Interactive storytelling: audio and audiovisual logs

In an earlier post, I talked about how games are often divided between interactive gameplay segments and non-interactive storytelling segments like cutscenes.

I want to look at other techniques that are used to add storytelling elements into games. In this post I'll talk about audio logs, and what I'll call 'audiovisual logs'.

The first-person shooter BioShock (Wikipedia | Steam) popularised audio logs. In BioShock the player starts out by entering an underwater city built to a utopian vision, whose society has -- for reasons unknown -- broken down and most of its inhabitants have either been killed or are scattered.

As they traverse through the city, they may find objects that look like old-fashioned tape recorders. If the player picks one of these up, they can listen to the sound recorded on it, which is usually like a diary entry recorded by a character who was an inhabitant of the city (often they are one of the major figures who lived in the city).

Here's a short video of finding and playing an audio log from early on in the game. 

The audio logs the player finds are the main means by which the player learns about the city's backstory.

Audio logs are sound recordings that the player can come across, that are usually related in some way to the location they're found at. E.g. the player might find an audio log recorded by a character in that character's private quarters. They tend to be fairly brief (I would imagine that most of them are well under a minute long), and while listening to them the player can still move their character around and shoot or whatever.

I'm using the term 'audio log' in a broad way. Instead of them being objects that the character finds and can pick up, they can also be recordings that are automatically triggered when the player does something, such as entering a certain room for the first time, or looking at a certain object (like opening up a locker and looking inside). The game Gone Home (Wikipedia | Steam) has audio logs of this nature.

In Gone Home, the character comes back from an overseas trip, to the house that her parents and sister had moved to while she was away. For some mysterious reason, when she arrives no-one appears to be home. The audio logs that the player hears as they progress through the game are what primarily informs them about what has actually happened. (These audio logs are like journal entries that you sister wrote to explain the situation to you. During the game it is not explained why it is that you're hearing these journal entries as if they were read by your sister. It's only at the very end of the game that the player gets a kind of explanation of it).

Terminology note: "audio log" is the most common name for these kinds of things, but they actually go by different names in different games. For example, in BioShock they're called "audio diaries", and in Bioshock Infinite (the third Bioshock game. Wikipedia | Steam) they're called "Voxophones". And these are just some prominent examples of games that use audio logs.

There's also what I'll call "audiovisual logs", where the player will not only hear the other character(s) talk, but see a visual representation of them and what they were doing at the time.

Here's what an audiovisual log could be like: where a character had recorded a front-facing video on their smart phone, that the player watches that as if they were watching a video. I'm not sure if that sort of audiovisual log has been implemented in any game or not. I haven't come across them.

But the kind of audiovisual log I'm talking about are a bit different. Say that the log is of several characters having a conversation around the dinner table in the dining room of a house. In these audiovisual logs, the player would see that audiovisual log when they're actually in that dining room. They'd see the characters sitting on the chairs around the table, that's right in front of them. So these are an 'in situ' visual representation of the characters.

In Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (Wikipedia | Steam), the player is investigating what happened in a town where something strange has happened and all the people have gone missing. As you explore the town you'll come across audiovisual logs here and there, which show conversations between town inhabitants that were happening as the strange occurrences were happening.

The audiovisual logs are like 'traces' of the past, whose presence is somehow connected to the strange happenings. In them, the people are visually represented by golden glowing blobs of light that roughly represent the shape of their body and which follow their movements. Here's a short example from early in the game.

In the sci-fi game Tacoma (Wikipedia | Steam), you're investigating what happened in the space station Tacoma and why all the crew are missing. As you explore the space station you'll come across scattered audiovisual logs. These were recordings made by the space station's computer, and they show events that happened in the lead up to the crew going missing.

These are presented slightly different, in that the player can control the playback, by pausing and scrubbing back and forth through the conversation - in order to better be able to catch all of its details. An example from early in the game can be found about 15 seconds into this trailer for the game.

