SRST: A Storytelling Model Using Rhetorical Relations

Abstract

Storytelling models are usually constrained to the applications they are implemented in because of the particular characteristics of the data used to define story events and the way those events are linked. In order to develop a more generic model to create storytelling applications, we need to focus the solution not on the data itself, but on the manner this data, in the form of events, is organized and conveyed to the user. In this paper, we present SRST (Storytelling RST), our proposal for a generic storytelling ontology model based on the organization of events using the relations proposed by the Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) and how narrative principles are applied to these RST relations to generate coherent stories.

Story Blocks

“…ProppÕs (1968) codification of Russian folktales into thirty-one discrete functions, describes the structural elements of a tale as assigned to its characters, and his analysis continues to have a profound influence on the computational production and theories of interactive narrative (e.g. Nakasone and Ishizuka, 2006;Cavazza et al, 2009;Gerv ‡s, 2013). …”

ISRST: An Interest Based Storytelling Model Using Rhetorical Relations

“…Even though some models do not deal with interactivity at all [1,23,11,19], most models deal with several kinds of intrusive interaction that goes from parameter specification [5,10], and menu selection and interruptions [29,27,13,7] to full user action multimedia processing [21,28,6,18,15].…”

“…In our previous implementation [19], we made use of most of the rhetorical relations defined by RST, since our ontology corpus data was created using textual events, i.e. events that were defined as pieces of text presented through an agent.…”

“…For more information about our previous implementation, please see [19]. In the next section, we will discuss how we overcame these limitations in the current version and the new ontology specification that resulted from those improvements.…”

“…In this paper, we present ISRST (Interactive Storytelling RST), our proposal for a generic storytelling ontology model based on the organization of events using a meaningful subset of relations proposed by the Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) [17] and narrative principles applied to these RST relations combined with interest measurement to provide an interactive storytelling experience. This model was developed as an extension to our previous storytelling model SRST [19].…”