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Well this is it folks; if you've been following this guide up until now, you should have in front of you a workable story to use as the basis for the game you've had working in your head. If not, well, at least you have the basic toolset to get started whenever you feel the need. But now it's time to wrap things up, trim those hedges and spit and polish that which we have created!

Introduction

It's important to realize that even though you've sorted out all the different components of your story, what you have can still be formed and changed to be something spectacular – in this, the final part of this narrative guide, we're going to take a look at story genres; which includes themes and styles, as well as looking at few things you should try to avoid and take note of.

Story Genres

Story Genres relate to HOW a story is being told

Remember way back at the start of the guide I spoke about genres? The message was that you shouldn't use a game's genre to determine the type of story you have as that would confine your imagination too much; a message which still stands! However, this isn't about game genres (First-Person Shooter; RPG etc) but rather about story genres.

Okay, obvious things first – what is a story genre?

The quickest way to explain it would be as such: horror, comedy, tragedy, romance, action, thriller etc; but as with everything else, it goes a little deeper – it's the culmination of the underlying message(s) being told within the story (or the themes) and the way in which these things are brought across throughout the story (the styles) using the fundamental components we've covered already.

Note that story genres are very abstract, and are applicable to ANY level of narrative.

Themes

On the surface, themes are the messages your stories give. Life and death; revenge; fighting for liberation; love – it's a concept behind the story. It needs to be pointed out that there can be many different themes, and that they're not always explicitly on display – in fact, more often than not, the theme is never explicitly laid out for the player and is often left unknown, leaving the player to flesh it out themselves.

For instance; playing a game of Mario Bros. what would you say the underlying theme is? Is there a theme? Or is it merely a collection of random events and characters tied together in an obscure fantasy world? The truth is we don't really know – being a lower level narrative, theme isn't expected to be predominant feature, which leaves it open to interpretation.

Looking at Fallout 3, however, we're faced with more prevalent themes: from the more obvious themes of causality (cause and effect) and sacrifice for the greater good (if you so choose); to perhaps deeper and personal themes of testing the player's conscience – are you a good person or a bad person? Being a high-level narrative, it's almost expected that at the outcome of the story, we're aware of the path that we walked and what it really means in terms of the greater picture (and it really helps having Ron Perlman explain it to us in the end anyway).

Does a game need to have a theme? Well, no, not really – but chances are even if you mesh together a bunch of random ideas, there's some sort of reasoning behind it; so in the end, you're putting in a theme even though it's not intentionally. And even though themes are part of story genres, they don't necessarily determine the genre itself, that's a job for…