Narrative Mode of the Third Kind

Abstract

The boundary between non-interactive and interactive narrative is a central focus in the debates regarding interactive media and narrative. Another boundary is highlighted in this article when interactivity is such that the audience lives the story offered to them. To represent this new boundary, we introduced a third narrative mode, in addition to the classic diegetic and mimetic modes, which we term the demiurgic mode of narrative, as it enables the author to make live the narrative events. This third mode clarifies what may be truly specific to highly interactive narrative or drama that many researchers in the field aspire to implement. The specificities of this mode are then further discussed regarding cognitive representations. In particular, representing and transmitting works relying on the demiurgic mode of narrative is particularly difficult, which may explain why this mode is less present in our culture.