The Narrative Cycle
Part 4 of We Are All Storytellers
The ongoing sequence of how stories develop and change during narrative roleplaying is called the narrative cycle. The method was created based on how stories have been told, in multiple forms, including oral traditions, written fiction, on stage, and on the screen, for millennia.
The narrative cycle goes like this:
An Instability Emerges: A problem, conflict, or source of uncertainty arises that affects the characters and demands attention.
The Characters Respond: The characters decide how they will address the instability through action, negotiation, investigation, avoidance, or any other approach they believe might work.
Consequences Follow: Every choice produces results. Successful actions, failed actions, and deliberate inaction all create consequences that affect the situation.
The Situation Changes: Those consequences alter the original instability, reduce it, worsen it, transform it into something else, or create entirely new problems.
A New Decision Point Appears: The characters confront the changed circumstances and decide what to do next, restarting the cycle.
The cycle repeats until the players agree that the original instability has been resolved, and the story they set out to tell has come to an end.
All three phases of the cycle are affected by narrative pressure. The instability creates actions that are affected by it; consequences change their form, but pressure is always present, as the force that continually drives the characters and the story forward.
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