As a cultural form, database represents the world as a list of items and it refuses to order this list. In contrast, a narrative creates a cause-and-effect trajectory of seemingly unordered items (events). Therefore, database and narrative are natural enemies. Competing for the same territory of human culture, each claims an exclusive to make meaning out of the world.
- Lev Manovich excerpt from "Database as a Symbolic Form." The Language of New Media, 2001.
Manovich here illustrates the differences between the newer medium of digital narratives and the traditional print medium. The differences are that the nature of digital narratives is that they are interactive, whereas print medium is not, there is no interaction between the reader and the medium as the discourse is pre-set and identical for every reader.
Database, Manovich explains is at the heart of the creative process in this computer dependent age and it is essentially an unorganised representation of a modern medium. Narrative, which is what human kind has grown up with, on the other hand creates "a cause-and-effect trajectory" out of unordered events. Narrative organises unorganised text before the reader gets a hold of the narrative, while conversely database tailors a story for the reader from the interaction that the reader inputs into the database. The difference is that a discourse in narrative form is pre-set and concrete while in database form the discourse is fluid and will change for different readers. It is because of this opposition in the way that these two forms construct a discourse that Manovich claims they are "natural enemies".
Database, which at first appears highly unorganised and chaotic, has its own logic; this is obvious when one understands that it makes a story, Manovich wittily named this "database logic". Links between nodes work seamlessly to present the reader with a feasible story, most of the time.
Database encompasses all types of digital mediums, from the early hypertext fiction to video games and internet fictions. They all work in the same way in that they all have an element of user/reader interaction 
, an element that makes the story.