Getting to the Point: Resolving Ambiguity in Intelligent Narrative Technologies

Despite more than three decades of work, researchers of intelligent narrative technologies have yet to settle on a lexicon that consistently describes common concepts. In some cases, certain terms are used in passing as though a common definition is understood, even though one or more different definitions can be used to understand the same term. In this paper, we present an exploratory study of how the terms “plot point” and “plot graph” have been used in the literature. We show that there exist at least two competing definitions for these terms, and we demonstrate how two recently-developed, representational frameworks can be used to clarify and distinguish between such competing definitions. On the basis of the demonstrated differences, we offer new terms to help distinguish the different uses of “plot point” and “plot graph”.

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