=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2811/Paper25
|storemode=property
|title=Transmedia Storytelling and Creative Writing: Can Media Convergence Change the Way we Creatively Write?
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2811/Paper25.pdf
|volume=Vol-2811
|authors=Vassiliki Nanou,Polyxeni Kaimara,Agnes Papadopoulou
}}
==Transmedia Storytelling and Creative Writing: Can Media Convergence Change the Way we Creatively Write?==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2811/Paper25.pdf
Digital Culture & Audiovisual Challenges: Interdisciplinary Creativity In Arts And Technology
TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING AND CREATIVE
WRITING: CAN MEDIA CONVERGENCE CHANGE
THE WAY WE CREATIVELY WRITE?
Vassiliki Nanou1, Polyxeni Kaimara2, Agnes Papadopoulou3
1 Researcher, Department of Preschool Education, University of Western Macedonia,
nanou.vassiliki@gmail.com
2PhD Candidate, Department of Audio and Visual Arts, Ionian University
a16kaim@ionio.gr
3 Special Research and Teaching Staff Member, Department of Audio and Visual Arts,
Ionian University, a.papadop@ionio.gr
Abstract
This article traces the history of transmedia storytelling and its evolutionary steps
through multidisciplinary fields of media, art, culture and technology and the way it is
currently being used and exploited. Transmedia storytelling as a particular narrative
structure that expands through both different languages (verbal, iconic, etc.) and media
(cinema, comics, television, video games, etc.) has been engaged by professional and
non- professional media as an example of media convergence. The current unprecedented
access to content, products and media allows– at least in what is deemed the developed
and developing world – unlimited control over a person’s experience as he or she can
customise, personalise and respond towards a narrative in multiple ways and across
multiple platforms. Trying to map this whole narrative universe offers a rather unique
experience, especially for a creative writer and potential producer and consumer of this
synergy of modes, media, technologies and content. Moreover, it is argued that creative
writing can really benefit by introducing its modes and practices into each medium
separately and across media at the same time leading into innovative narrative practices.
Keywords: transmedia storytelling, creative writing, media convergence, narrative
structures, interactive storytelling
In lieu of an introduction
Literature has been steadily unfolding beyond the letters and words on a page. Emerging
technologies, new and ever-changing forms of communication, audiovisual designing
have all contributed into creating various transformed modes of representation,
enhanced with visual, narrative and verbal characteristics, that people interact and
connect with: e-books, hypertexts, virtual gaming worlds etc. This unique combination
of textual, visual and verbal elements presents an expansive and rather challenging field
of representation and interpretation for creators as well as a new way of experiencing
Copyright © 2018 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative
Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) DCAC 2018.
Digital Culture & Audiovisual Challenges: Interdisciplinary Creativity In Arts And Technology
and “living through” a story (or multiple stories) for the “readers”. Thus, the written,
handheld book becomes a digital copy with images and sounds or a virtual world with
narration and dialogues in simultaneity with the action, where the reader-player
becomes the hero (or the villain etc.) and creates his own storyline. In that way, the
variability, interactivity and open-endedness of these literary worlds may produce
variable instances of place and time, altering several times the initial chronotopy of a
literary text.
Digital Literature
Nowadays, people are constantly surrounded by media-rich environments - television,
DVDs, MP3s, Touch/iPhones, computers, video games, cell phones, smart toys, 3D
goggles are almost ever present in developed countries (Critcher, 2008; Drotner &
Livingston, 2008; Hasebrink, Livingstone, Haddon, & Olafsson, 2009; Linebarger &
Piotrowski, 2009). The contact with digital worlds is almost an everyday occurrence
(Bowman, Donovan, & Burns, 2001; Byron, T. 2010; Druin, 2009; Guernsey, 2007;
Marsh, 2004; Marsh & Millard, 2000; Marsh, Brooks, Hughes, Ritchie, Roberts, &
Wright, 2005; McPake, Stephen & Plowman, 2007; Pahl & Roswell, 2006; Palfrey &
Gasser, 2008; Shuler, 2007; Specht, 2009; Stephen, McPake, Plowman, & Berch-
Heyman, 2008). This digitization of form, content and presence has not left literature
unaffected. Handheld books went on becoming digitised and wholly digital books were
created (Koskimaa, 2000). These trends have also entered the world of Literature
leading to multi-layered, nonlinear, non-sequential, interactive and graphic- rich books
that bear small to great differences from their handheld counterparts (Dresang, 1997).