With most audio and audiovisual logs, the player is free to move about while the log is playing.

How can we understand these audio and audiovisual logs from a storytelling point of view?

They provide backstory, and function somewhat like a flash-back in a movie. The audio logs that are like diary or journal entries serve basically the same function as finding a diary or journal entry written on paper, that the player can look at and read the text of.

They may also provide some world- or character-building.

In some of the games, it feels fairly unrealistic for there to be all these audio logs scattered around the place. And it sometimes feels unrealistic that the recording was made in the first place. E.g. an audio log recording of a doctor doing some surgery where they suddenly decide to do something horrific, and the nurse is horrified. Who decided to record audio of what was happening during that part of the surgery? These sorts of contrivances can detract a bit from the storytelling.

(From a gameplay perspective, that your character can be still moving around and doing things while you're listening to an audio log, makes a bit of a difference. Compared to you having no control while listening to the audio log. It means the storytelling details of the log are integrated a bit more smoothly with the gameplay).

In the four games that we've looked at -- BioShock, Gone Home, Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, and Tacoma -- there is a mystery as to what happened prior to the events in the game, and the logs are the primary way that the player can piece together a picture of that.

There is a kind of puzzle element to it. The player hears the pieces (individual logs), and those pieces may not explicitly spell out the overall picture of what has happened. The player may need to themselves connect the dots to figure out the overall picture.

This isn't to say that that's the only way these logs could be used in a game. However, what does seem to be pretty inherent to such logs is that they provide backstory.

There can be a gameplay challenge, of finding the logs. BioShock is like this. If a player doesn't search thoroughly enough, they might miss several of the audio logs. That's some interactivity that's associated with the logs (in finding them). And the game might require user input to play a log (more interactivity). But the recordings in the logs are non-interactive. In this sense they are a bit like a cutscene.

What I said in an earlier post about cutscenes also applies to these logs. The logs may together form a strong narrative, but the player's experience of that strong narrative is diluted by the very loose narrative of the gameplay segments between each log that the player finds. Also, because the logs are fairly short and are scattered about, it is more difficult to use them to form a strong narrative. The logs tend to work better as more stand-alone pieces, that don't have the strong connective-tissue between them that's required for a strong narrative.

But while cutscenes can be used for flashbacks, flashforwards, or what is happening in the present, the logs only seem usable for (what are effectively) flashbacks. So they can only contribute to strong narrative for the backstory, not the story that the player experiences first-hand.

Interactive storytelling: control over a character means an abstracted existence in the game world, which makes storytelling difficult

Here's a reason it's difficult to have strong storytelling when the player has control over a character in a game. 

Consider the way the player character may move about in the game world. In a typical 3D game, the player can control the direction the character moves in, and often the speed that they're moving at. In some games, they can make the character crouch down, jump, or climb.

In most games, the movement is always exactly the same. There's the same running animations that are always used. If the player walks into a part of the environment that blocks their movement, such as a kitchen table, they'll have to change direction to move around the table. And the whole time the same movement animations will be used.

In the real world, there are a lot of details to how a person moves through their environment. The kinds of steps they take, their posture, how they may put their hand on objects that they pass by. Those details are affected by the person's nature, their state of mind at the time, and also their intentions. While they are in the kitchen cooking something, their steps may be quite different to when they're on their way through their kitchen to go outside.

Some games, such as in the Uncharted series, do try to capture some of the actual ways characters move through an environment, while that character is under the player's control. But even in these cases, they only capture a small part of what actual movement is like.

So in general, the player character's movement is fairly abstracted and generic, compared to people's movement in real life. The player can make the character do things like walk in a particular direction, but they can't control the nature of that walking. This is not the criticise the games or the game developers. There's all sorts of good reasons why it is like that.

