CHAPTER 7

Structure in Digital Storytelling

STYROFOAM PEANUTS

Structure: it is the unseen but all-important method of organizing a work of digital storytelling. It functions much like the bones in our bodies. Without our internal skeleton, we would have no shape, and our flesh would have nothing to support it. In a work of digital storytelling, the structure not only supports the narrative and gaming elements but also helps determine the nature of the interactivity.

Structure should not be confused with plot. Plot consists of the basic beats of a story, the “what happens next.” Structure is the framework of the story. It connects the basic pieces of the narrative and ensures that the work flows in a satisfying way.

Without question, structure is one of the most daunting aspects of creating a work of interactive entertainment. Yes, character design and the issues that go with it create a host of challenges, as we saw in the previous chapter, but the questions springing up around structure can make one’s head spin. How do you organize and shape an experience that is supposed to be free flowing? How do you create a pathway through a nonlinear environment, and when is trying to do that even a good idea? Where do you find usable structural models, when a great many people in the field can’t even articulate the models that they are currently using? When you’re dealing with interactive structure, it can be extremely hard to find anything solid enough to grasp hold of—it can feel somewhat akin to trying to construct a house out of Styrofoam peanuts.

The job of designing the structure falls to specialists—the game designers in the game world, the information architects of the Internet and information-based projects, and the engineers and computer programmers and designers and inventors and producers in other fields of interactive media. But even if you are not tasked with designing the structure yourself, that doesn’t mean you can ignore the topic. That’s because every member of the creative team needs to have a basic understanding of the framework that’s being used in order to do his or her job. Furthermore, each member of the creative team has valuable input to give since each is viewing the structure from a unique professional vantage point.

Curiously enough, considering that structure is such an essential aspect of creating an interactive project, the language we have to describe it is still largely unfixed. Even basic words like “node” or “level” may be used one way at company A and in quite a different way at company B. As for company C, it is very possible they have no terminology at all to describe the structural model that they use and reuse for their projects. Yes, they will probably be able to describe the structure in a loose sort of way, but if you really want a clear understanding of it, you’ll have to work your way through several of their projects to learn how they are put together.

Fortunately, we do have some basic structural concepts and models that we can use as a starting place to discuss structure. Furthermore, the fundamental questions of structure are essentially the same across the board, for all types of interactive media. And, as always, we can look to traditional linear narratives for some initial guidance.

THE BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS OF TRADITIONAL DRAMA

Structure plays an important role in every type of narrative, whether the work is linear or interactive, and it is built in the same fundamental way across all kinds of stories as well. Small units of material are assembled into a greater, interconnected whole. The units are the basic building blocks of the work, and they may be combined together to form still larger building blocks and these, in turn, are assembled and become the final product.

In a linear work of drama, such as a movie or play, the smallest building blocks would be the story beats. They’d then be organized into scenes, and from there into acts. If we look at classic drama, as we did in Chapter 5, we see that Aristotle believed that every effective theatrical work contained three acts, with Act I being the beginning, Act II being the middle, and Act III being the end.

Although Aristotle was talking about classic Greek drama when he described the three-act structure, the same basic structure can be applied to video games and other forms of interactive media as well, as long as the work has at least a thread of a story. In other words, interactivity and the three-act structure are not mutually exclusive; on the contrary, this structure still plays an important role even in the most cutting edge kinds of storytelling. Sometimes the three acts can be hard to spot, and they may not be connected in a sequential order, but if you study the work closely, the three acts will shine through.

At some companies, the creative teams are highly aware of the three-act structure and use it consciously. In other organizations, however, it may be employed in a less conscious fashion, although it still shapes their products.

After all, we are inundated almost since birth in story-based material organized around the three acts. How could this degree of exposure not affect our interactive storytelling?

Her Interactive, the company that makes the Nancy Drew mystery– adventure games, finds the three-act structure a highly useful organizational tool. Creative director Max Holechek told me that they definitely think in terms of a beginning, middle, and end. “We have to make sure there’s a good story that keeps evolving,” he told me. “And the characters have to evolve in one way or another.” He echoed many of the things Dr. Seger said about the function of the second act. “In the middle act we do things like up the dangers, or put in some plot twists, or add some intrigue,” he said. “These things help keep the game fresh.”

