help. Any English Major out there? I need some input about my research proposal

Soo... I'm taking English Literature as my major and I have homework to make a research proposal. I pick a topic that I have an interest in, and it was for the most part smooth sailing

My research/proposal title is "How The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Uses Interactivity to Tell a Unique Story Experience"

So as the title sugest I tried to analyze how video game as a multimodal stories let the player experience a story in a different way than a passive the written stories such as a novel etc. So the question is what is the difference between video game and a novel, and once I find the difference I try to analyze it, and in this case, the answer is interactivity with the example of optional side quest and their possible result etc in contrast to a linear story in a novel.

I think so far I did alright but then I get stumped at Methodology/ method of the study. I have no experience doing research and so I have no idea where to start looking. I understand that if it is translation research or linguistic then the methodology would be obvious but for this kind of research I have no clue, am I screwed?

I think my brain was still thinking on how to make an essay instead of a research article because that is what I've been doing for the most part of my life so If anyone has any clue at all I would really appreciate your help

 

okay, so the first thing you're gonna want to do is drop out. You're screwed, you've spent money on a useless degree and will live with a debt hanging over you.

EDIT: so, mocking aside, you should do a keyword search of any databases your uni has access to. As an undergrad, you're mostly going to have to rely on the analysis of other people's research.

 

Being able to write well is never useless.

Go to your school library and ask the librarians for help. There should be someone there who is able to help you.

 

Not an English Literature major, but am a graduate student.

You could always look up English Literature publications and look at what they write in their Methodology section. If your university has a database of journals (or gives you access to one, such as Emerald or JSTOR), that's a good place to start. If not, you could always use Google Scholar to start.

 

Methodology is basically saying what is your process of research. For example: First the proponent recorded lines from the game then following this is blah blah blah

Methodology is the step by step process

Then followed by analysis and discussion on the paper which then tells the result of the thing and discusses all of it.

This is my experience on research papers.... scientific research papers... Im not sure how it happens on literature

 

You think you learn to write well in a literature degree? Guy hasn't even worked out how to read or use a library yet

 

My mom was an English professor and taught courses on writing. Hell, yes, you learn how to write well with an English degree.

 

There are courses on video game story writing. Maybe looking at them would help. Contrast/compare difference between them. Google "game story writing courses" and you can find their different approaches and compare major titles to those approaches, in particular Witcher 3.

Edit: Despite never playing Witcher 3, "answer is interactivity with the example of optional side quest and their possible result etc in contrast to a linear story in a novel." isn't quite right unless you include the option to do nothing storyline related. Because open games don't require you to do even the base storyline quest if you don't feel you want to. You can skip all story, even optional quests, that are not shoved on you during the opening and any tutorial.

 

Not really an English Major, mine was more in Sciences but I did do Lit and English in the past.

Does your subject have a "common reporting format" like we do in Science? The international agreed upon format for Science papers is pretty standard so it would be worthwhile to check if the English Major has a common accepted format too otherwise you might end up submitting a paper that is an "irregular pubication".

For your Methodology, your best bet would be to contrast the difference between story structure between a linear novel and an interactive "game". To do this, you have to chart out how a novel story goes, basically Prologue/Intro/Worldbuilding, Struggle, Overcoming, Conclusion, it's a pretty linear path. For games, it's somewhat the same thing but with more "internal repeats" and the possibility of failure. The "sub bosses" in game actually resets the "Struggle, Overcome, Conclusion" back to square one each time you pass a "sub level" which novels usually don't have unless you have "story arcs" like Eastern Stories. They are closer to cartoons with their "villain of the week" where everything is reset next week. Then there is a need to "grind", which is probably a step in the "Struggle" part. Novels can skip this over into a short linear phrase like "then he trained for 24 months to get good" which will not affect a novel a bit but to "git gud" in a game really does require time and effort, so they can't drag it out for too long in case the player gets bored. This is also a reason of the short rewards cycle in games, so people don't lose interest, same as why movie producers toss in sex scenes at about the 1hr mark to "perk up" audience interest.

Sorry, the Methodology overran into the Conclusions with the reasonings, but long story short, contrast the structure of the stories for Methodology and the intent, save the reasoning for the conclusions, or at least most of them.

Good Luck, hope this helps.

 

There are proper format in academic papers and you must follow them. Ask for your school preferred format like what font and size to use in header , body, title and so on.

There are words and phrases to avoid in making a professional paper, research them.

 

...you should change the subject with " How Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy/Legend of Zelda still became the best story telling RPG game". And with that you give the naration of the game from A-Z in your papers.

or just write "How 50 shade/twillight series fucked up millenial generation trend of literature choose"...

or " How 'Boys Love' became must read choose for millenial generation of little girls and young adult womans ? "

 

thx dude, I kinda get the gist of it now

 

Hm... I would argue that novels aren't necessarily non-interactive? The whole thing is written with the readers in mind, there are many tricks you can do with the narrative style, etc. You could maybe do some research into the effectiveness of the novels.

Since you have your texts, I'd start with some general critical reading and try and find your way further inwards. I did my final dissertation on fantasy novels, and I found that the Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature was extremely helpful in giving me an overview of that part of the field and providing key critics to investigate first. There might be something similar for you on video games?
They generally encourage you to tie your research into the wider field. You have to be able to answer the question: "So what?" So developing your direction from what you read is a good idea.
Then you can look into key themes and criticism on your specific texts.

Hit up your library and criticism reference books. There are databases that will provide you with articles and books, if your university has paid for access to them. They'll probably have information about that on your library homepage.

 

they are interesting but seems like too much work, esp the "How 50 shade/twillight series fucked up millenial generation trend of literature choose" as I would have to collect data and stuff

 

First one would be rejected by the title alone and second one is in the grey area depending on what culture of the school.

 

thanks and I guess I have to explain my definition on Interactivity further in the paper. I'm not saying that a novel is not interactive, it just that it is more of a static literary product that will not change, sure the reader perspective might be different but the words itself is the same for all of the readers while video game can give you option and your choice will lead to a different result and therefore different experience for each player.

 

No problemo hoped it helped

 

And as you can see, asking help for a topic paper on NU might not be the best of choices seeing the number of ... unhelpful... replies on it. lol.

 

even one helpful answer is worth it, and even the seemingly unhelpful one might give me some inspiration. I'm never taking life too seriously anyway

 

Hm... Technically there are "choose your own adventure" novels, and games have a limited number of options. Providing a visual representation of something also provides more limitations to the audience on how they can interpret and interact with the story.

Science papers are very different from literature papers, so be careful with that. Science is very regimented; you're supposed to set your own flow to build up your argument in literature. It might be slightly different where you are, though.