I am focusing on the player's control over the character. In non-interactive cutscenes, the character will act in this more natural way. And in gameplay segments, there will be elements of that, such as in the "bad ass" way your character in a third-person game might hold a big gun while they're firing it, or in the "tough" way they reload the gun. But the player has no control over those sorts of details.

The same abstraction is there in the other ways the player character exists in and interacts with the game world. It's common in games for characters to be able to look at, and interact with, objects in the game environment. Looking at the object might bring up a description, or a 3D model of it that can be rotated around. Interacting with an object will trigger the character to perform some sort of action, such as toggling a light switch, opening a cupboard, or talking to a person.

These things are handled in a very abstracted way. The player tells the character to interact with the object, but has no further control over how that interaction happens.

To illustrate why that's very abstracted, consider how, in real life, someone might make and eat their breakfast. They might be still quite sleepy, and slowly shuffle about, assembling the ingredients. They might absent-mindedly prepare it, like putting bread in the toaster, chucking the toasted bread on a plate, and spreading a bit of butter on it. Then taking that and the coffee they prepared out to the back steps and sitting down to have them. They might place the mug and plate to the side, and alternate between sips of coffee, bits of bread, and taking in their surrounds. They might give a small sigh as they finish, dust off their hands, grab the mug and plate, and head back inside.

It's not possible in a game to have the sort of nuanced control that would be required for the player to have control over those details of what that character did. The player has essentially zero control over such details.

This isn't to criticise the games or game developers, as there are good reasons why games are like that. It's just to note that the character exists in the game world in a pretty abstracted fashion.

Here's some other ways that the character exists in an abstracted way. Consider a JRPG where the party of characters is going on an adventure through some lands towards a far-off place. In real life, such journeying would affect their physical and mental state. They would get tired and sore. At times they might feel despondent at how much of the journey they have left. They would need to sleep. In most games these sorts of details are abstracted away (during the gameplay segments, at least).

And that's because abstracting away those sorts of details is better for the gameplay.

I want to have a name for the kinds of details that are abstracted away. We can think of acting. A good actor has nuanced control over their entire body, in terms of posture, movement, body language, vocal control, facial expressions, etc -- at every moment in time. The timing of these details is important. There is how they go about moving through and interacting with details in their environment. All of these details reflect the character's emotional state and their intentions.

Are their movements languorous, or skittish? How do they sit in a chair? What is their body language, and where are they facing, when they're talking to different people?

We can call all these details the "performance". The performance details are abstracted away when the player has control over a character.

These performance details are very important to the storytelling in movies, TV, etc. Their absence, while the player has control over a character, is a reason why it's difficult to have strong storytelling within the gameplay.

Interactive storytelling containing interactive gameplay segments and separate non-interactive, story-focused segments

A game might consist of sequence like:

  1) cutscene, 2) gameplay, 3) cutscene, 4) gameplay, ...

We can call each of the elements in the sequence a 'segment'.

Story-focused segments like cutscenes are non-interactive, and they can contribute to a strong narrative. Cutscenes are like a short animation or movie that plays.

Gameplay segments are interaction-focused and they have a loose narrative.

This basic structure, of some segments focused on gameplay, and others focused on non-interactive storytelling, is found in many different genres of game, such as point-and-click adventure games, JRPGs, Western RPGs, platform games, and first-person shooters.

In different game genres, the nature of the gameplay segments differ. In classic point-and-click games, they're primarily about looking at and manipulating objects, and talking to characters, to solve puzzles. In classic JRPGs or Western RPGs, the gameplay segments primarily involve exploring around and fighting monsters. In a classic platform game, they involve running and jumping, to avoid or take out enemies, and to traverse different platforms and gaps. In a classic first-person shooter, it's traversing through an environment, shooting enemies and trying to avoid getting shot.

In all these genres, a gameplay segment ends when the player does some particular thing, like solve a puzzle, defeat a boss enemy, or get to the end of a level. When the gameplay segment ends, a story segment starts.

