How to Use The Narrator in Interactive Stories

Originally published at: https://shanniiwrites.com/2019/04/23/how-to-use-the-narrator-in-interactive-stories/

We hardly ever talk about narrator, but they are a huge part of making a good interactive story! Here’s what you need to think about!

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Great narrating is harder than you think!
@ChaoticDeluge what do you think is the best way to narrate?

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That’s a very good question!

@ChaoticDeluge do you like first or third person? Or are you all meta and use second?

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Third person is generally the best, it’s so malleable. Especially when you switch up close and far like I do.

It makes your story an incomprehensible mess that you don’t want to continue :smiley:

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Medium bump

I like have my narrator do stuff then my author would come in and be like ‘no! Shut up! This is my time!’

I think Narrator I think of the PowerPuff Girls that Narrator.

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I completely agree with you Shani! There are so many authors out there who use the narrator incorrectly. This only concludes in loss of readers, since the narrator is more important than is thought to be. I hadn’t realized that until now! Narrators can help make your story so much better, but can also ruin a good story with potential, if used incorrectly. In fact, most people use the narrator incorrectly, or they ignore the narrator, making their story seem poorly written. Your guide on how to use the narrator is very on point, and more people should read it.

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It was really interesting to be reminded of how even these interactive stories still can’t show anything. In cases where animation is limited or the characters are just pictures with some variations for different emotions, using a narrator is definitely critical to ensuring that readers understand what’s happening. I haven’t actually seen a whole lot of stories that aren’t written by an omniscient narrator on Episode, but it was really interesting to think about how using the main character as an unreliable narrator or have someone else entirely telling the story could work. It was also especially interesting to think of having anonymous narrator that had targeted commentary about the story rather than just being used to describe events. Seeing the different impacts of first, second, and third person narration generally was also useful to think about, since they aren’t something that I tend to pay much attention to in my own writing.

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The narrator is so important in interactive stories and I often got so confused as a reader. Why do people mix up the thought bubbles with the narrator bubble? Or why do they switch between them all the time? Please read this blog post to not confuse your readers with that mistake anymore :sob:
But seriously, I tend to use the narrator too much, but never mixed it up with thought bubbles.

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Hey @Bloggers and @Episodians, do you know what you need to know when it comes to narrating your stories? Take a read of this and tell me what you think!


Remember that if you really enjoyed this blog, feel free to recommend it (it’s similar to liking it). This will help with it being higher in the results of search engines too.

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Added some tags