emotions

Part 9 Putting into play – The Hidden Art of Pacing 3 (3)

| Katarina Gyllenbäck

The Hidden Art of Pacing is a three-part trip, which takes you on a journey to trace the core to the hidden art of pacing by stripping familiar story and game structures from standard elements to discern the engaging and motivating forces that trigger the receiver´s building of experiences, feelings, and expectations.

To enhance the reading experience, I suggest you start with the first part if you haven´t done so already.

As a result of the stripping of the dramatic story structure, and the removal of its standard features (acts, turning-points, rising and falling actions), the previous part revealed a learning curve. The flow-state of the learning curve (illustrated below) shows the motivating engine by how the receiver gradually builds experiences and feelings on the path towards the goal.

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Part 7 Putting into play – The hidden art of pacing 1 (3)

| Katarina Gyllenbäck

The Hidden Art of Pacing is a three-part trip, which takes you on a journey to trace the core to the hidden art of pacing by stripping familiar story and game structures from standard elements to discern the engaging and motivating forces that trigger the receiver´s building of experiences, feelings, and expectations.

Before shifting to interactive media, I wrote story arcs for films and television series. The technique of scriptwriting was to follow your gut, establish a conflict, take it to a climax, and end it with a twist. The receiver’s engagement was built into the dramatic story structure, which meant that focus was laid on the character’s motivations, relations, and behavior. As long as the audience stayed seated and the ratings were good, work continued as usual.

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Part 5, Putting into play – On organizing thoughts and feelings

| Katarina Gyllenbäck

“Putting into play” is about how our thinking and understanding work when putting the thoughts into play towards the desired goal in the making of an engaging and dynamic game system. The series is a part of a project whose goal is to offer a hands-on approach to the design of a motivating and meaningful experience from a narrative and cognitive perspective which illuminates how our thinking, learning, and emotions interplay.

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Part 2, Narrative bridging on testing an experience

| Katarina Gyllenbäck

I wonder if you remember the feeling that slowly came over you when you wrote what would become your last letter to Santa? If you have never written to Santa or, you are still writing, maybe you have the experience of buying a lottery ticket and is thus able to recognise the feeling of doubt when questioning your beliefs, intentions, and desires, as to why you are putting hopes into something you know won’t correspond to your desires? The feeling I´m trying to describe is the same I have every time I return to science in matters that concern the narrative, which is complicated, to say the least. So in January, I decided to settle the relationship, with the same confidence I had when writing my last letter to Santa I wrote my last words to science in my text “Are you a man or a mouse.”

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Part 3, Don´t show, involve

| Katarina Gyllenbäck

The series “Don´t show, involve” builds upon the narrative as a cognitive process and how to go from a thought to the plotting of an involving experience. As to get the most out of the third and last part of “Don´t show, involve” I would like to recommend reading the previous parts before continuing.

Part 1 Don´t show, involve – how to propel a thought towards a goal.
Part 2 Don´t show, involve – hands-on plotting towards a goal.

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