Narrative
An annotated collection of 4 books & articles on narrative, spanning 1997 to 2023. Featuring works by Robert McKee, Frank Rose, Andy Field and 1 more — each with editorial commentary oriented to digital product practice.
Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
McKee's book is the most sustained theoretical treatment of storytelling in print — not a formula but a theory of how stories work on audiences and why. The book is ambitious and sometimes over-systematic; McKee is a tea…
The Art of Immersion: How the Digital Generation Is Remaking Hollywood, Madison Avenue, and the Way We Tell Stories
Rose's book is a survey of how digital technologies are changing narrative — from ARGs and transmedia storytelling to the redefinition of audience from passive recipients to active participants. The specific examples (Th…
An Adventure in Statistics: The Reality Enigma
Andy Field teaches statistics inside a sci-fi novel — a graphic-novel narrative frame in which statistical concepts are introduced as the protagonist needs them. The gimmick works: concepts that are dry in most textbooks…
How Do We Actually 'Pull Stories Out of Data'?
Randy Au writes the "Counting Stuff" substack and has more practical wisdom about doing data work inside product organisations than most books on the subject. This post is about what happens between a SQL query and an in…