The Story Box is a framework for writing and experiencing stories on the web. It is designed to give authors the ability to express their stories in a structured format, and take advantage of that structure by offering the opportunity for more in-depth exploration, for instance through multiple character perspectives on a scene.
We’re building on the principles first explored in the Mythology Engine, allowing readers to experience stories by choosing significant events.
Stories are split into episodes, with each episode comprising a number of narrative “moments”. For each moment, relevant characters can have their own “perspective”, akin to seeing through their eyes, hearing their thoughts, or even just being the focus of the audience. These perspectives can then be clustered into scenes, which describe the action taking place between characters in a more traditional way.
Line of Sight is an original episodic hypertext drama from author David Varela. During the development of The Story Box it served as a template for exploring how to dissect the elements of drama, and now it provides a showcase for the tool itself.