Nonlinear (arts)
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In the literature and film, the term nonlinear is used to describe a narrative technique wherein events are portrayed out of chronological order. It is often used to mimic the structure and recall of human memory but has been applied for other reasons as well[citation needed]. Nonlinearity has a slightly different meaning in the context of video games, where it refers to the possibility of narrating different stories depending on the player's actions in the game.
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[edit] Literature
Well-known examples of nonlinear novels are Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, James Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake, William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch, Joseph Heller's Catch-22, and Carole Maso's book Ava: a novel (1993). The technique has been used since the beginnings of literature (see In media res).
[edit] Film and television
- F for Fake
- Last Year at Marienbad
- Lost Highway
- Mulholland Dr.
- INLAND EMPIRE
- The Killing
- Irreversible
- Memento
- Pulp Fiction
- 21 Grams
- The Prestige
- Naked Lunch
- The Mirror
- Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
- Sin City
- Kill Bill
- Rendition
Japanese anime series sometimes present their plot in nonlinear order, for example, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Yami to Bōshi to Hon no Tabibito, Touka Gettan, and (partly) Boogiepop Phantom.
[edit] Video games
In video games, nonlinear refers to a game that has more than one possible plotline and ending, leaving the gamer to take the path that most suits their style of play. This increases replay value, as players must often beat the game several times to get the whole story. Computer role-playing games, e.g. Fallout, often contain multiple paths which the player can take since the beginning of the game.
Some video games mimic the film nonlinearity by presenting a single plot in chronologically distorted way instead of letting the player determine the story flow themselves. The first-person shooter Tribes: Vengeance is an example of this.
[edit] See also
- Stream of consciousness
- Metafiction
- Experimental fiction
- Metacognition
- Time
- Sequence
- Chronology
- Wheel of time
- Time in physics
- Anachronistic
- Change
- List of cycles
- Duration
- Exponential time
- Multilinear
- Sense of time
- Spacetime
- System time
[edit] References
- Maso, Carole [1993]. Ava: a novel, Fiction. Normal, Illinois: Dalkey Archive Press. ISBN 1564780295. OCLC 26763542.