Quicksilver Software is another software developer that consciously employs the classic three-act structure. This company has developed dozens of strategy, simulation, and action/role-playing games, including Master of Orion 3,Invictus, Castles, Star Trek: Starfleet Command, and Shanghai: Second Dynasty. Katie Fisher, a producer–designer for the company, told me without equivocation:“The three-act structure is the backbone of everything we do here.” But she also noted that the nonlinear nature of games added a special wrinkle. “How you get to the plot points—that’s where interactivity comes in.” That, of course, is the critical question. How and where does the interactivity come in, and how do you structure it into your story world? How do you combine story and interactivity—and gaming elements, as well, if you are making a game— into one organic, seamless whole?

THE BASIC BUILDING BLOCKS OF INTERACTIVE NARRATIVES

In any type of narrative, in order to form a structure, you must work with both your smallest and largest building blocks. In interactive narratives, your smallest building blocks are your decision or action points—the places where the user can make a choice or perform an action. They are the equivalent of story beats in a linear narrative. Decision and action points are also known as nodes, although to make things especially confusing, “node” is also a term used for some types of macro units. In order to create your structure, you need to determine the kinds of things the users can do at each node. Can they pick things up? Shoot weapons? Converse with characters? Rearrange objects?

In some cases, users are given several specific options to choose from in the form of a menu. For example, let’s say we have a story in which the player character is a young woman, and let’s say she’s being followed down the street by an odd-looking man. The user can decide whether to have the young woman (a) run, (b) turn and confront the stranger, or (c) ask a policeman for help. Each choice will result in a different outcome. Decision points are not always so obvious, though, and in most cases, the player is not given a menu of possibilities to select from. For instance, let’s say our same player character, the young woman, has successfully dealt with the odd-looking man and is continuing down the street toward her destination. As she is walking along, a piece of paper flutters out of a window above her. She must decide whether to pick it up or to continue walking, and is thus a decision point.

On the macro level, you’ll need to work out the nature of your biggest units or divisions. In video games, where there is a relatively standardized approach to structure, the most common type of large division is the level. Each level takes place in a different setting and has a different group of NPCs and a different set of challenges. The player usually (but not always) works through the levels in sequential order. The challenges become more difficult as he or she ascends through the levels, with the ultimate challenges awaiting the player in the final level. Some games are instead organized by missions, where users are given assignments they must complete one at a time.

Many interactive narratives use a world structure, where the narrative is divided into different geographical spaces—the rooms of a house, different parts of a town, or different planets. Still another type of organizational unit is the module, which is often used in educational and training projects. Each module customarily focuses on one element in the curriculum or one learning objective. Yet other types of interactive projects may be divided into episodes, as a webisode is, or into chapters, as DVDs often are. Or, if this work is being made for the Internet, your macro units may be Web pages.

Once you know the type of large building blocks you’ll be using, you can begin to determine the core content of each unit, what the user does in each one, and how many units you will have in all. You’ll also be able to begin populating them with characters. Thinking in terms of large building blocks can help bring order to the organizational process.

THE IF/THEN CONSTRUCT

As we noted a little earlier, the decision or action points are the smallest building blocks of interactive narratives. These choices or actions will trigger specific events to happen during the narrative—sometimes immediately, sometimes further down the road. The logic system that determines the triggering of events is implemented using a piece of computer code called an algorithm. An algorithm determines such things as what the player needs to do before gaining access to “X” or what steps must be taken in order to trigger “Y.” Algorithms are a little like recipes, but instead of the ingredients being foods, they are events or actions. For instance, an algorithm for opening a safe may require the player to find the secret combination for the lock, get past the growling guard dog, and dismantle the alarm system. Only then can the safe be opened.

Logic in digital storytelling is often expressed in if/then terms. If the player does “A,” then “B” will happen. Another way of expressing the steps needed to trigger an event is through Boolean logic. Boolean logic is based on only two variables, such as 0 and 1, or true and false. It allows for only two possible outcomes for every choice (live/die; open/close; explode/not explode). A string of such variables can determine a fairly complex sequence of events. Boolean logic can be regarded as a series of conditions that determine when a “gate” is opened—when something previously unavailable becomes available, or when something previously undoable becomes doable.

Having only two possible options for each decision or action is also called binary choice. However, there’s also a more subtle type of choice mechanism available, the state engine approach, which allows for a greater range of stimuli and responses instead of a simple if/then. Game producer Greg Roach, introduced in Chapter 4, described to me how a state engine works in a video game. In his sample scenario, the player wants to smash open a wooden crate with an axe, the one tool available to him. With binary choice, the crate could only exist in one of two possible conditions: broken or unbroken. It would remain unbroken until the user succeeded in smashing it. At that point, Roach said, its status would switch to broken.

