearity into the popular gaze. Although, these examples are labeled nonlinear, they exhibit characteristics of multilinearity. For example, they are more interesting to experience two and three times, because of the connections that are hidden in the first exploration. There are also many examples of this in literature, particularly from South American authors, like Borges. But even the authors, who provide cues for jumping from page to page, are faced with a book's architectural limitations. They still do not provide the freedom of movement that can happen on the web.
www.theflockingparty.com