The nature of narrative in the age of networks.

http://jimbanister.com/?page_id=73

Storytelling vs. Storydwelling

The disparity between industries steeped in history and habit, and the “changed consumer,” which can be generally represented by the so-called Web2.0 movement, is a compound chasm… but I believe it can be characterized accurately and practically as a “change in narrative.”

If you can accept for a moment that the definition of *narrative* can be thought of as the “relationship between communicator or auteur with their intended audience,” then the disparity described above (and in the video) becomes clearer.

A “storytelling” narrative is necessarily one-directional. An individual or institution, however well-informed on the nature of the audience, packages a message– a story– in the form of 0:30 spot, television show, film, book, magazine article… whatever. It is a paternal, one-to-many kind of relationship that treats the “audience” as consumer– reader, viewer, listener, etc. The roll of the *creator*– individual or institutional– is to create the story… the message.

But what’s the role of the *creator* who created the game of chess? Or an MMOG? Or basketball? Or Facebook?

Their role is to create a WORLD– a themed framework with a set of social morays and rules (that, oh by the way, can be broken) within which audiences can and will do whatever they want… and then to watch that world, adapt to it, and evolve it. This is “storydwelling” form of narrative that requires the individual or institution to become world designer, world builder and world manager, wherein story *emerges* from audiences participation in that world. These are self-perpetuating engines of engagement.

Looked at this way, the creators of eBay, mySpace, World of Warcraft and team sports are of similar ilk, but vastly different from those who create film, commercials, tv shows, or print ads.

Storydwelling demands a completely different literacy than the ad industry is built around– a predominantly storytelling industry.

What about interactive agencies? Not quite. The best they’ve come up with are campaigns like Subservient Chicken, Elf Yourself, and an array of interactive apps that beget viral behavior. While brilliant in their own right, they don’t build permanently populated communities with their investment– a perpetual engine of engagement. And with the amount of money spent on ad campaigns, it’s a crime they aren’t *always* augmented with such an engine, that at the very least will provide long-tail value, and might resonate far beyond the exposure/engagement gleaned from the initial spark created by the core tv/radio/print/event campaign.

BTW– the storydwelling narrative process has been codified and can be taught, and executed with more predictability.

I stumbled across this whilst exploring twitter as a story telling platform and it really blow my mind. storydwelling rather than storytelling.Beautiful in its simplicity, this is very close to a definition of difference in the role of the transmedial writer and writer operating within a signal medium.

Transmedia produces as narrative architects

http://asmith50.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/what-will-they-do-transmedia-producers-as-narrative-architects/


This is an interesting article that I stumbled across today as I browsed Google for more comment on Transmedia narrative.
In this blog we get a discussion exploring the difference between a traditional film producer and a Transmedia producer; the discussion arises as a result of the recent introduction of formal Transmedia producer credit by the  producers Guild of America.
Traditional producer talents and skills setsare identified as involving management and finance; with some involved in the development of narrative extensions; but very few with expertise which cuts acrossdifferent medium platforms. The Transmedia producer has a different set of skills and one which draws connections across media platformsand involves conceptualising analysing and designing experiences at a macro level. The Transmedia producer is more than somebody who moves into the Transmedia realm with" a laundry list of media to explore, but actually has a deep understanding of the relationship between content context and culture.
Describes the Transmedial producer in terms of an architect somebody in the business of merging theory and practice to make up most of the points to Jeff Gomez who has long said that Transmedia storytelling in its purest form is simply the application of technique; the Transmedia producer specialise in bringing narrative materials sculpting intriguing mythologies and embedding satisfying revelations for those who want a closer look at the detail. Like an architect that Transmedia producer must consider the limitations and afforded series of the materials he is using, certain stories that lend themselves to particular media types and vice versa; as the narrative becomes more complex and threatens to impede comprehension that Transmedia producer must guard against blatant inconsistencies and contradictions. The narrative structure their design must be durable and organised as well as allowing for future construction in addition.
"Transmedia producers possess storytelling talent yes but they should also appreciate the complex relationship between story and game, author and audience openness and closure, art and commodity. They must be well versed in any sector of the entertainment industry as they are improper culture and banned as a whole."

Finally when they have done their job right as media producer design spaces not just people to admire but also to interact, play and collaborate.
 
And it when I've been developing the SEER I have found myself much more in the role of Transmedia architect than simple storyteller. It is in crafting Transmedia world robust enough to contain the various narrative strands of the SEER's story ,that I've come up against my biggest challenges. it is in my website www.theheath.net but I hope to create a space where people can interact play and collaborate in developing the SEER narrative.

