Storytelling
June 9, 2008 – 3:45 pm
The central component in all media is the story. What is the message we get out of the experience and how does it map onto our lives and change us?
linear narrative => branching narrative => transmedia narrative
Traditional storytelling has been linear: Movies, television, and books all move in a sequence from start to finish. There have been examples where the story plays with nonlinear techniques, however, the experience itself is something that you consume in a linear way.
Conversations, in contrast, are unique. They are not a set sequence in a story — they are an interactive form of collaborative storytelling. The telephone is a good example of a broadcast technology that supports interactive storytelling.
Websites and video games are also building in interactive aspects to a story and they strive to build out the depth of experience that an audience can engage in.
There is also a lot of work happening in transmedia storytelling – stories that transcend one specific medium and covey a message in a pluralism of forms. More of a collaborative storytelling effort and immersive experience.
So the trend is to make your story a whole universe with parts in each medium that make the most sense for that part of the story. The Stars Wars story is a good example: it is movies, television, books, and video games. All these forms allow fans to explore and immerse themselves in the story.
There is a cultural concern that new media will take traditional stories and recreate them in another medium just to make it edger, or to spin it a different way, or to add a component that had never been addressed before. What will happen to our stories that have cultural significance when exposed to this transmedia expolsion? Everything in culture is iconic and will find new representation in every iteration of the media.
And this assumes that the real value in story telling is being able to provide a narrative with the right icons at the right time to appeal to your audience. And if the audience likes what they get, they’ll likely continue to engage your story through other forms.