As I hinted towards the end of Screenwriting 101, game theory applies to more than just the behaviour of the characters in a storyline. The information presented to the members of the viewing audience also constitutes an important part of the storyteller’s consideration.

When game theory was originally developed by mathematicians, it earned its name because of its application to strategic games — games like chess. A good chess player can figure out all his opponent’s possible moves, but more importantly, how his opponent will react to each of the possible moves he could himself make in response to them. There is a cascading network of possible outcomes, growing exponentially with each move. Based on the probable outcomes from this huge set of possibilities, the chess player then tries to predict which course his opponent will take. And that is at the heart of game theory — prediction. Characters in a narrative can make predictions or not, and be correct in their prediction or not, as it serves the story. But for an audience to predict subsequent events is a storyteller’s anathema.

Game theory, as it relates to the choices that characters in an unfolding story make, is really about plot. Except on very rare occasions*, plot is always linear. One event leads to the next or, in the case of game theory, one revelation leads to the next. In other words, the flow of information — something determined by the writer — in turn determines the behaviour of the characters, and the sequence of events (ie, the plot).

But while plot is linear, narrative is anything but. Writers use countless devices to control the information revealed to the audience; this is unrelated to the immutable sequence of events as they supposedly “happen,” and everything to do with controlling the information the audience has, in order to prevent them from predicting the outcome of the story. Even when the ultimate ending to the story is foregone, as in Romeo and Juliet, the way in which the events transpire is not, and it is by withholding this kind of information that writers shape the story and hold the viewers’ interest.

In other words, gaming the characters determines the story’s plot, but gaming the audience determines the story’s structure. While plot is linear — one event leads to the next — information is doled out to the audience only when it serves to structure the story, to maintain interest, and build anticipation to the climax. Information is essentially given to the viewer in a hodgepodge order relative to the sequence of events, but one that is rationally structured from a game theory (and narrative) point of view.

Flashbacks and flash-forwards are an obvious example. By showing the audience events out of order, information that would make subsequent events obvious can be withheld, making these future events less predictable. The audience’s reaction — their emotional response — is controlled in a way that can be described by game theory. Imagine if Murder She Wrote showed all the events in order: it would start with the scene where we saw the murderer (and his identity) as the crime was committed, then we’d follow Jessica Fletcher as she tried to uncover the perp — all the while knowing who the perp is ourselves. It’s not impossible to make that interesting, but it sure takes a lot of the mystery out of it. But by showing the crime being committed as a flashback at the end, the audience receives this information at the moment when it is most gratifying from a structural perspective.

A flash-forward, on the other hand, gives us a glimpse of future action that is meaningless out of context — the challenge to the audience here is to see if they can determine the how before it’s revealed. Ideally, viewers will be intrigued by the mystery of how a chain of events leads to the future moment they’ve witnessed, and remain guessing about how this future moment came to pass until just before the “future” becomes the “present,” and the narrative leads up to the moment portrayed in the flash-forward. Lost has used both flashbacks and flash-forwards extensively; some have been used to fill gaps in the narrative within a single episode, but some, like the flash-forwards of Season IV, show us moments that offer clues to the direction the narrative is taking, but which are slowly incorporated into the narrative over the course of an entire season, or even multiple seasons.

Which leads to another technique — omission. Few screenplays show every single possible event. Even real-time stories like 24 cut away from important events, keeping information from the audience and building suspense. These events (assuming they really are important) are filled in later, either by flashback or some kind of expository dialogue.

Speaking of exposition and omission — even filmic narratives are told from a certain perspective. Whether it’s the first person limited style (one that usually follows a single character, and captures all his or her experiences, but omits anything the central character doesn’t experience personally (the “first person” component being fulfilled by narration delivered by the central character, obviously)), or third person limited (in which we see various characters at various times, but know only what selected characters know) or even third person omniscient (in which we follow various characters, and information is filled in by an all-knowing narrator), the type of narrative is strictly controlled for the main purpose of limiting the information presented to the audience.

Take The Big Lebowski, for example. The scenes themselves are delivered from a first person limited perspective: The Dude is in every scene of the film, and we have access to only the information that The Dude has, no more. This is supplemented by narration from an omniscient narrator, one who knows the ending before the storytelling has started, but who keeps this information to himself. (Take a moment and think how often you’ve seen this structure used.) Contrast this with a typical Robert Altman movie — Nashville, for instance. There is no omniscient narrator; everything we experience we experience by observing the characters. But our perspective flits from one member of the huge cast to another, taking in more information than any single character knows, putting together our version of events by examining them from multiple perspectives. Both styles selectively withhold information in order to let the audience know what’s happening while preventing them from guessing what will happen next.

Variations in narrative style serve only one purpose — whether it’s the number of characters and whose experiences we witness, or the omission of entire events to be filled in later through exposition, or even the temporal inversion of events, so that information about past events is not revealed until it creates the most powerful and effective reaction from the audience, to say nothing of the characters — it’s all in order to structure the story in such a way that a) information is meted out to the audience steadily, to maintain interest, b) information is limited to prevent the audience from extrapolating every situation into the next and making correct predictions, and c) action builds in intensity, to create a climax at the end, to be followed by a resolution.

Life does not happen in three acts. Even events that have a beginning, middle and end are seldom gripping stories at every moment from start to finish. But by pacing the disclosure of events to the audience, if not the events themselves, writers can structure a narrative in a way that maximises the dramatic or comedic impact. And game theory can be used to mathematically comprehend the relationship between the material that a given series of events comprises, and the viewer, whose response to that material can vary wildly based on which bits of information that viewer has received.