I don't think there's anything really new in this blog but I did like the idea of a Transmedia architect and I also really like the way in which the writer encapsulating the idea of creating a space where consumers are able to play interact and collaborate in the Transmedia narrative. I think it fits really well alongside projects like Warner Brothers why so serious (see blog entry ).

reframing transmedial narratives

Once again starting to look at what is happening in the world of transmedial narrative. This is the first thing that I have looked at in a while and I have to say that in its own way it is interesting. William Patrick Wend's blog entry Reframing transmedial narrative. Probably the most intersting element of this was the referral to  Christy Dena's PHD - which I will be looking out for , if and when she posts it. There is also a brief discussion of the concept of Cannon, in massive story / transmedial narrative ,cannon may be seen as the bible , the place from which the true story is drawn.

http://www.wpwend.com/2010/01/18/reframing-transmedial-narratives/

Developing the SEERs world

No great insights today into the theory of transmedial narrative simply a period of reflection for my self on what steps I need to take next if I want to push my personal project of the SEER to the next level , get it into production , and ultimately set it free into real world. ( still struggling with the loss of my computer equipment - but I can no longer be delayed by that). I need to keep chipping away at the mountain!

One significant area of progress has been the agreement with my tutor as to the question I hope to address within my MA - " defining transmedial narrative through practise"!

After having had a few days to simply consider the way forward for the Seer I have come to the conclusion that I need to develop some of back story , flesh things out, at the very least identify some of the key moments in the Miro-narratives that are going to orbit around the main Marco narrative of J.J  the SEER.
Key Characters that need to be fleshed out / thier back story / and the specific media types which I intend to employ for each of these characters. Looking not just at what these micro narratives should be but also at how that will act as trails of bread crumbs leading my audience into the world of SEER.

More later

Authoring a massive Narrative.

Third Person Authoring and exploring vast narrative




Unsuprisingly This book is divided into Authoring and Exploring. Each section is made up of a serious of essays/interviews with individuals who are either practioners , accademics or commentators on vast narrative. the first of these essays is titled

"Truths Universally Acknowledged: How the Rules of Dr Who Affect the Writing p 13- 24 by Lance Parkin."



This is an intersting essay discussing some of the issues and challenges faced by anyone attempting to take on the challenging of writing a character who is already part of a vast narrative. referencing in the main DR who ( the British SF program) Lance Parkin takes through some of these challenges.



The first issue raised is that of writing within the rules of a serious.



"A long running fictional serious requires a writer to take in to account a set of rules that don't apply to stand alone stories as well as almost all those that do.........As a serious becomes long running the involvement of the original creators diminish and the weight of the internal history and audience expectation begin to affect the story themselves.."

This certainly seems obvious and true for the long running TV serious , but can and is the same true for a massive transmedial project , which can and in the SEER does seem to compress much of the narrative energy that one would expect from a long running serious into a much shorter period. Is the weight of internal history and audience expectation increased exponentially when audience participation is part of the substance of the project? I think the answer must be yes. When creating a world as complex as that which compasses the SEER it is almost the pressure of internal history pressing in around the story that creates the world within which it lives. It is the interaction between different media streams which creates the world of the transmedial narrative.

Really the transmedial narrative is an example of what Lance Perkins calls the continuing narrative (Sherlock Holmes - Dr Who - Tarzan ) or unfolding text
" a fiction based around a common character, set of characters or location that has had some form of serial publication. The works that make up an unfolding text  can often have a single author at the start as things progress they are typically written by many."

Again the transmedial narrative seems to compress the concept of unfolding narrative in sense of time and space . With different narrative strands operating simultaneously what would normally take months to unfold across a single narrative can unfold almost instantaneously within a transmedial narrative.

One of challenges faced normally by the writers of unfolding text is that of contempory taste - so keeping a character fresh when they have exsisted across a signifiant period of time - this is not a real probelm  in the transmedial space , because although a massive narrative , the fact of compreshion , at least as regards time means that this at least for me is not one of the rules of transmendial narrative - clearly it could become an issue over time. I think what is far more important is consumer expectation. Making sure that there is some kind of consitatncy across the transmedial narrative. Again Lakin raises an intersting concept , metanarrative. A story about a story , and perhpes it is developing this idea of metanarrative , that we find the consistancy required to hold the transmedial narrative togther.

