Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling (4 page)

Storytelling was a natural, almost inevitable consequence of human evolution. The human brain developed in response to the environmental pressures facing early hominids. Each major problem triggered some sort of change in the human body; if a problem could be solved by mental effort, an existing part of the brain took over that problem, often expanding as a consequence. Most of the time, these new mental abilities were cobbled together from a combination of existing parts of the brain, so they weren’t often cleanly localized to one region of the brain. As they developed, these “mental modules” were in turn recruited to solve new but related problems.

Because mental modules aren’t tightly localized, scientists can’t pin them down with anatomical precision; brain function is so complex that one mental module blends into the next. This makes the job of identifying mental modules a subjective task; every scientist slices the pie a little differently. Nevertheless, some slices seem to be more popular than others. Here are four of the most commonly recognized mental modules:

Visual-spatial:
Handles visual perception and spatial imagination; based on pattern recognition.

Social:
Handles relationships with others; also based on pattern recognition.

Natural history:
Storage of facts about the environment and logical analysis of those facts; some sequential processing.

Language:
Permits communication and ties together all the other mental modules; sequential processing.

Once the development of language had pulled the mental modules into communication, all sorts of fascinating interactions began between them. For example, the natural history module and the social relationships module interacted in a surprising fashion. The natural history module impelled humans to inquire into the causes of phenomena they observed in their environment, but all too often a clear cause was wanting. For example, an especially important question for the early farmers was “Why does it rain?” Or, more to the point, “Why does it sometimes fail to rain?”

When language put the natural history module in touch with the social relationships module, these two modules interacted to devise an answer that made some sense: Natural phenomena were caused by “powerful people”—gods. Whenever a phenomenon lacked an obvious cause, assigning the phenomenon to a god and then explaining the apparently erratic behavior with the deity’s mood swings was a simple matter. Not only did the social relationships module suggest an explanation to the problem; it also offered the solution: propitiate the god. A huge array of behaviors became associated with various gods. Some acts were forbidden; others were mandatory. And because the gods seemed so arbitrary, it behooved society to have someone on hand who could communicate with the gods. There was never any shortage of applicants for the position; whoever communicated with the gods was, essentially, in charge of the society. There, now you know where religion came from.

But the natural history module also interacted with the language module, producing “sequential thinking natural history”—science. Sequential thinking took a long time to develop, but once the idea of syllogisms and chains of deduction took hold, science took off. The conflict between science and religion becomes clearer when viewed in this fashion. Both arose from the natural history module; both attempt to explain the world in which we live. Religion takes the social relationship route, and science takes the sequential logic route. The choice between them might have more to do with relative strengths of these two modules than anything else.

FIGURE 1.1
: Interactions between the mental modules.

There are still four more interactions to consider. I lump two of them together: the combination of the visual/spatial module with the natural history and social relationships modules to produce representational art.

When visual/spatial reasoning combined with the language module, we got writing, an impressive result. And when the language module combined with the social relationships module, it produced storytelling.

For those whose spatial reasoning module is stronger than their verbal reasoning module,
Figure 1.1
(on the preceding page) shows a graphical summary of these results.

Why is storytelling such an important component of culture? All cultures have their stories. Why are they universal? The obvious answer, of course, is that stories are the vehicle by which cultural knowledge is communicated from one generation to the next. They’re not the only vehicle, of course, but they certainly play an important role in transmitting cultural information. Storytelling is an ancient technique, probably developing hand in hand with language.

But why should information be transmitted by stories? Why couldn’t cultures simply compile their knowledge into a simple, compact list of important truths, and then require every young person to memorize them? This approach would probably be quicker and more efficient than the long-winded storytelling system, so why didn’t any culture ever adapt such a superior alternative?

The answer has to do with the character of the information being transmitted. Most of the information content of these stories pertains to social reasoning. Some pertains to the natural history module, but the bulk of these stories concern interpersonal behavior: trustworthiness, marriage, perseverance, and so forth. The social relationships mental module relies on pattern recognition, which raises a nasty problem: How do you communicate pattern-type information to a pattern-recognizing mental module using a sequential medium such as language? In computer terms, the data is in the wrong format for the communications link!

What’s needed is a reformatter, something that converts one thinking format to the other. Narrative is that reformatter. It’s an ad-hoc solution to an ugly interfacing problem that arose early in the development of language.

Consider: A story is definitely a linear sequence of events; its architecture is even referred to as a “plotline.” That linearity is the inevitable outcome of using language to relate the story. Yet the story’s content can’t be understood until the story has been completely received. If I’m downloading my email and the transmission link breaks 90 percent of the way through, I can still read the email and figure out most of its content. But if you’re watching a movie in a theater and the projector breaks down 90 percent of the way through the movie, you have every right to demand a 100 percent refund; without that last 10 percent, the story never snaps into place and is a useless communication.

In other words, stories are complete patterns that communicate a special kind of knowledge to our pattern-recognizing mental modules. How does that happen? I’ll use a visual metaphor that clearly shows what happens (well, it’s clear to visual thinkers…). Imagine your knowledge to consist of a meshwork of connected ideas, something like the diagram in
Figure 1.2
.

FIGURE 1.2
: Abstract representation of information organized in the mind.

The triangles represent ideas or concepts inside your mind. All your ideas and memories exist in some association with other ideas and memories; in other words, you have associative memories. Now
Figure 1.2
is misleading in two ways: First, it’s a conceptual diagram, not a blueprint. It sketches out some imaginary set of relationships, not a real structure inside your brain. Second, it’s vastly oversimplified. Mental associations are far bigger, richer, and denser than this little diagram. I present it only to prepare you for a little exercise in visual reasoning.