Confused about Some aspects of Narrative Character Maps

Hi folks

I get the basic idea of the above, but there are some aspects of them I'm not sure how to read/interpret esp, I'm unclear about what movement in the vertical axis is meant to communicate sometimes.

I get that when God interacts with people his line dips down then back up again, but what about the other character lines?

e.g. why do all these character lines slope upwards in the example below? What is that communicating? Why dont' they just run horizontally at that point?

I wonder if we could redraw this graph with less vertical movement and still convey the same key info? As a graphic designer and visual communicator, I strongly believe in removing everything that doesn't help communicate your message.

Thanks in advance!
Richard

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Comments

Justin Gatlin

If you click on that section, it will tell you that it is portraying Isaac's family moving to Gerar. So in this case, it is representing literal motion toward where Abimelech lived. You can see GERAR to the right of your circle, which is indicating that they moved to Gerar and then lived there. I think words that are outside lines are always locations.

MJ. Smith

I wonder if we could redraw this graph with less vertical movement and still convey the same key info? As a graphic designer and visual communicator, I strongly believe in removing everything that doesn't help communicate your message.

[quote]Narrative Character Maps present the Bible’s familiar story arcs with a new visual perspective that makes sense of complex interweaving narratives. Color coded character lines elegantly present the geographic location of key players through time.

In other words, the horizontal dimension indicates time/sequence and the vertical dimension indicates space with the top and bottom sometimes serving as "parking" for characters when not involved in the narrative. See iStoryline Supplemental Material for more on this kind of visualization.

Richard Lyall

Thanks for those … I’ll take a look at that paper.