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Transmedia Storytelling: Narrative worlds, emerging technologies and global audiences
Notes of online course
Week 1
Transmedia Storytelling is the art of designing, sharing, and experiencing a cohesive story experience across multiple traditional and digital delivery platforms - for entertainment, marketing, or social change.
A transmedia story is one in which separate story elements of a larger narrative can be experienced by many different audiences, via a range of technology platforms. Three main aspects to a transmedia storytelling strategy are story, technology, and audience.
We remember things that happen to us in our lives by stripping away extraneous details, and condensing experiences into simplified narratives. When we connect what we learn from each of these episodic narratives in our own memories, important life lessons emerge – guiding the way we behave and live within our broader society. Our own life experiences have an emotional impact upon us. No matter who we are, we all have common emotional responses to different situations. Eliciting emotional responses in a story can therefore be used as a way to engage with diverse audiences in a similar manner, and communicate an important life lesson, or moral.
Joseph Campbell noted that most stories share the same structure. He called this structure the monomyth.
Christopher Vogler distilled this monomyth into a series of simple steps called ‘Stages of the hero’s journey’. These simple steps form the basic structure for the majority of all stories told today. He also described the eight most common character archetypes appearing in most stories. An archetype is something that exhibits typical elements of certain personalities.

In a story everything needs to be motivated. If you know your central character, what they want, what they need, where they’re trying to get to, what motivates them than the plot rights itself. A storyworld consists of rules that apply in that reality. If the rules are broken than it isn’t part of the world. Anything can be part of these rules and set the basic of understand this storyworld. From that you can make anything within that world. Remember that the structure of your story is critical. To engage your audience, you need to take them on an emotional journey, with some kind of transformation for the hero because of a life lesson being learned. The audience needs to relate this transformation to their own experience.
Week 2
One of the simplest models of thinking we can apply when we are creating new transmedia stories is conceptual blending. This means taking two seemingly unrelated ideas and merging them together to form something new. Six Word Stories are a useful way to help you develop the premise of your story. A premise in the idea generating process can be a simple statement which helps to frame your central story concept, and which can help you to see a pathway to the conclusion, like a headline in a newspaper article. You can create several six word stories while developing your own ideas. One that describes the theme, one that describes the emotional tone of your story, one that describes the main character and so on. It is a useful way of mapping out the essentials to ensure you don’t get too lost in details at the start.
There are three useful tools that you can use to help you develop unpredictable and unusual stories; reframing, random stimuli and research. Such narratives are more memorable for audiences and help to engage them in your transmedia storyworld.
Take an existing story and re-frame it by changing the time, place, characters, and so on. Randomly select some personal images and include them into your story. And research using a real desktop or notebook ensuring that you have real images in your mix.
Small assignment
What kind of story do I find interesting?
Assignment
I really enjoy reading, watching, or emerge myself into science fiction stories. I mostly like these stories, because I like to fantasize about the "impossible" and completely get lost in these new worlds.
What kind of (fantasy) world would I like to live in?
How do I see the future of our planet?
Which stories/story worlds inspires me?
What kind of superpowers would I like to have?
In the ideal world, I hope we have realized what we should do to fight the climate crisis with a more sustainable way of living with for example a no-waste production norm, intertwining more green in our everyday environment, or leaving nature be as it mended to be. But unfortunately, there are also some concerns like water levels rising resulting in less land to live on, mass extinction, or losing touch with nature at all. No matter what the future will bring, I think that the climate crisis will change the world as we know it now.
I have always liked to be surrounded by nature, whether it is by water, mountains, or forests. While traveling I have done several hikes and went on diving trips. Doing these activities already gives me the idea of jumping into a different world and I start wondering what creatures might live here. Therefore, in my fantasy world, I would love to be able to live underwater with mythical or fictitious creatures around me.
Within science fiction, there are many supernatural powers that are introduced. For me personally, I think being able to live underwater and on the land (adaptable to the atmosphere you are in) is the most interesting one. When I read or watch stories about certain phenoms I wonder how that must work. Did the physiology of those human(oids) change? Is it even possible? Or should we leave it up to our imagination?
For my story world, I would like to create something around a water theme. My main inspiration is my diving experience, where I felt like being in another world. Besides, there are some water-related stories that inspire me as well. The film "Aquaman" is the ultimate way of showing a (half) human to be able to live in water and air. The cartoon "Avatar The Last Airbender" shows a way of controlling water by waterbending, which intrigues me by the flow and shapes the water can be bent in. Another creature that inspires me is the Zora for the Zelda world, who lives and transports themselves through the water. Bringin all this back to the real world, there are several villages completely floating on the water, where they are living of the water and its life.