“But a state engine approach works differently,” Roach explained. “It tracks cumulative force and damage, allowing for a richer set of player choices. Each player can make a different set of choices and the state engine construct will respond appropriately. So a player who chips away at the crate with a penknife will take 10 times longer to get it open than a player who runs it over with a vehicle and breaks it open with a single move.”

Thus, the state engine approach offers users a broader range of actions and responses than simple binary choice.

BRANCHING STRUCTURES

Many, if not most, interactive narratives still rely to a greater or lesser degree on the if/then construct, and this construct is the foundation of one of the most common structural models of digital storytelling: the branching structure. A branching structure is made up of a great many interconnected if/then constructs. It works a little like a pathway over which the user travels. Every so often, the user will come to a fork in the path—a decision or action point— which may offer several different choices. Upon selecting one, the user will then travel a bit farther until reaching another fork, with several more choices, and so on. Thus, this structure is extremely similar to the old Choose Your Own Adventure books, described in Chapter 1. (To see a script using a branching structure, see Figure 10.2, Dick and Jane, in .)

The problem with a branching structure is that in a very short time it escalates out of control. After just two forks in the path, with three choices at each, you’d have racked up 13 possible choices, and by the third opportunity for choice, you’d have a total of 39 possible outcomes. Although the user would only experience three of them, you’d still have to produce the other 36 in case the user made a different selection. A branching structure like this squanders valuable resources. (See Figure 7.1.)

Figure 7.1 The simple branching structure can easily escalate out of control.

Image courtesy of Terry Borst.

Designers employ a number of techniques to rein in runaway branching, some of which, like the faux choice, offer little or no meaningful agency. In a faux choice construct, the user is presented with several options, but no matter which is picked, the end result will be the same. Runaway branching can also be contained by cul-de-sacs, loop backs, and barriers. Cul-de-sacs are areas off the main story path that the user is free to explore, but these areas are walled in and ultimately force the user back to the main story path. In a loop back construct, the user must return to a previously visited area in order to fulfill a task or acquire some necessary information. In a barrier construct, the user can only activate a choice or move forward by first succeeding at a “gateway” task, such as solving a puzzle.

Some designers rein in runaway branching trees by constructing more modest branching shrubs, each with a specific subgoal. The branching shrubs all link to the major story path, but the branching is more contained. For instance, the ultimate goal might be to save the princess in the tower. Subgoal number one requires that you poison the dragon (shrub #1); subgoal number two requires that you pass over the bridge that is guarded by ogres (shrub #2); and subgoal number three requires that you outwit the princess’s evil stepsisters who are keeping her locked up (shrub #3).

Other designers strive for an illusive structural form called “bushiness,” which offers a maximum amount of choice but which prevents unlimited branching by having many of the links share communal outcomes.

The branching structure is often used within large structural building blocks, such as levels, missions, and worlds.

THE CRITICAL STORY PATH

In works of digital storytelling, the underlying structure has a great impact on the overall user experience. Structures can range from quite restrictive in terms of choice to being extremely free ranging. The structure for a particular project is typically determined by the type of interactive experience the designers want to provide.

If the goal is to allow users to be able to explore freely, interact with other users, and make up their own adventures, the structure will be designed for maximum openness and the least amount of restraint. But if the project is essentially a story-based one, such as an adventure game, a mystery, or a drama, it will need a fairly restrictive structure that invisibly nudges the user down a linear narrative passageway.

Many professionals within the new media industry refer to this linear passageway as the critical story path. This path contains everything the user must do or must discover in order to achieve the full story experience and reach a meaningful ending point.

The critical story path makes it possible to reveal key pieces of information in an incremental way and at an optimal time. It also facilitates dramatic intensity. With the critical story path, you can ratchet up the spookiness of a scary story by controlling when the player will see the shadowy figure outside the window, or hear the scurry of footsteps on the roof, or find the dead dog in the refrigerator. The critical story path can also be used to dramatize the protagonist’s character arc. It is useful whenever you want certain things to happen in some rough order.

Devising the critical story path is a four-step process. To create one, you:

Her Interactive, which develops the Nancy Drew mystery adventure games, is one of the software companies that utilizes a critical story path. Players can travel down this path in many different ways and can collect items and clues at their own pace, but they must perform certain actions in order to solve the mystery.

