Immersion: Hero Narrative

Immersion is an essential part of good storytelling, gameplay, and education. Professor Michael Welsh, an anthropologist, describes storytelling as a means of documenting the human experience. I believe storytelling to be essential to any immersive experience – a story is what constitutes a memorable experiences, time and place. The brain stores a library of stories each associated with different sounds, sights, tastes, smells, and touches. There is a clear relationship between the senses, memories, and stories. Michel Welsh described one of the most common storytelling narratives, the hero narrative. In the hero narrative, the main character receives a call to adventure, the eventual acceptance of which results in a transformation of the protagonist, whether it be physical or philosophical. This was the basic storyline Madison Dalke and I unknowingly followed when writing the story of Charlie and her call to action at the Konza Prairie Research Station. There are clear advantages and disadvantages to this storyline. Disadvantages include that it is a uni-linear storyline with a clear beginning, middle, end. The hero narrative also restricts the voices of other characters.
It is hard to quantify and categorize something as immersive or not. To me an immersive experience is a memorable one. Memories are made through stories, and when reflecting on memories, general patterns (such as the hero narrative) begin to surface. For that reason, it is hard to argue a hero narrative as immersive or not. Maybe immersive storytelling bridges beyond “documenting the human experience” to documenting a collective experience. This collective experience could be from a broad perspective, but of course; broadening can be reductive thus counterintuitive to the idea of immersion. For this reason, a truly immersive concept is in many ways uncharted