As Koskimaa points out, “digital literature is very diffuse and very hard to define”
(Koskimaa, 2000). He continues discerning three different instances. Firstly, he presents
the digitalisations of print literature, as works which aim at digitalising as
comprehensively as possible the old, mostly canonical, literature, with a lot of practical
attributes such as conserving old texts physically deteriorating, making rare works
available for the larger public, creating useful corpuses for researchers and students and
enabling all kinds of statistical style analyses. He considers as a second type the digital
publication of original literature, where texts do not employ any hypertextual techniques
at all and literature confirms to the established conventions. Here, he argues that digital
form is primarily used in the distribution of the texts. Last but not least, comes the
literature using new techniques made possible by the digital format, including everything
from hypernovels to interactive poetry and multimedia encyclopaedias (Koskimaa,
2000).
Later, Koskimaa goes on creating another categorisation of digital literature. He
again distinguishes three different meanings but here he assigns totally different
categorisations. First, comes Digital Publishing, which focuses on the production and
marketing of literature, and books in general, with the aid of digital technology. It
includes eBooks, Print on Demand, Audiobooks made available as MP3 files, etc. He
considers it, content-wise, literature in the traditional sense, as digital technology mainly
serves for packaging and distribution purposes. As a second category, Scholarly literary
Digital Culture & Audiovisual Challenges: Interdisciplinary Creativity In Arts And Technology
hypertext editions for educational and research purposes are presented. This category
includes hypertextually annotated literary works, as well as multimedia implementations
of literary classics. Due to royalty rights, these are mainly older works. Finally, the third
category comprises writing for Digital Media which he considers as programmed text,
text based on computer code. This opens up a limitless field of literary play and
experimentation, as texts can be programmed to behave in a more or less dynamic way.
This perspective is called ‘cybertextuality’ and the works ‘cybertexts’, in accordance
with Espen Aarseth (1997). Cybertextuality is an umbrella term for different types of
digital texts, such as hypertexts, kinetic texts, generated texts, texts employing agent
technologies, etc. There are also poetic works using interactivity and kinetic techniques.
(Koskimaa, 2007). Moreover, there are digital games and its various genres. In addition
to the mainstream game genres, such as action, adventure, sports, and puzzle games, the
subfields of news games, political games, advergames, edugames, and such, bring the
game approach to cultural fields. These new kinds of works are characterised as
‘cybertexts’ or ‘technotexts’ (Aarseth 1997, Hayles, 2002). And then, an even richer
textual – but, at the same time not- experience emerges: digital storytelling.
Digital Storytelling
A transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms with each new text making
a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole (Jenkins, 2006). Although each
component can be experienced individually, they all clearly exist in relation to each
other in the larger transmedia story. The connections between different components
mean that experiencing the other media forms will improve the experience as a whole.
In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling each medium does what it does best – so that
a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics,
and its world might be explored and experienced through game play (Jenkins, 2006).
Jenkins insists on the term convergence, defined “as the flow of content across multiple
media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory
behaviour of media audiences” (Jenkins, 2006).
In parallel to the aforementioned definitions, there are also the characterisations of
“media mix” by Ito (2007), the “multisensory stories told across two or more diverse
media (film, print literature, web, video games, live performance, recorded music, etc.)
(Ruppel, 2005) or differently worded characterisations as “cross media storytelling”
(Dena 2004a, 2004b), “synergistic storytelling” (Jenkins, 2004), “intertextual
commodity” (Marshall 2004), “transmedial worlds” (Klastrup & Tosca, 2004),
“distributed narration” (Walker, 2004), “transmedia practice” (Dena, 2009), and
“multimedia storytelling‘ (Perryman, 2008).
