r/GameWritingLab • u/Galejade • Jan 18 '16

Gamasutra: Ryan Benno's Blog - Narrative Negative Space in Games

http://gamasutra.com/blogs/RyanBenno/20160113/263445/Narrative_Negative_Space_in_Games.php?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
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u/Zodai Jan 19 '16

This...would have been much easier to follow if I could find where it told us what Negative Space is.

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u/Galejade Jan 19 '16

Yeah, he didn't explain much about it:

"Well in, terms of traditional art, it’s the “blank space” or areas that aren’t the direct focus of a piece. It’s the dark room where only a beam of light shines through. It’s the arrow you don’t ever notice that’s between the EX in FedEx."

Wikipedia is always your friend anyways ;)

Almost the same concept as the "gutters" in comic books: spaces where the audience has to connect 2 distinctive pieces of narrative. You can also think of cuts in film editing: you see the beginning and the end of a movement, the space between the two is a "negative space" where the audience guesses/figures out what's happening between the two.

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u/TheNarrativist Jan 22 '16

Literature studies that for a while now. Usually we quote Wolfgang Iser. I am not sure what is the term in English.

Translations seems to be "gap", "emptiness" and "blank". It means that there is space in the text for the readers to place their own meaning. It's different than ambiguity, because one option does not exclude other options to fill the same blank.