Authors

Csaba Szekeres

The fractal nature of narrative, dramaturgical agency and the possibility of interactivity in narrative

Full text in PDF 10.56044/UA.2025.1.1.eng Abstract: This study is part of a larger study in progress, which attempts to describe the interactivity inherent in film narrative and the sequentialisations that characterize narrative. My aim is to explore the basic features of the functioning of the film receptive attitude inherent in interactivity. The exploratory method builds on the claim that in the macro and micro structures of narrative the fractal nature of narrative, which carries the potential for interactivity, prevails through two dilemmas. Thus, not only the narrative power lines in the body of the text, which form the basic structure of the dramatic structure, but also its variants, the shadow patterns, become visible. Consequently, the dilemma situations are able to form narrative shadow patterns, inducing a decision agency, which reveal a dramaturgically structurable system of a character’s decision situations, thereby creating the possibility of dramaturgical agency. The starting point for the investigation of dramaturgical agency is the Interactive Digital Narrative (IDN), which is well known in video games. Its functioning is significantly influenced by the interpretation of chance, which creates coherent or incoherent decision patterns in the narrative structure with a paragraphic nature. The study indirectly tries to show, through the concept of chance, that its interpretative significance has a stimulating or enervating impact on the recipient during the reception process. Keywords: nonlinear narrative structure, IDN, chance, psychological agency, dramaturgical agency, archetypal value, dilemma, motivation/drive, shadow patterns, Tyche.

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