Creative Writing
The term Creative Writing (C.W.) can cause confusion due to its multitude of definitions,
functions (Ramet, 2011), purposes and educational roles (Harper, 2015, Donnelly, 2012,
Harper and Kroll, 2007). Many identify Creative Writing with literary production, while
others believe that Creative Writing is identical to producing an original written
Digital Culture & Audiovisual Challenges: Interdisciplinary Creativity In Arts And Technology
composition (or re-composition). Some proponents of the teaching of Creative Writing
want it to refer to any writing referred as “creative, e.g. original, unconventional,
expressive and seemingly, sometimes, to oppose the official literature” (Dawson, 2005),
not only a literary genre. Kotopoulos (2011) regards it as a quest for creativity that
deviates from the traditional notion of writing as an elitist, solitary practice. It can
also seem to conceptually refer to a series of meanings: literary activity field, art of
literary production, emotive educational method for the teaching of literature and of
literary writing through games, a form of mental relief (Donnelly, 2015) and a means of
strengthening self-esteem, academic subject knowledge, etc. (Kotopoulos, 2012).
Creative Writing (Harper, 2013) is cross-disciplinary because it is incorporated
in the field of literature (as literary writing, the art of writing and as literary theory of
reading), in the area of pedagogy (as an educational method of teaching language and
literature) and in the field of psychology (as a therapeutic method). At the same time
though, it constitutes an independent discipline dealing with the art of writing and its
implications. Gianni Rodari describes creativity as a synonym of “divergent thought”
that has the ability of “continually breaking the schemes of experience” (Rodari, 1973).
Research on Creative Writing practice in Greece suggests that support of creativity
increases exponentially with the implementation of various writing techniques
(Kotopoulos, 2011). Creative Writing as an art uses all known writing techniques
and experiments with new ones. It is based on dialogue, blending different styles,
while leaving free the “subconscious flow” of writing. It also uses both linguistic and
emotional elements in order to activate the creative function and support an increase in
the brain’s potential (Kallas-Kalogeropoulou, 2006).
Having creativity at its core, Creative Writing is considered to be any fiction or non-
fiction writing, whether prose or poetry, that exceeds the limits of standard professional,
journalistic or academic writing and, in general, any writing that uses certain speech
techniques (Kotopoulos, 2011). In Jacobson’s terms, Creative Writing refers to texts
exemplifying the poetic function of language (Kotopoulos, 2011). At the same time, the
term Creative Writing represents the art of writing literature. Literary art belongs to the
broader category of “the arts”, which includes music, theatre, dance, painting, etc. and it
can be taught. It incorporates the ways and means, the tools and the techniques, that are
used consciously and unconsciously, intentionally and unintentionally by the authors
for the creation of a literary work. The poetics of Creative Writing aim to provide an
emotional and aesthetic stimulation for the reader, but also to the expression of the
writer. As a term therefore, it refers to an act, to a set of acts but also to the combination
of an act and its outcome (Harper and Kroll, 2007).
Combining the two fields
By considering these two seemingly unrelated fields, a common thread can be traced,
that of narration. Having at their core the basic element of narrating a story, they provide
with an interesting question: could a combination of both digital storytelling and creative
writing create an equally interesting and exponentially challenging new product?
In order to attempt answering such a question, Roland Barthes provides the
Digital Culture & Audiovisual Challenges: Interdisciplinary Creativity In Arts And Technology
underlying inherent links. In his text Le Plaisir du Texte (1973) he sets out some of his
ideas for a literary theory, characterising texts as scriptible, that is writerly texts that
rely heavily upon the audiences to provide any semblance of meaning and lisible or
readerly texts that require very little work on the part of the audience and afford very
little room for individual interpretation. Digital storytelling can be seen as a writerly
text, where the audience follows narratives across multiple platforms. These narratives
can be created in ways and modes presented in the filed of creative writing.
Moreover, creative writing techniques can make their way and be incorporated into
the whole process of creation of a transmedia story. From its initial crafting to the
crafting of the whole storytelling universe, from the insertion of references and
allusions, that may function as connecting devices through the different media to the
creation of ambiguity, suspense and uncertainty with the incorporation of migratory
cues, from the creation of a core story to the limitless expansion of new media, creative
writing techniques may infuse, enhance, enrich and provide with different alternative
throughout the whole construction of a digital storytelling project. A wholly new
universe can be created, by letting the text speak for itself. Either the original writer or
other participants can creatively construct interconnected stories, bearing different
characteristics, elements, modes and tropes, incorporating migratory cues and creating
allusions. The final product? A whole new universe as a writerly text.
Conclusion
Even though digital storytelling and creative writing seem to embark from totally
different perspectives of the notion of text, they have one common streak: the desire to
narrate a story. Thus, by incorporating creative writing techniques, modes and styles
into the digital storytelling process, media convergence can propagate itself into the
field of literature and vice versa creating a contingent new literary field.