Let's consider all this in the context of classic point-and-click adventure games.

In gameplay segments, the player can move their character around within their current location, and move to other locations. They can choose to look at different objects in the surrounds. They can interact with objects (e.g. turn on a tap), to use an object they have on another object (e.g. use a lighter on a pile of sticks, to create a fire). They may be able to talk to other characters and choose between a few different dialog options. They do these things to try to solve puzzles, and by doing so, advance the narrative.

The gameplay segments tend to have a very loose narrative. Under the player's control, their character walks about, looks at and interacts with various objects. They may go back and forth between locations, and repeatedly interact with the same objects, as the player tries to figure out a puzzle solution. The player may get stuck for tens of minutes or even hours, before they figure out how to solve a puzzle.

The sequence of all these events within a gameplay segment will likely form a very loose narrative. If these gameplay segments were made into a movie, they'd be very dull movies to watch (imagine the UI elements were removed, and the footage was given to someone to watch and they weren't told it was from a game).

(The gameplay segments in the other genres we've talked about -- JRPGs, Western RPGs, platform games, and first-person shooters -- all have very loose narratives, too. This isn't to say gameplay segments can't contribute anything to the storytelling. They can, for example, do a lot of world building or character building. In a future post, I'd like to look at some of the ways the gameplay segments can contribute to the storytelling. Still, I'd maintain that these gameplay segments have a loose narrative.)

While the non-interactive, story-focused segments can together form a strong narrative, that narrative gets "diluted" by the loose narrative in the gameplay segments that sit in between them. If the entire experience was just the story-focused segments, it could have a strong narrative. But because the entire experience also includes the gameplay segments, the narrative of the entire experience is loosened. And since the gameplay segments tend to comprise the majority of the time the player spends with the game, there's substantial loosening of the narrative.

There are other ways that the gameplay segments affect the narrative of the non-interactive, story-focused segments. The gameplay segments constrain the types of narratives that can work in the story-focused segments.

One, the overall plot has to be compatible with being repeatedly put on hold, for long periods of time, during the gameplay segments.

Consider point-and-click adventures again. In these, the reason the plot has to be put on hold during the gameplay segments is the following. In a gameplay segment, the player will usually need to complete one or more puzzles before the next story-focused segment (cutscene) is triggered. The player is usually given as much time as they need to finish those puzzle(s), and the state of the game world (and thus the story) needs to basically be put on hold until the player solves the puzzle(s). If it wasn't put on hold, it'd interfere with the player's ability to complete the puzzles.

A second way that gameplay segments constrain the overall plot is that the plot has to be compatible with the sorts of activities the player character undertakes during them. In a point-and-click adventure game, the character will usually be walking around, examining objects, using objects and combining objects together.

In principle, any sort of plot could be used in the story-focused segments. But, a lot of them wouldn't "work" very well with being put on hold for extended periods of time, or with the kinds of activities the player character is undertaking during the gameplay segments.

Think of it this way: the plot of many novels or movies wouldn't really work if they contained extended sections where the main character went about like a player character does a point-and-click adventure game.

And again, the same applies to all those other genres where you have gameplay segments sandwiched between non-interactive story-focused segments. Many stories wouldn't work very well if the majority of the time in the game is spent in gameplay segments where a character is running and jumping, like in a classic platform game, or if the character is shooting down hordes of bad guys like in a classic first-person shooter.

 

To summarise, the gameplay segments loosen the overall narrative of such games, and they won't be compatible with various kinds of plots.  

I think the best way to think of those games, from a storytelling perspective, is that the gameplay is the main focus, and the storytelling is used to enhance the experience of the gameplay. That is, as opposed to if the storytelling was the main focus, and the gameplay was used to enhance the storytelling.

And, if we're interested in interactive storytelling, that raises the question of, what ways can the gameplay enhance the experience of the storytelling?

