Storytelling for New Media
Adam Brackin
April 27, 2010
Stories have been shared since humans muttered their first syllables. It is the method by which we communicate our feelings, our perceptions and our experiences. Story telling is essential for the development of concepts, religions, even societies as a whole. Storytelling is often fun, collaborative and inspiring. Upon initialization of my own storytelling process, these were the attributes I wanted to implement in the development of my own project. In addition to a collaborative effort, I wanted to employ a strategy using social media and emergent properties. Thus, I fell upon the concept of KatesEpicStory.
During the brainstorming process I knew it would be in the story’s best interest to implement a plan using social media. Because of the sheer numbers of users on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, I thought the project would be easier to advertise and execute if it were on a medium users were already comfortable with. I also knew I wanted interactivity within my in order to make the process more entertaining for users. My first iteration included a pre-made story, which would be hyped up using real-world elements such as t-shirts and flyers. After the initial hype, I would slowly release parts of the story via microblogging platforms such as Twitter and Facebook status updates. I eventually threw this idea out because I foresaw users not sticking around; I knew it didn’t have enough interactivity to keep the attention span of my cohorts. I then came upon a plan which used a well-balanced mixture of social media, interactivity, and emergent properties. I wanted to hone in on the creativity of the masses, so I devised a course of action to utilize each of these elements, and I called this method KatesEpicStory.
I chose the name KatesEpicStory because I wanted it to be distinctive enough to remember, yet something familiar enough so that people would participate. I chose to eliminate the spaces in the title as the quality of distinction. This also made branding the story easier because website URLs and Twitter handles do not have spaces. I used my name in the title as something familiar, because I knew my friends would trust what I was asking them to do something constructive. I wanted to use epic in the name because that is exactly the direction I wanted the story to go, and luckily, that is the exact direction it went.
Understanding the importance of visual literacy, I wanted to choose a graphic which would be eye-catching and easy to remember. I wasn’t sure what to use, but I stumbled upon a funny and slightly ambiguous drawing of a man in a suit with a plastic bag over his head. I liked the color scheme and thought it would be a good branding tool for my story. The artist was David Creighton-Pester, a graphic designer based out of Hamilton, New Zealand. After efforts of contacting him for permission to use his graphic turned out to be unsuccessful, I chose to use the graphic anyways, but sited the source on the side of the image. I was satisfied with the graphic, but I added a purple background and text which read “KatesEpicStory” in order to brand my story further. I even made the graphic my personal profile picture on Facebook to both create hype and allow users to make the connection between the story and the brand. It worked, because the storytelling process was more successful than I had originally predicted.
KatesEpicStory consists of a short introduction from which users could add their own variations of what came next in the story. The effort was a general success; 21 people added to the story, and it ended up being an interestingly messy collaboration. The story itself was all over the board. The main character’s name was Sammy, and the story began with him in his room, cleaning up a pile of dirty clothes. The story then turns to Sammy falling downward, cascading into a world of pigs. This world was equipped with a Scientologist Kraken, a hot-air balloon, Sammy’s junkie father, and an elephant named Brainy Jim. The story came to a literary pause when Sammy was awoken from his dream, so I continued the story by adding a chapter two. This chapter didn’t get as many entries as the first chapter, but it allowed the story to end in a logically entertaining manner. Overall, this story was absolutely a pleasure to read, and through this experience I have learned that collaborative creativity is a positively useful tool.
As a whole, this project was quite a cool experience. It has shown me that anyone can tell a story, and that tapping into the creativity of the masses is easy, and allows users to feel part of something that is bigger than them. The overall purpose of the project was fulfilled in my eyes, mainly because of the engaging response of users. It turned out to be a success because I used platforms such as Facebook that were familiar to the people I wanted to participate. I also advertised on Facebook, Twitter, and Blogger with hyperlinks to the story, so it would be easy to access. I chose a graphic, which was funny and slightly ambiguous, so that people could gain interest in and remember the story. I was surprised at how little I had to advertise the process in order for it to gain momentum. The secret was to make it easy for users to link to the story, read, and add their own input. Overall, this was really interesting, and I would like to see how I can implement creative collaboration in the future with other media.
