The books I ordered arrived today:

• Propp, V., Morphology of the Folktale, a book about deconstructing Russian folk tales. Some hints on how one can decompose narratives can be gleaned from this, no doubt.
• Campbell, J., The Hero With a Thousand Faces, a well-known book about shared characteristics of compelling myths, and what people are likely to be captivated by. Hopefully I'll learn something about how to make the generated narratives be compelling and engaging from this.

This talk on narratives in games would've been interesting, but it's a few years old and doesn't appear to be available on GDCTV anymore. If anyone knows where else to get it, let me know.

I should also look at existing games today, and how they propel the player forwards through the game. We must remember that we're not only generating some random narrative, but we want to create gameplay from it that the player will enjoy.