Understanding narrative linearity for telling expressive time-oriented stories

Abstract

Creating expressive narrative visualization often requires choosing a well-planned narrative order that invites the audience in. The narrative can either followthe linear order of story events (chronology), or deviate from linearity (anachronies). While evidence exists that anachronies in novels and flms can enhance story expressiveness, little is known about how they can be incorporated into narrative visualization. To bridge this gap, this work introduces the idea of narrative linearity to visualization and investigates how diferent narrative orders afect the expressiveness of time-oriented stories. First, we conducted preliminary interviews with seven experts to clarify the motivations and challenges of manipulating narrative linearity in time-oriented stories. Then, we analyzed a corpus of 80 time-oriented stories and identifed six most salient patterns of narrative orders. Next, we conducted a crowdsourcing study with 221 participants. Results indicated that anachronies have the potential to make time-oriented stories more expressive without hindering comprehensibility.