A database is made of segmented or chunked semantic units. The smaller and more modular the units, the more useful the database. It is only through an interface that a user can see and interact with these segmented units and their metadata. Primarily a spatial narrative device, an interface is more than a map. It is a map that changes, evolves, with the user's navigation in time. A database structures the relationships between data; its interface offers the user ways to explore and interpret those relationships and to narrate paths of meaning. 

According to Earl Miner, narrative plot is a "continuation in sequence of a sustained group of people in  places and times."  Plot arranges events to take shape in the mind as a single entity; a contemplative whole made of structurally related parts: cause and effect chains, points of tension and release, beginnings, middles and ends. Each significant “plot point” in a linear narrative provides a kind of virtual interface for the developing story world, a map of the conflicting and harmonious energies  moving through the whole of the text. While plot and interface perform similar roles of providing interaction and cohesion in their respective domains (time and space), they are at odds  when it comes to the pleasures of story.  Plot focuses the attention of a mostly passive listener/viewer held captive by an illusion.  Plot delights,  puzzles, frustrates and excites through a selective revealing and  concealing of information over time. An interface, on the other hand, is typically designed to be useful. It provides the database  user with access, fast retrieval  and possibilities for data manipulation. An interface that frustrates any of these is said to be poorly designed.  But a "plotted" interface–to a database narrative or fiction – withholds as much as it reveals; provides micro and macro views, but also limits and delays access to those views.