Interactive storytelling: choice & narratives, and separating narratives from interaction

There's a curious phenomenon, regarding different people's views of interactive storytelling. There's quite a few works whose storytelling gets high praise from gamers. Yet it seems common, when non-gamers try some interactive storytelling, for them to be not very impressed with the storytelling, and to consider it to be lesser than what they’d find in a good movie or novel.

What's the explanation of these contrary views?

Here's some potential explanations. Maybe non-gamers are just not familiar-enough with interactive storytelling. Maybe they're biased against interactive storytelling because it's less familiar to them. Or perhaps games are (in general) targeting younger audiences, who aren’t as interested in mature storytelling. Or maybe gamers are used to a lower-quality of storytelling in games, so have lower expectations for them.

 

I think there's at least a small element of truth in all of these, but I think the main explanation is something else.

To help explain, I'll introduce the notions of 'strong' and 'loose' narratives. That was the topic of my last post. Since the distinction is central to this post, I'll quote the entire contents of that previous post here:

In a strong narrative, everything that happens in the sequence of events have a purpose that contributes to the overall details of the story. The overall story is there to create a satisfying experience for the viewer, reader, or game player (from here on I'll just use 'viewer').

The overall story details will involve elements like the following. There will be challenges put in front of the protagonists, that they will overcome. The tension may ratchet up, until the climax of the story, and there will be a resolution. The protagonist will likely experience some growth. There may be certain themes. The overall story may present unexpected surprises. There will likely be mysteries that are raised earlier in the story, that get answered later on, which serve draw the viewer (etc) through the story.

I'm not saying that all of these have to be present for the narrative to be strong. I'm saying that a strong narrative supports the overall story details, whatever they are for a particular story.

A strong narrative is a set of events, put in a deliberate sequence, in order to produce a strong set of the overall story details (a strong climax, a satisfying resolution, etc). Events that occur build on what came earlier. A strong narrative won't include superfluous events, that don't help contribute to the overall story details.

A problem for the protagonist may arise in one scene, and the events in the next scene may exacerbate those problems. Earlier scenes may have painted a certain picture of the protagonist's predicament, and a later scene may turn those appearances on their head. The sequence of events will be constructed to make the story's mysteries compelling.

In strong narratives, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts", because the parts are designed to contribute to the overall details of the story.

In loose narratives, on the other hand, there may be little or no overall story details for the sequence of events to contribute to. It's just: this happened, then this other thing happened, then something else, and so on.

The events will likely be connected -- perhaps by occurring in temporal sequence, following what happens to a protagonist, like what they did and where they went. But there won't be much to the overall story details, and thus not much for the sequence of events to contribute towards.

Everyday life is like a loose narrative. A sequence of stuff happens, but there's not the dramatic arc and so forth found in a strong narrative.

Of course, this isn't really a binary of only "very strong" narratives and "very loose" narratives. It's a spectrum, with stronger narratives at one end and looser narratives at the other end.

I believe that, generally speaking, people tend to prefer stronger narratives. There's always exceptions of course, but I think that in the majority of cases, if all else is equal, people will find a stronger narrative more compelling than a looser narrative. And if people find strong narratives more compelling, then in that sense I think it is fair to say that, generally speaking, a stronger narrative is a better narrative.

And this doesn't seem to be merely a matter of people's personal preferences or opinions. Evolution seems to have given us brains that desire and enjoy strong narratives. Brains that are suited to consuming information in the form of strong narratives.

 

With this distinction between strong and loose narratives, I think I can explain what’s going on with the divergent views about how good the narratives are in interactive storytelling.

To help illustrate, I’ll focus on Inkle’s “80 Days” (Wikipedia | Steam). It’s a souped-up “choose your own adventure”, that re-imagines Jules Vern’s “Around the World in Eighty Days”. The player's goal is to get around the world in 80 days.

