@inproceedings { paiva01, abstract = {One difficulty in creating synthetic characters for interactive stories is that these characters must convey their role in the story in a believable way. However, the relation between believability, on one side, and the role a character plays in a drama, on the other, has not yet been fully addressed. In this paper we will present a view on how to develop believable synthetic characters whose behaviour is based on a set of predefined functions (Propp’s functions) associated with the role they play in the story. To illustrate the approach, we will present a collaborative virtual environment, Teatrix, designed for children to build their own stories-fairy tales. In Teatrix, virtual actors play roles (such as villain, hero, magician, etc), which are functional for the development of the story. Such roles have pre-defined goals and plans, allowing the story to flow and climax situations to arise. Teatrix is already in use by children ages between 7 and 9, in the context of a Computer-Integrated Classroom scenario.}, address = {Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA}, booktitle = {IUI'2001 - 5th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces}, keywords = {intelligent agents, agent-based interaction, application-specific intelligent interfaces, storytelling}, month = {January}, pages = {129-136}, publisher = {ACM}, title = {Heros, villains, magicians,...: dramatis personae in a virtual story creation environment}, year = {2001}, author = {Ana Paiva and Isabel Machado and Rui Prada} }