“We want to give players as much freedom to explore as possible,” writer– producer Anne Collins-Ludwick told me. “But we also want to relate a story, so we have to move them from A to B to C.” She said sometimes the methods to get the players to move down this path will be obvious, but sometimes they go on behind the scenes. “For instance,” she said, “you might not be able to get inside a certain environment until you’ve done something else.”

However, the company also wants to pace each adventure so players don’t race down the critical story path too quickly or else the experience won’t feel like a game. Thus, they devise puzzles, activities, and various kinds of obstacles to heighten the gameplay and make the mystery more challenging to solve.

While the creative team of the Nancy Drew titles uses the term “critical story path,” over at Quicksilver Software they use a different way to talk about the through-line for their games. Producer–designer Katie Fisher calls it a malleable linear path. She said: “Even though we use a three-act structure, we give the players lots of ways to get to the end. We want to avoid the need to hang things on one specific event to move the story forward. We don’t know what order things will happen in, but we can say that five different things will happen before X happens.”

Structural Models That Support the Critical Story Path

An often-used structural model for the linear story path is as a string of pearls. Each of the “pearls” is a world, and players are able to move freely inside each of them. But in order to progress in the story, the player must first successfully perform certain tasks. Sometimes they cannot enter a new pearl until every task in the prior one is completed; sometimes they can enter other pearls, but access to certain areas within them will be blocked. (See Figure 7.2.)

Figure 7.2 With a string of pearls structure, the player progresses through a series of worlds.

The Passenger Train Model

A number of other structures also channel users down a linear path, some more restrictive than others. Most are applicable both to story-based material and to nonfiction material. One that offers the least amount of freedom is sequential linearity, a structure that I prefer to call the passenger train. It was the model used in the first children’s interactive storybooks. It is still used for this purpose, and it is also commonly employed in interactive training applications. It is similar to the string of pearls structure.

In the passenger train model, users begin at the engine end of the train and work their way down car by car until they reach the caboose end. They can explore the interior of each car at will, but they usually cannot leave until the program releases them—sometimes they must first listen to some narration, or watch some animation, or work through some exercises. They also must move in sequence; they cannot jump, say, from car number two to car number six. Once users reach the caboose, they are usually able to explore more freely. Many projects built on this model offer a menu to allow users to revisit a particular car or to go directly back to a specific game, activity, or exercise.

OTHER STRUCTURAL MODELS

If you look closely at interactive models, you might see that they fall into two broad groups: rounded and angular. Angular structures tend to channel users along a particular path and have a more linear core. On the other hand, rounded structures do not support much of a story thread, but they do promote a great deal of freedom and exploration. Some structural models combine rounded and angular elements and thus can combine narrative with a certain amount of freedom.

Spaces to Explore

Some people refer to an unrestricted, free-range environment as an exploratorium. I prefer to think of this structure as an aquarium because it is so much like a three-dimensional fish bowl. Users can navigate through it in any direction, though it may be dotted with “islands” of story elements. It is better suited for experiential interactive journeys or “scavenger hunt” types of experiences than for dramatic narratives.

The aquarium model is frequently found in MMOGs, which typically offer a number of free-ranging worlds through which players can journey. A MMOG universe can be vast in scale. Robert Pfister, senior producer of EverQuest, told me that his game contains about 220 adventure zones. It would take months for a player to visit them all. And Ben Bell, producer of the PlayStation2 version of EverQuest, said of MMOGs in general that: “Most are loosely structured in terms of plot and level design.” He feels that in such games setting is more important than the story because “supporting thousands of players in a single game world is prohibitive to supporting a single story line.” He said designers of these games generally convey a linear plot through suggestions in a handful of subplots. “Quests, items, and the movement of NPC populations are all tools that we use for plot exposition.”

Some designers call the most free form structures a sandbox. Unlike games, they have no specific goals to achieve and no victory conditions. And unlike narratives, they have no plot. However, they do provide users with objects to manipulate and things to do, and they do have spatial boundaries. Virtual worlds like Second Life have many of the characteristics of the sandbox.

Marie-Laure Ryan, in her book Narrative as Virtual Reality, describes an extremely free-form structure she calls the complete graph. In these works, each node can be connected to every other node, and all paths are bidirectional. In this type of structure, the user can move in any direction, but it is hard to imagine how it could be capable of sustaining any kind of narrative thread.

