ISRST: Generating interesting multimedia stories on the web

Interactive storytelling (IS) models, either implicitly or explicitly, have had to deal with three major aspects in their implementations, regardless of their technology: (1) how to define story events, i.e., the pieces of information that constitutes the content of any story; (2) how to present story events, i.e., the algorithm that is used to convey this content to the user; and (3) how the user is to interact with the story, i.e., the variables that the user can modify in order to change the presentation of the events in content or in order. The majority of IS implementations encode in their definition of story event timing information (the range of time specified in terms of the story timeline in which the event must be presented) and interaction variables associated with that predefined timing. This approach is convenient for story presentation, but presents several restrictions in terms of story understanding and story dynamism. To overcome these restrictions, we developed interactive storytelling model using rhetorical structure theory (ISRST), our proposal for a storytelling model based on the organization of generally defined events using a subset of rhetorical relations proposed by the RST and the application of narrative principles and user interaction through interest to generate appealing stories. This presentation of ISRST will be complemented by a critical discussion about technical and usability issues of its implementation. We also conducted an empirical study using a real full-fledged story, which suggests that a user's story satisfaction can be associated with the presentation of a story outcome that emphasizes the user's empathetically preferred character(s).