Feelings Evolution as Narrative Backbone


EmoEmma

The two main protagonists, in the portion of the novel we chose to represent, are Emma and Roldolphe. Emma is the main character and possesses the most detailed knowledge representation and the most elaborate plans. She is struggling between the two notions of pleasure and duty and her sentimental experiences impact on the direction she chooses to follow and therefore on the evolution of the narrative. Rodolphe is mainly driven by his sexual needs and his loneliness as he mainly pursues the objective of seducing Emma.

The following figure highlights a portion of the story together with the evolution of two meaningful dimensions: anger and affinity. This evolution constitutes the narrative backbone that drives the unfolding of the generated story.

This highlights a portion of the story together with the evolution of two meaningful dimensions: (anger and affinity):
  1. During her first meeting with Rodolphe, Emma's emotional state is dominated by her curiosity: her first action is an invitation to engage in conversation (Operator 1, Give-Friendly-Waves), which increases their affinity.
  2. Emma declares her love to Rodolphe (Operator 2, Love-Declaration). As a consequence, this interest has a negative effect on Rodolphe (i.e. his feeling of anger increases).
  3. But this does not affect his basic attraction for Emma and, because their affinity is still high, a short time later the lovers kiss (Operator 3, Kiss) giving birth to a new love relation (i.e., affinity is increasing again).
  4. Emma's loss of inhibition authorises her to use a certain number of actions that would have otherwise been unavailable in her basic state, such as offering a present to Rodolphe (Operator 4, Offer-Gift).
  5. Emma's attitude is perceived as intrusive by Rodolphe (the level of Rodolphe's annoyance increases). It is thus this irritation which he is going to express (Operator 5, Irritation-Sentimentality). This then leads to a temporary relief (his anger then decreases), and also begins the degradation of his relation with Emma (affinity decreases).