Another interesting idea raised is that of core conecpts - tso what makes a bond movie a bond movie , no matter what medium what are the core concepts within Batman? In some ways the idea of core concepts seems to equate to that of narrative rules that I mentioned at the satrt.
Core concepts for the SEER
1.Set in the heath
2.Contempoary setting?
3.Involves the battle between Drake and Hendrix?

more to come on this later.....................

Transmedia - attractor objects and signal trails

I have been away for a while, as I explained in previous posting , I had  a break and some bastard took my lap top .... Fcukers ... and be honest its taken me longer than expected to get my self back together. I haven't put pen to paper to advance my project the SEER really since the break in , but I spotted this article on the web and just had to blog about it.
http://goonth.posterous.com/transmedia-narrative-ecosystems-and-experienc

( I know it looks like I have missed a letter off the end of the sentence but trust me this link takes you to the site , so click and dive in, this takes the theory around transmedia narrative a step further, and certainly has made me think about my project in another way.)

"the analogy of ant and hive-like food gathering and pheromone signals to describe how the extraction & collaboration process gives rise to the evolution of new stories.

I am not really sure that I agree or even really understand this proposal, in essence it seems to be saying if you offer your potential audience an interesting enough narrative playground , and allow them to explore that world without restriction , then almost as an organic process new narrative lines will emerge from there exploration.

What is interesting is this idea of direct line between free exploration and emergence of new narrative.  The exploration is encouraged by the discovery of attractor objects by the consumers - and these attractor objects are identified within the text as written narratives;mash ups;tagging and geo-tagging - these attractor objects effectively creating a signal trail which the consumer follows and adds to as he/she collects the attractor objects - drawing them deeper and deeper into the transmedial narrative.

The area that I am not so sure about is the idea that this free exploration ( is it freeif you have your viewers/consumers following a trail which you have laid out for them!) the of itself leads to the creation of new narrative. I am not saying that it does not simply that I would like to know how often this is the case? How does the saying go , give a room full of monkeys a typewriter each and enough time and they'll produce Shakespeare - the question is always how long to give the monkeys and how often do they do it. I suppose my question would be how long do you need to give your participants to participate and how often do they do it?!

The phrases attractor objects and signal trails really chime for me because they encapsulate one of the ways in which I feel transmedial narrative work.  The micro narratives that surround and dissect the Macro narrative are the attractor objects which build over time into signal trails which lead reads/consumers into my transmedial world. SO in the SEER it will be the twitter feeds , blogs, and ,film , webisodes which act as attractor objects and signal trails leading people into the world of J.J and the Heath.

Time to start working on creating some attractor objects and signal trails!!!

Third Person Narrative

Well after a couple of weeks off air (becuase some bastard broke into my home and stole all of my computing equiptment  !!!!***!!! - personal rant over) I am back online blogging about my exploration of the world of transmedial narrative.

Acting on the advise of my tutor colin Harvey I have recently purchased  a copy of Third Person Authoring and Explioring Vast Narratives and as I move through the book over the next few weeks I will be blogging about its content and any impact that it has about my tyhinking as regards my own project "The SEER".

The Introduction drafted by Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrio-Fruin, attempts to give you an overview of the book introducing you to some of the basic concepts which underline much of the writing and some of reasoning behind the structure of the book ( a serious of essays about Vast Narratives from across the spectrum - accdemic to hollywood prodcuers, and everywhere in between.

One of the early ideas about transmedial/cross medial works that is raised in this text is the concept of a CANONICAL text - ie. the idea that amongst the range of text and media within  which the story resides there is one text from which all others are said to sprout. - so in Harry Potter it is the books that are considered the CANONICAL text - within narrative Universes such as star wars there is not said to be a CANONICAL text but more sections of a vast fictional quilt. I feel with the SEER that I am attemting to create something that has more the feel of a fictional qulit than one based on a single canonical text.

What immediatley struck me was this concept of the vast narrative , stretching across a range of different media, or even contained within a single media form, and the impact that it has upon both the creative and potential consumer. Although at this stage the authors are not really attempting to define the vast narrative what they do is by pointing to works such as tolkin's Lord of the rings or James Joyce's Ulyssess make it clear that the vast narrative is not simply the domain of the digital age but has been around in one form or another for many years.

I am also stuck by the feeling that in my attempts to push the SEER into the world of the transmedial narrative I have stumbled into the VAST narrative and now face the same issues of maintaining structure and narrative consitancy throughout a large number of different stories and media types!