This is a simple try at representing a story using the up-and-down values of the story -- whether the action is primarily positive or negative. Would it be possible to recognize and understand a story simply by looking at a "graph" of its story values? In this attempt we simply took some of the clip art supplied with Lotus Freelance and threw it together.

First, try figuring out the story just from the pictures and the direction of the lines. Then hold the mouse over each picture in turn; a caption will appear below telling the story. How far were you off? Did you get the "gist" of the story, even if you couldn't interpret some of the details (as shown in the pictures) as they were intended?

You could imagine a tool for viewing stories in a story base in which you could choose among a number of timeline plots such as this. For example, you could see a plot of

• how funny or sad the story is at any point
• how many people are involved in the story at any point
• what types of conflict are present at any point (within one person, between people, between a person and their environment)
• how rich is the environment at any point (a room, a street, a mountain range)
• the amount of conflict at any point
• the amount of cooperation at any point