All great VR stories still begin with words in your head.
In August, VRScout & VR Playhouse partnered with YouTube Space LA to put on the “VR Creator Lab,” a 3-month intensive for a select group of YouTube content creators looking to enhance their VR/360° output. An overview and guide to immersive writing and storytelling was included as a part of this lab.
The participants included accomplished creators who already had experience producing immersive video (program requirements stipulated they needed to have at least 10,000 subscribers and two 360° videos under their belts) and so, while many of these kinds of guides are geared toward beginners, we wanted to use this opportunity to explore concepts in greater depth than we’d seen elsewhere.
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Though it’s geared toward 360° filmmaking, we also wanted to get creators thinking about conceiving and composing VR experiences with an eye toward the medium’s future. We’re guessing many readers fall into a similar camp, so we decided to make this resource available to the public—think of it as something like, “VR Writing and Storytelling 201.”
Presence
Our look at VR storytelling ought to begin with presence. It’s the heart of what makes an immersive experience like VR special and unique. Simply put, presence in VR is the sensation of being in the space of a given experience, of sharing that space with characters, of being there. That sensation in turn leads to the need to be active, to have intentions, to play a role.
One article we love that addresses this notion is Katy Newton & Karin Soukup’s “The Storyteller’s Guide to the Virtual Reality Audience.” One gem to include here:
There is no such thing as a neutral observer.
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In other words, your audience will feel an increased sense of responsibility—these questions of Why am I here? and What should I do? This is why games and genre stories that focus on intentions (rescuing something; capturing something; escaping something; solving something) work particularly well.
Working with that sense of presence and taking advantage of its features is a unique and essential part of your job as an immersive storyteller. On the simplest level, this means giving the viewers things to learn, things to discover, things to reveal. What will they discover simply by looking around this space? (We’ll address this in more detail in the “Set & Setting” section later). The very nature of VR/360° video means viewers are not passive—so your storytelling has to help invite them to be active.
POV
The nuts-and-bolts part of presence is point of view (POV). In 360° storytelling, you must directly address the question of which specific POV you will utilize in your story. Will your audience see things through a specific character’s eyes (first-person POV) or will you simply take on an “objective,” detached perspective (third-person POV)?
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For these reasons, first-person POV has the higher degree of difficulty, though, of course, that sense of presence can increase dramatically when it’s grounded in an actual character and you are actually seeing things through someone’s eyes. At the same time, third-person POV is very often the easier choice to work with.
3rd Person
With third-person POV, the major idea to remember is that we’re still hardwired as humans to presume our participation in a virtual space (more on this in the article linked above). This means that, even when we don’t have a virtual body to call our own, we start to claim ownership of the space in terms of how we interact with it. Say you have created a crime scene that participants experience in 3rd person. They will still “take ownership” of their participation in the space by putting together clues to create a narrative about what might have happened here—even if they’re not playing the role of detective (in 1st-person).
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A good reference point for this is theme parks and how much meaning is embedded in the actual physical space there. For instance, Disneyland uses a lot of forced perspective to make structures like Cinderella’s Castle seem larger than it is and, by extension, for you to seem smaller; childlike. The space itself is designed to create a sense of nostalgia. Before anything even happens, the story has begun.
Space is Dynamic
The important thing to remember here is that set and setting are not just background or the vessel in which action takes place. In order for it to feel dynamic, it has to be dynamic. It has to be engaged in the process. Many have compared the potency of immersive storytelling to hallucinogenic experiences. What happens in hallucinogenic experiences? The world warps and shifts around you, driving new impressions from spaces you may have encountered countless times before. This is the power at your fingertips as an immersive storyteller.
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Write to communicate set & setting from the get-go. If you’re directing/producing your own piece, this will help you fully conceptualize what you’ll ultimately create. If you’re handing the script off to other collaborators, this will do wonders in helping them bring your story to life.
Drawing from Theatre
Finally, as a practical matter that dips into the production end, this is why classically trained theatrical actors are often better equipped with the kind of embodiment it takes to pull off 360° scenes. Embodiment is more than how you stand—it’s how you use space. These kinds of actors will often do the work of the camera, using their bodies and voices and expressions to create new perspectives and new relationships to the audience’s POV.
Don’t be scared to write toward your set/setting in more poetic ways than you might normally think to in a screenplay. Your job in describing space is not only to literally depict it, but to emotionally evoke its essence so that it comes to life. This will benefit you even if you’re also the director of the piece.
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The point is that 360° is not a plot-driven medium. That’s not to say your stories shouldn’t have plot. You just shouldn’t make plot your sole foundation. Maybe don’t start with plot.
(Read that last line one more time for good measure.)
Instead, go back to what we mentioned above about discoveries inside this world. Your responsibility is creating a world that an audience can get inside and take from it what they want; to lay out a bunch of ingredients from which they can make a story.
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Plot is Still Important, but in a Different Way
Remember too that story, at its most fundamental level, is about change. Of course, “change” can mean many things. Where immersive storytelling diverges with the pre-existing storytelling paradigm is that now, instead of being the primary driver of this change, plot is one component designed to work in tandem with other storytelling elements to realize the full vision of the story.
Character & Dialogue
One thing to remember as you write is that contemporary audiences are extremely evolved when it comes to narrative and storytelling. We are all inundated with story from practically the moment we open our eyes in the morning to the moment we close them at the end of the day. And so we, as storytellers, can leave a lot of work to the audience.
For example, if we see a person crying in one corner of a room and another person standing in the other corner, his arms crossed and his back to the first person, we’re all going to know that they’ve just been in a fight. We don’t need to tell them that, especially not through dialogue-as-exposition. Trust your audience. They’re smarter than you think, pinky promise.
In more traditional mediums, an audience’s interest in the above scenario might be on how this fight came to happen; the cause-and-effect of it. And our interest in these characters is a reflection of this; how do their internal motivations play a part in these events? How will this event then play a part in future internal motivations? But as we’ve discussed above, 360° video is not a medium of causality.
Situation & Environment Drive Characters & Interactions
When it comes to characters in 360° stories, an audience is more interested in what it feels like to be this person in this environment. They are more interested in the character’s internal life; their emotional condition. And, as we discussed, the subjective nature of 360° video sets us up well to capture these elements.
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Why Subtext Matters
Because subtext is emotional and expressive, it invites participation. It’s not so definitive that it squashes alternate understandings. For instance, in the above example, let’s say the crying character jabs the arms-folded character with: “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?”
And folded-arms fires back with: “Oh, so now it means something to you?”
We can read a lot of things into this discussion, as well as start to conduct guesswork about the nature of this fight. There’s a power play, reference to existing problems in the relationship, and also a veiled desire to get to the bottom of the fight. We’re learning about the situation and the people all at once, borne of the speculative work we do to make narrative sense (which our brains will do automatically).
This also creates a more open, fluid style of dialogue that isn’t necessarily driving toward one takeaway or a big moment—because again, there’s always a danger that any individual moment will be missed (at the expense of the larger “picture”).
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360’s unprecedented ability to present a subjective perspective means we can create Impressionist narratives, and so a good point of reference here is Impressionist art. There is that same, monumental shift going on now as there was more than a hundred years ago: from objectively depicting something as it is to subjectively depicting it as it looks to you.
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Source: VR Scout