References
Aarseth, E. (1997). Cybertext. Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press.
Barthes. R. (1973). Le Plaisir du Texte. Paris: Editionds du Seuil.
Bowman, B., Donovan,S. and Burns, S.. (Eds.) (2001). Eager to learn: Educating our
preschoolers. Washington DC: National Academy Press.
Byron, T. (2010). Do we have Safer Children in a Digital World? A Review of Progress
since the 2008 Byron Review. London: Department for children, schools and
families.
Critcher, C. (2008). Making waves: Historical aspects of public debates about children
and mass media. In K.Drotner & S. Livingston (Eds.) International Handbook
of Children, Media and Culture (pp. 91-104). London: Sage.
Dawson, P. (2005). Creative writing and the new humanities. London: Routledge.
Dena, C. (2004a). Current State of Cross Media Storytelling: Preliminary observations
for future design‘, Proceedings of Crossmedia communication in the dynamic
Digital Culture & Audiovisual Challenges: Interdisciplinary Creativity In Arts And Technology
knowledge society networking session 2004, The Netherlands, 15 Nov,
European Information Society Technologies (IST) Event 2004: Participate in
your future.
Dena, C. (2004b). Towards a Poetics of Multi-Channel Storytelling‘ Proceedings of
Critical Animals postgraduate conference, 1October, 2004, This Is Not Art
Festival, Newcastle.
Dena, C. (2006). How the Internet is Holding the Centre of Conjured Universes‘,
Presented at Internet Research 7.0: Internet Convergences, Association of
Internet Researchers 2006, Brisbane, Queensland, 27-30 September 2006.
Dena, C. (2009). Transmedia Practice: Theorising the Practice of Expressing a Fictional
World across Distinct Media and Environments‘, School of Letters, Art and
Media, Department of Media and Communications, Digital Cultures Program,
PhD, University of Sydney.
Donnelly, D. (2012). Establishing Creative Writing Studies as an Academic Discipline.
Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Donnelly, D. (2015). Embracing the Learning Paradigm: How Assessment Drives
Creative Writing Pedagogy. In Harper, G. (Ed.) Creative Writing and Education
(pp. 46-56). Bristol, Buffalo, Toronto: Multilingual Matters.
Druin, A. (Ed.) (2009). Mobile technology for children. Elsevier: Amsterdam
Dresang, E.. (1997). Influence of the Digital Environment on Literature for Youth:
Radical Change in the Handheld Book. Library Trends. Vol 45, No. 4. pp. 639-
663
Drotner, K. and Livingston, S. (Eds.) (2008). The international handbook of children,
media and culture. London: Sage.
Guernsey, L .(2007). Into the minds of babes. New York: Basic Books.
Harper, G, and Kroll, J.. (2007). Creative Writing Studies: Practice, Research and
Pedagogy. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Harper, G. (2013). Creative writing research. In Harper, G. (Ed.) A Companion to
Creative Writing (pp. 278-290). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Harper, G. (2015). Creative Writing and Education: An Introduction. In Harper, G.
(Ed.). Creative Writing and Education (pp.1- 16). Bristol, Buffalo, Toronto:
Multilingual Matters.
Hasebrink, U., Livingstone, S., Haddon, L., & Olafsson, K. (2009). Comparing children’s
online opportunities and risks across Europe: Cross-national comparisons for
EU kids online. LSE, London: EU Kids Online.
Jenkins, H (2004). The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence. International Journal of
Cultural Studies, vol. 7 (1):33-43. DOI: 10.1177/1367877904040603
Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New
York: New York University Press.
Jenkins, H & Deuze, M (2008). Editorial: Convergence Culture‘, Convergence: the
International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, vol. 14, no. 1,
pp. 5-12.
Digital Culture & Audiovisual Challenges: Interdisciplinary Creativity In Arts And Technology
Kallas-Kalogeropoulou, C. (2006). Scripts -The art of confecting a narration to the
cinema. 66 exercises and 1 method. Athens: Nefeli.
Klastrup, L & Tosca, S (2004). Transmedial worlds – rethinking cyberworld design. In
Proceedings of the International Conference on Cyberworlds 18-20 November,
2004, IEEEE Computer Society, Tokyo, Japan: Klastrup Cataclysms.
