Hello and Welcome to [Story Computing!]

Hiya, folks! 

My name is Sarah, and for a brief introduction, I am a college student, studying Narrative Studies (basically English and Creative Writing combined) and Animation, and working hard to consume as much as I possibly can about narrative, media, and storytelling from both my education and the Internet. I, myself, have explored working with new media in order to tell stories for classes and for personal projects. One of my projects I wrote for a class, is a multimedia web comic fashioned as an artist’s portfolio, and you can find here if you’re interested.  (Don’t forget to click the “hidden” links ;)). Another one that is the works still, is a project I worked on with my partner: a video blog retelling/sequel of the Little Mermaid story called “In the Tub with Marina”. Hopefully, very soon, you will be able to see the finished product!

I share this with you because the purpose of this blog is not only to assess, critique, and share the new media that have been popping up all over the Internet nowadays, but also that hopefully through this project, you, my readers, and I, can learn about how to perfect this new media with our own projects. The wonderful thing about the Internet is that we are creators and contributors. Together, I hope to cultivate an environment where we can discover how to be better creators and contributors and make the Internet the creative and safe space that it truly should be.

To do this? We’re going to look at transmedia, (which means utilizing other mediums such as facebook, twitter, video games, etc. to continue or expand upon an initial source for the story such as a television show or a novel, for the uninitiated), Internet folklore, video games, web comics, fan fiction, and everything in between. At the same time, we’ll be looking at traditional mediums, such as novels, comic books, film, and animation, and explore how these things are being brought into this new age (both in ways that succeed and fail). We’ll also explore the benefit of this media, and how it can be a force for change in the world. Narrative is not always for educational purposes or entertainment purposes—at times (and almost always) it contains a political, societal, or even psychological message indicating the spirit of the author, and the author’s time. It is my personal belief that almost all of our new media sends a message of our current generation’s beliefs, and how the world will change with their guidance. This will be interesting to note not only in the new media, but also in how the traditional mediums fail to come into this new age. But this is just one potential thesis—there will be many to explore, I can promise you that.

Some questions to briefly cover:

·      Why You?

o   The cliché goes that I’ve been interested in writing stories since I was little, and honestly, it’s a true one. I have been obsessed with all forms of storytelling from a young age. I have also been an avid illustrator for those stories. Once, an adult told me that I needed to pick one thing, and focus on that for my stories, and I was devastated. With the arrival of web comics, transmedia, YouTube, and so many wonderful things that independent creators are making, I realized that confining oneself to a certain medium was a thing of the past. Sure, maybe your day job is doing one thing, but with all these possibilities at our fingertips, our personal projects never have to be confined. I find that liberating. Since starting school, I have been dead set in learning how these different mediums affected readers, listeners, and viewers, so that I could discover the best way to tell multimedia stories. Thankfully, I have been given many opportunities in my educational career to analyze and study this topic.

·      Why This? Why Now?

o   Continuing from above, I think this is also the direction that storytelling is going in. I definitely do believe that we will always have novels, films, television, radio, etc., but I also believe that those things will change to better incorporate this new understanding of narrative. I think the future of these traditional mediums lies in multimedia and new media, and I think smart creators see that too. I would like to explore more how this will happen, and how it is happening, because from that I believe we can learn how to be better creators and consumers ourselves. We are in a transitional period in our history of narrative, and I would like to analyze that history and our future.

Luckily, I’m not the only one interested in this topic. For further reading, you should definitely check out these bloggers:

·      http://transmediame.wordpress.com/ This is the web blog of assistant professor of English at Rockford University, Kyle Stedman, who specializes in studying transmedia storytelling and how people are interconnected through the Internet.

·      Another professor, here at USC, Henry Jenkins can be found here, http://henryjenkins.org/, who specializes in studying fandom culture and is a prominent member of the Project New Media Literacies group, looking into transmedia and multimedia projects.

·      http://designingstory.wordpress.com/ Another student studying very similar things to what this blog will be talking about, and with real world experience and research done.

·      http://theonlinenovel.wordpress.com/ This blog is run by two writers looking to not only analyze online novels, webfiction, and other online content, but they write it themselves, as well as accept submissions of work, both analytical and fictional.

·      http://jaybushman.tumblr.com/ Jay Bushman worked with Hank Green of vlogbrothers fame on their first venture into fictional video blog accounts, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a partially interactive, transmedia story. This is his Tumblr blog in which he posts things he is interested in, working on, transmedia work opportunities, and his thoughts on transmedia.

And come back and check out some of the things we’ll be talking about here! Coming up will be an exploration of multimedia novels like Cathy’s Book and House of Leaves, Web Comics, Video Games and Alternate Reality Games, Failed and Successful Attempts at Entering the New Media Age, and more! :) Thank you so much for stopping by! I look forward to hearing your thoughts!