It's a highly-rated story-based game. Its writing has been praised, and its storytelling has been lauded. The Guardian said it was "Interactive storytelling as its best". The game won the Independent Games Festival’s "Excellence in Narrative" award.

It’s worth noting that the game provides the player with a lot of choice. When the player has stopped at a destination, they have several choices for what to do while they are there. This might include buying items available there, or selling (hopefully at a profit) items they had previously bought elsewhere. They can talk to other characters, and make choices at various stages in the conversation.

When they are ready to leave, they have several transport options, to different destinations. And some will be faster than others, but might be more expensive. So the player needs to manage their funds, to ensure they get around the world in time but also don’t run out of money.

(Disclaimer: it has been several years since I have played it, so I apologise for any inaccuracies in my description of how it works).

To get a sense of the degree of choice, “The developers estimate that on one complete circumnavigation of the globe players will see approximately 2% of the game's 750,000 words of textual content” (from the game’s Wikipedia entry).

80 Days has a fairly loose narrative. There are some overall details to the story, that are contributed to by events that happen. But a lot of what you’ll encounter in a playthrough is more just: this happened, then this other thing happened, then something else happened.

This is not because the developers and writer are unable to write a strong narrative! It’s because of all the choice and freedom the player has. I would guess that there are thousands of different (but interrelated) possible playthroughs. Some of these would only vary from each other in fairly minor ways, but other ones would vary from each other in fairly major ways. So lets imagine that there are a couple of hundred possible different playthroughs (that vary in non-trivial ways from each other). It’s just not feasible to write hundreds of different strong narratives for a single game.

It’s not simply that it’s difficult to construct that many different strong narratives. The fact that all of those different playthroughs are related to each other, and overlap to some extent, actually makes it even more challenging. It would be harder to construct X number of inter-related strong narratives than to simply write X completely-distinct strong narratives. This is because strong narratives don't "live close together" in "narrative space".

So I think this is the explanation for why non-gamers who might try out a game like 80 Days may come away not terribly impressed by the storytelling.

But then, why is it that a game like this is lauded by gamers? I think the distinction between strong and loose narratives can help us here.

 

Gamers like 80 Days as a combination of that storytelling with the interactivity.

What interactivity brings is that the player gets to feel, to some extent, like they have been on an adventure, with ups and downs, and some interesting happenings along the way. They might feel good about having made some good choices along the way. Since there is so much choice, they can feel that they truly shaped what happened in their adventure. There is also the puzzle-like element to the game of trying to find good routes while also managing your finances well, which some people will enjoy.

And while the narrative is fairly loose, that doesn’t mean it’s bad, nor does that mean it can't contain small pockets of stronger narrative scattered through it. Also, narrative is separate from the writing in the story. The writing in a story with a loose narrative can obviously still be good.

It’s the overall package that the gamers like.

But there’s a lack of precision in how they evaluate the work. They don’t distinguish precisely enough between the qualities of the overall package and the storytelling component of that.

If the overall package is great, and that overall package is “interactive storytelling”, then it seems that the storytelling must be great. But just because someone finds the overall package great, that doesn’t mean that all the components of that package are great, in absolute terms. If a person really likes interactivity and choice and freedom, they may still really like the overall package, even if the narrative isn’t terribly strong. In absolute terms, you have to compare the narrative to those in other media, such as the strong narratives such as in movies and novels.

Can you actually separate the storytelling from the interactivity? Not totally. But, in general, I think you can to a large extent. It depends on the nature of the interaction in the particular work. You can definitely separate out narrative from the interactivity. The interaction determines what happens, and thus what specific narrative the player experiences. The narrative is the result of the interactions, which aren't part of it.

Any particular screen of text that you see in the game will seem like what could appear in a novel with a strong narrative. So the lack of a strong narrative is far from obvious. A strong narrative is more “abstract”. It concerns much larger-scale details in the story than any individual passage of text. And unless you already have an appreciation of the distinction between strong and loose narratives, you won’t be well equipped to be aware of that component of the story. I would imagine that the majority of people playing games don’t have a clear idea of that distinction. This isn’t a criticism of them, just what I think is the case, without making any judgements of the people.