Structures That Are More Angular

Several basic structural models have been devised for works that have a narrative through-line, though they also offer a certain amount of navigational freedom. These structures include the funnel, the pyramid, the coal mine, parallel worlds, and the hero’s journey.

The hero’s journey, described in Chapter 5, is one of the best known of these quasi-linear models. This type of work is structured around the classic myth about the youth who must survive and triumph over a number of terrible ordeals and is transformed by the experience. The classic journey contains 12 stages, so an interactive model using the hero’s journey would incorporate a critical story path and could logically be broken into 12 levels or missions or “pearls on a string,” although there could be fewer or more structural units.

Another model is the funnel, which is sometimes called a pyramid (a pyramid is essentially just an upside down funnel). It is often used in games. In this structure, players start at the “fattest” end, where there is a great deal of freedom of movement. But as they work their way through the game and are nearing the conclusion, their choices become more constrained, though they also may be more challenging.

In interactive environments that call for users to “drill down”—a term frequently used in regard to the Internet—we can find several different types of structures. In general, however, they can be clustered together as coal mine models. The coal mine is most common on the Web, but it can be employed for any project that encourages a burrowing process for fictional or informational material. In a coal mine model, you gather new material via a series of links and move through lateral as well as vertical passageways.

The parallel world, also known as parallel streaming or even harmonic paths, is another quasi-linear structure. It contains several layers of story, each set in its own virtual world, and the user can jump between them. Often each world is a persistent universe, meaning that events continue to unfurl there even when the user is not present. Since it is not possible to be in more than one world at a time, the player must carefully decide which to visit because being in one of these places inevitably means missing out in events taking place in the others.

The Modular Structure

As noted earlier, the modular structure is often used in education and training. These kinds of projects often open with a noninteractive introduction, and then the users are presented with a choice of modules, which they visit in any order. Modules within a single work may vary greatly in style, much like a variety show with different acts. Once all the modules have been visited and the required tasks in each have been completed, the program may end with a linear wrap-up or the user might be offered a “reward” activity.

At JumpStart, they refer to this structure as a hub and spoke model. The player starts from a central location (the hub), and all the modules radiate out from there (the spokes). This structure is extremely clear and simple to navigate, making it especially suitable for children’s projects. (See Figure 7.3.)

Figure 7.3 The main screen of JumpStart Advanced First Grade illustrates the hub and spoke structure. The modules, represented by the various structures, are accessed from the main screen—the hub of the wheel. The reward activity takes place in the Race Arena (upper left of the main screen).

Image courtesy of Knowledge Adventure, Inc. and used under license.

Sophisticated Story Models

Designers of interactive content have come up with a number of structural models that work particularly well in supporting complex interactive narratives.

One such structure is what I refer to as the Rashomon model, though it goes by a number of different names. This model contains several versions of the same story, each version seen from the POV of one of the characters. The model resembles the Japanese movie Roshomon, described in Chapter 1, about a crime viewed by four people, each of whom saw it differently. In interactive narratives that use this model, the user can move between storylines to get a full picture of the incidents at the core of the story. Though it is primarily used for works of fiction, it has also been used in at least one interactive documentary.

The model I call the archeological dig uses quite a different approach. The narrative in these works takes place over a long stretch of time, and the user digs down through these different time periods to reconstruct the story. In Chapter 23, we will be looking at works that utilize both the archeological dig model and the Rashomon model.

In Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet Murray deconstructs a number of narrative models, some of which resemble ones already discussed here, though they go by different names. Two, however, are quite different. The rhizome model takes its name from the field of botany, where it is used to describe an interconnecting root system. Murray applies this term to stories where each piece can be connected to every other piece and where there is no end point and no way out. Thus, it is much like a maze. This model, she feels, is particularly good for journey stories and can offer many surprises, though navigating the rhizome can be challenging to the player.

Another model she describes is the electronic construction kit. In this model, users are given a number of story components, like characters and settings, and they can use them to assemble their own narratives. It is an open-ended construct, with the user in control of how the story will unfold.

In Narrative as Virtual Reality, Marie-Laure Ryan describes two particularly interesting narrative models. One, which she calls the hidden story, contains two layers of narrative. The top layer contains clues to a story that took place in the past. The user explores this top layer to uncover the second layer, the hidden story, and to assemble the pieces of the hidden story into a coherent and linear whole. Although not specifically noted by Ms. Ryan, this type of structure is often used in Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). In these games, players uncover clues to a mystery and reassemble them to form a cohesive narrative, often working on the clues at the same time as the fictional characters in the game. (For more on ARGs, please see Chapter 17.)