Linebarger, D., & Piotrowski, J. (2009). TV as storyteller: How exposure to television
narratives impacts at-risk preschoolers’ story knowledge and narrative skills.
British Journal of Developmental Psychology, Vol. 27, 47-69.
Koskimaa, R. (2000). Digital Literature. From Text to Hypertext and Beyond. Doctoral
Dissertation [Electronic text, available online]. Jyväskylä. University of
Jyväskylä. http://users.jyu.fi/~koskimaa/thesis/thesis.shtml
Koskimaa, R. (2007). “The challenge of cybertext: teaching literature in the digital
world” [article online]. UOC Papers. Iss. 4. UOC. http://www.uoc.edu/
uocpapers/4/dt/eng/koskimaa.pdf
Kotopoulos, T.. (2011). From reading to literary reading and playful disposition of
Creative Writing. In Papantonakis, G. and Kotopoulos, T. Ta eterothali (pp. 21-
35). Athens: Ion.
Kotopoulos, T.. (2012). Keimena Magazine. The «legalisation»of Creative Writing.
26 July. Accessed May 19, 2018 http://keimena.ece.uth.gr/main/t15/03-
kotopoulos.pdf.
Kotopoulos, T., Papantonakis,G. and Nanou, V. (2012). Creatiive Writing, Suspenseful
Literature and Excited Students. In 1st International Conference «Education
Across Borders» Proceedings (pp. 268-276). Florina: University Of Western
Macedonia.
McGann, J. (2006). From text to work: Digital tools and the emergence of the social
text. Romanticism on the Net, 16 (41-42), 49-62.
Marsh, J. (2004). The techno-literacy practices of young children. Journal of Early
Childhood Research, Vol 2 (1), 51-66 DOI: 10.1177/1476718X0421003
Marsh, J, Brooks, G., Hughes, J., L. Ritchie, Roberts, S., and Wright, K., (2005). Digital
beginnings: Young children’s use of popular culture, media and new
technologies. University of Sheffield: Literacy Research Centre. http://www.
digitalbeginnings.shef.ac.uk/.
Marsh, J. and Millard, E. (2000). Literacy and popular culture. London: Paul Chapman.
Marshall, P.D. (2004). New Media Cultures. London: Arnold.
McPake, J., Stephen, C., and Plowman, L. (2007). Entering e-society: Young children’s
development of e-literacy.Stirling: Institute of Education, University of Stirling.
Pahl, K. and Rowsell, J. (Eds.) (2006). Travel notes from the new literacy studies.
Clevedon, England: Multilingual Matters.
Palfrey, J. and Gasser, U. (2008). Born digital: Understanding the first generation of
digital natives. New York: Basic Books.
Perryman, N. (2008). Doctor Who and the convergence of media: a case study in
“transmedia storytelling”. Convergence: The International Journal of Research
into New Media Technologies, vol. 14, no. 1, 21-39. https://doi.
Digital Culture & Audiovisual Challenges: Interdisciplinary Creativity In Arts And Technology
org/10.1177/1354856507084417
Ramet, A.. (2011). Creative Writing. London: Little, Brown Book Group.
Rodari, G.. (1973). Grammatica della fantasia. Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore s.p.a.
Ruppel, M. (2009). Narrative Convergence, Cross-Sited Productions and the Archival
Dilemma. Convergence, vol. 15, no. 3, 281-298.
Shuler, C. (2007). D is for digital: An analysis of the children’s interactive media
environment with a focus on mass marketed products that promote learning.
New York: Joan Ganz Cooney Center.
Specht, M.(2009). Inaugural address: Learning in a technology enhanced world.
Heerlen, Nederland: Centre for Learning Sciences and Technologies, Open
Universiteit.
Stephen, C., McPake, J., Plowman, L., Berch-Heyman, S. (2008). Learning from
children: Exploring preschool children’s encounters with ICT at home. Journal
of Early Childhood Research, Vol. 6. No. 2, 99-117. https://doi.
org/10.1177/1476718X08088673
Walker, J. (2004). Distributed Narrative: Telling Stories Across Networks. Conference
Proceedings of AoIR 5.0, 21 September, 2004. Brighton: University of Sussex.
http://jilltxt.net/txt/Walker-AoIR-3500words.pdf