So I think the non-gamers are right about the storytelling in a lot of the interactive storytelling. The interactivity is used to give the player freedom and choice, which necessitates a looser narrative. And this is the case even in beloved interactive storytelling works, that are widely lauded for their storytelling.

A question raised by this is, is all interactivity at odds with having a strong narrative? That’s something I’d like to write about more in the future.

"Strong" vs "loose" narratives

In this post I want to sketch out the distinction between "strong" and "loose" narratives. It's a pretty simple distinction, but one that is often overlooked. In later posts, I'll make use of this distinction to make some points about interactive storytelling.

In a strong narrative, everything that happens in the sequence of events have a purpose that contributes to the overall details of the story. The overall story is there to create a satisfying experience for the viewer, reader, or game player (from here on I'll just use 'viewer').

The overall story details will involve elements like the following. There will be challenges put in front of the protagonists, that they will overcome. The tension may ratchet up, until the climax of the story, and there will be a resolution. The protagonist will likely experience some growth. There may be certain themes. The overall story may present unexpected surprises. There will likely be mysteries that are raised earlier in the story, that get answered later on, which serve draw the viewer (etc) through the story.

I'm not saying that all of these have to be present for the narrative to be strong. I'm saying that a strong narrative supports the overall story details, whatever they are for a particular story.

A strong narrative is a set of events, put in a deliberate sequence, in order to produce a strong set of the overall story details (a strong climax, a satisfying resolution, etc). Events that occur build on what came earlier. A strong narrative won't include superfluous events, that don't help contribute to the overall story details.

[EDIT, Oct 2022: to expand on it not including superfluous events, part of a strong narrative is what details are left out. The narrative might include the protagonist getting some groceries at the shop, and then arriving home with their shopping, to find a stranger in their house. The narrative doesn't include them waiting for the bus with their groceries, getting on the bus, riding along in the bus, then getting off the bus at their stop, then walking home. Because, for this particular story, such details are not relevant to the narrative, and they're sorts of details that the viewer/reader can infer have happened.

So it's common for there to be spatiotemporal gaps between segments of the narrative. In a movie, when a scene ends and there's a cut, it's common for there to be spatial and temporal gap between that scene and the events of the next one.]

A problem for the protagonist may arise in one scene, and the events in the next scene may exacerbate those problems. Earlier scenes may have painted a certain picture of the protagonist's predicament, and a later scene may turn those appearances on their head. The sequence of events will be constructed to make the story's mysteries compelling.

In strong narratives, "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts", because the parts are designed to contribute to the overall details of the story.

In loose narratives, on the other hand, there may be little or no overall story details for the sequence of events to contribute to. It's just: this happened, then this other thing happened, then something else, and so on.

The events will likely be connected -- perhaps by occurring in temporal sequence, following what happens to a protagonist, like what they did and where they went. But there won't be much to the overall story details, and thus not much for the sequence of events to contribute towards.

Everyday life is like a loose narrative. A sequence of stuff happens, but there's not the dramatic arc and so forth found in a strong narrative.

Of course, this isn't really a binary of only "very strong" narratives and "very loose" narratives. It's a spectrum, with stronger narratives at one end and looser narratives at the other end.

I believe that, generally speaking, people tend to prefer stronger narratives. There's always exceptions of course, but I think that in the majority of cases, if all else is equal, people will find a stronger narrative more compelling than a looser narrative. And if people find strong narratives more compelling, then in that sense I think it is fair to say that, generally speaking, a stronger narrative is a better narrative.

And this doesn't seem to be merely a matter of people's personal preferences or opinions. Evolution seems to have given us brains that desire and enjoy strong narratives. Brains that are suited to consuming information in the form of strong narratives.