Narrative and Practice

You might recall my Illustration: Story and Game post.

The other realisation I've had since then, is that a story is a 4D map of the world; it gives you a view of a bit of narrative terrain you might have to negotiate.  A rich movie (grand narrative) will pick up alternative paths in neighbouring regions in the subplots.

The relationship that is interesting is that between narrative and practice.  We live by practice, familiar ways of resolving the world.  Narrative is the way of 3rd-person-ing the practice so that it can be out there for us to learn from each other, which is invaluable for infrequent occurrences.

(I'm indebted to Dramatica, and probably sadly derivative of everyone who has gone before.)