Interactive Narratives and Transmedia Storytelling provides media students and industry professionals with strategies for creating innovative new media projects across a variety of platforms. Synthesizing ideas from a range of theorists and practitioners across visual, audio, and interactive media, Kelly McErlean offers a practical reference guide and toolkit to best practices, techniques, key historical and theoretical concepts, and terminology that media storytellers and creatives need to create compelling interactive and transmedia narratives. McErlean takes a broad lens, exploring traditional narrative, virtual reality and augmented reality, audience interpretation, sound design, montage, the business of transmedia storytelling, and much more. Written for both experienced media practitioners and those looking for a reference to help bolster their creative toolkit or learn how to better craft multiplatform stories, Interactive Narratives and Transmedia Storytelling serves as a guide to navigating this evolving world.

Digital Storytelling shows you how to create immersive, interactive narratives across a multitude of platforms, devices, and media. From age-old storytelling techniques to cutting-edge development processes, this book covers creating stories for all forms of New Media, including transmedia storytelling, video games, mobile apps, and second screen experiences. The way a story is told, a message is delivered, or a narrative is navigated has changed dramatically over the last few years. Stories are told through video games, interactive books, and social media. Stories are told on all sorts of different platforms and through all sorts of different devices. They’re immersive, letting the user interact with the story and letting the user enter the story and shape it themselves. This book features case studies that cover a great spectrum of platforms and different story genres. It also shows you how to plan processes for developing interactive narratives for all forms of entertainment and non-fiction purposes: education, training, information and promotion. Digital Storytelling features interviews with some of the industry’s biggest names, showing you how they build and tell their stories.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- 1 Introduction -- 2 Traditional Narrative Texts -- 3 Subjective Interpretation -- 4 Sound Design -- 5 Visual Montage -- 6 Codifying Story Elements -- 7 Interactive Narratives -- 8 The Business of Transmedia Storytelling -- 9 Conclusion -- Appendix 1: Making The Little Extras -- Appendix 2: Digital Data Compression -- References -- Index

Transmedia storytelling is defined as a process where integral elements of fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels to create a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. This process and its narrative models have had an increasing influence on the academic world in addressing both theoretical and practical dimensions of transmedia storytelling. The Handbook of Research on Transmedia Storytelling and Narrative Strategies is a critical scholarly resource that explores the connections between consumers of media content and information parts that come from multimedia platforms, as well as the concepts of narration and narrative styles. Featuring coverage on a wide range of topics such as augmented reality, digital society, and marketing strategies, this book explores narration as a method of relating to consumers. This book is ideal for advertising professionals, creative directors, academicians, scriptwriters, researchers, and upper-level graduate students seeking current research on narrative marketing strategies.

As a game designer or new media storyteller, you know that the story is critical to the success of your project. Telling that story interactively is an even greater challenge, one that involves approaching the story from many angles. Here to help you navigate and open your mind to more creative ways of producing your stories is the authority on interactive design and a longtime game development guru, Chris Crawford. To help you in your quest for the truly interactive story, Crawford provides a solid sampling of what works and doesn't work, and how to apply the lessons to your own storytelling projects. After laying out the fundamental ideas behind interactive storytelling and explaining some of the misconceptions that have crippled past efforts, the book delves into all the major systems that go into interactive storytelling: personality models, actors, props, stages, fate, verbs, history books, and more. Crawford also covers the Storytron technology he has been working on for several years, an engine that runs interactive electonic storyworlds, giving readers a first-hand look into practical storytelling methods.

Equally useful for seasoned professionals and those new to the field, Carolyn Handler Miller covers effective techniques for creating compelling narratives for a wide variety of digital media. Written in a clear, non-technical style, it offers insights into the process of content creation by someone with long experience in the field. Whether you're a writer, producer, director, project manager, or designer, 'Digital Storytelling' gives you all you need to develop a successful interactive project.

Transmedia Storytelling explores the theories and describes the use of the imagery and techniques shared by producers, authors and audiences of the entertainment, information and brand communication industries as they create and develop their stories in this new, interactive ecosystem.

Transmedia Narratives for Cultural Heritage focuses on theoretical approaches to the analysis and creative practice of developing non-fiction digital transmedia narratives in the rapidly growing cultural heritage sector. This book applies a media-focused transdisciplinary approach to understand the conventions of emerging digital narrative genres. Considering digital media’s impact on narrative creation and reception, the approach, namely remixed transmedia, can aid practitioners in creating strategic non-fiction narratives for cultural heritage. These creations also need to be evaluated and a digital-media focused ‘ludonarrative toolkit’ allows for the critical analysis of the composition and public participation in interactive digital narratives. This toolkit is applied and exemplified in genres including virtual museums, serious games, and interactive documentaries. The book also includes a seven-phase theoretical framework that can assist future creators (and project managers) of non-fiction transmedia ‘mothership’ narratives; and a methodology (based on ‘big data analysis’) for how to invent new cultural heritage narratives through bottom-up remixing that allows for public inclusion. Two transnational case studies on the 11 UNESCO World Heritage Australian Convict Sites and the Irish National Famine Way demonstrate the seven-phase framework’s applicability. As many scholars across disciplines are increasingly creating digital narratives on historical topics for public consumption in various forms, the theoretical foundations and practical project management framework will be useful for scholars and project teams in the domains of transmedia studies, interactive narratives, cultural heritage, media studies, comparative literature, and journalism.

This book is a guide to developing cross-platform and pervasive entertainment. Whether you're a seasoned pro or a complete newbie, this book is filled with tips and insights in multi-platform interactive storytelling.

Storytelling for Virtual Reality serves as a bridge between students of new media and professionals working between the emerging world of VR technology and the art form of classical storytelling. Rather than examining purely the technical, the text focuses on the narrative and how stories can best be structured, created, and then told in virtual immersive spaces. Author John Bucher examines the timeless principles of storytelling and how they are being applied, transformed, and transcended in Virtual Reality. Interviews, conversations, and case studies with both pioneers and innovators in VR storytelling are featured, including industry leaders at LucasFilm, 20th Century Fox, Oculus, Insomniac Games, and Google. For more information about story, Virtual Reality, this book, and its author, please visit StorytellingforVR.com