Implicit and explicit content

Treated here:

How to select macro elements of your story, how to construct your scenes, choose which elements you efficiently incorporate into your plot and characters

For characters, implicit and explicit might refer to the act of showing the actions of a character to let the player infer on their personality; but here, we focus on how some constitutive elements of the story is directly displayed or not to the audience, and to which degree.

We'll use "on screen content" and "off screen content" as blanket terms regardless of media.

Content selection in linear media

Scenes are constructed to move the plot forward, let the characters show personality and confront their mindset to reality, and to worldbuild -> Stephen King's three elements to a story are narration (plot), description (sensory reality) and dialogue (characterization).

GLOSSED OVER: generic and easily inferrable events that don't do either of those, condense everything as much as you can -> make everything have a clear meaning if you can (not a hidden one but again easily inferrable)

Sanderson's abstraction

In his BYU writing classes, Brandon Sanderson defines the concept of abstraction as the level of detail provided to the audience by the author. Giving out a plethora of details will not have the same evocative power and freedom of representation for the reader. Fine line to walk.

Calvin's Noodle incident

Lots of effective content can happen off screen.

Definition

As described and analyzed by Overly Sarcastic Productions:

• representation of values and characters

Environmental storytelling

In linear media, we only get pre-plotted character action.
Particular strength of a game is communicating its narration by establishing a neutral space for the player to use the game mechanics in, in a guided way.

-> obvious move is drop player in an unclear scenario where you need to investigate, deduct, infer meaning from environmental elements that therefore become more than just backdrop pieces. No character taking the center stage forces the player to focus on the environment.

Two naturally compatible genres

🔍 Crime scenes

Heart of the detective genre

☠️ Dawning horror

Slowly figuring out the present danger from escalating clues.

1. It's quieter than expected
2. More bodies than expected
3. Hints pertaining to the nature of the threat
4. The monster is still here!

Toolbox

All cues are more effective if genre conventions let the player know what's expected and what deviates from the norm.

• Light: universal regardless of setting, candles can indicate long-term adaptations
• Cleanliness / Tidyness: some universal priorities (eg. blood and bodies) but again depends on the specific setting / sublocation.