Readings 12: Narrative

The internet has contributed to numerous new ways to tell a story.  Tone Language showed how some of Japan’s highest selling fiction author’s are writing via text messages.  The series of texts are then turned into published books; it is unbelievable that these stories are becoming so popular.  It also prompts the idea of Cross-Platform Storytelling in that there are creative new ways to write and distribute stories.  This article explains examples from the show Heroes in which elements of the show are brought into different platforms (i.e. a website on a business card in the show.)  It reminds me of an old episode of The Simpsons where Lisa visits whatbadgerseat.com; the joke being that there’s a website for everything.  They then created the website, which included more humor, but more recently just redirects to the Simpsons homepage.  Clearly a story can be more entertaining if told through many different media.  I like how the article explains the importance of making the audience feel like part of the performance and telling, not ‘selling’, a story.  The “We Tell Stories” projectwas also very intereseting; it utilized a lot of elements of online interaction that you don’t usually see in stories.  Watching it progress in an instant-message type of conversation was innovative and captivating.  Lastly, the Hamlet on Facebook and other historical events in a facebook template was quite funny.  It’s creative to have an old story retold in a more modern format.

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