Another model she offers is the fractal structure. “Fractal” is a mathematic term for a pattern that repeats itself endlessly in smaller and larger forms. Ryan uses this term in an interactive narrative context to describe a story that does not advance but instead expands. In the example she gives, a miniaturized version of the core story is presented right at the start. It grows in scope as the player interacts with it, but the essence of the story never changes.

Video game scholar Joris Dormans sees great potential in this model, which he discusses in an article called Lost in a Forest, posted on the Game Research website. He feels that fractal stories contain many pluses and avoid some of the problems characteristic of other structures. Like interactive stories with a fairly linear plot and clearly defined goal, the fractal story also has an ultimate destination, but it does not narrowly push the user toward it. And like structures that emphasize exploration, it offers a great deal of freedom but without sacrificing the narrative elements. Thus it is a middle ground between the two ends of the spectrum: strict linearity on one hand and unrestricted freedom on the other. It also supports replayability because with each play, users can experience the story differently.

CREATING YOUR OWN STRUCTURAL MODEL

Sometimes no ready-made model exists for the type of interactive narrative you have in mind, and in cases like this, you need to invent your own structural model. I faced a situation like this when I was pitching a series of interactive stories for a children’s website. I wanted a structure that contained a linear entrance and exit but that was interactive in the center. I thus came up with a model that I named the python that swallowed a pig. In this model, the head portion, or entrance to the story, is narrow, and the tail portion, which is the exit, is also narrow. But the middle is fat, and here is where most of the interactive events occur. Though you can experience these events in any order, you must be careful in the “pig” section or else you will not succeed in accomplishing your goal and will be forced to exit from the snake prematurely. Thus, the beginning and the end are essentially linear, while the middle is interactive, a model that combines the rounded and angular forms. This structure lends itself well to a goal-oriented narrative experience. Multiple pythons can be connected together in various ways to produce a more dimensional experience, somewhat like a lumpy string of pearls.

Another model I took the liberty of naming is one of my favorites: the balloon man. Like the python, it combines angular and rounded elements, but it is far more complex. The balloon man can be an effective vehicle for exploring psychological themes and revealing hidden facets of a character. It resembles a handholding of a cluster of strings, and every string is attached to a balloon— each a world in the balloon man’s universe. Your mission begins in the hand, and from there you choose which string—or pathway—to move along. When you reach a balloon, you experience events much as you would in the interior of the snake except that you are free to leave at any time. To visit another balloon, you must first travel back to the balloon man’s hand and select another string. Each journey along the same string produces new experiences or yields new insights. Once you have neared your overall goal, the ultimate revelation or triumph often awaits you back in the balloon man’s hand.

DETERMINING A STRUCTURE

It is one thing to talk about structure in an abstract way and to examine a variety of models; it is an entirely different thing to decide which structure to use for a particular project or line of titles. Often, the decision is guided by practical considerations or by the type of experience the creative team wants to provide for the user.

Different factors come to the forefront at different software companies. For instance, at Training Systems Design, which makes interactive training programs, they regularly use a modular structure with an open architecture because it can accommodate a variety of ways of presenting material and multiple learning styles. Dr. Robert Steinmetz, the company’s president and senior designer, told me they like to promote “discovery learning” rather than a tutorial approach. A modular structure with an open architecture lends itself well to this type of learning.

Obviously, there is no “one size fits all” when it comes to structure. And in some cases, as we’ve seen, you might find that no off-the-shelf model will work for what you want to do, and it may be necessary to customize a unique structure for your project. Your decisions about structure will be determined, to a large extent, by the project itself. Here are some questions you can ask that will help guide you:

CONCLUSION

We have described a variety of structural models here, some widely recognized in the field, others not. Often professionals use different names to describe the same models. Perhaps, because of the evolving nature of digital media, we will never reach the point of having one standard set of models, each with a specific name and architectural form. And in some cases, it is left to the creative team to shape their own structures.

Fortunately, it is not necessary to completely start from scratch. We can study the models that are most frequently used, and we can deconstruct already-made projects to see how they work. And, as we begin to shape one of our own projects, we can be guided by its specific purpose and requirements. Once we do that, we will find that it is not as impossible as it might seem to give order to an experience that should, to the user, feel free of constraint. In actuality, we do have far more to work with than Styrofoam peanuts.

IDEA-GENERATING EXERCISES