Transmedia Story Creation

Module 1: Introduction to Narrative 

By Rudy McDaniel

Module Outline

• Associated Readings
• Background
• Analysis
• Additional Resources
• References

•  Narrative and Media (Fulton et al., 2005) Chs. 1-2

• "An Introduction to Narrative," (online) from http://www.mediaknowall.com/alevkeyconcepts/narrative.html
• Digital Storytelling (Lambert, 2002) Chs. 1-3

The readings for this week cover a broad range of complex ideas and topics, particularly those related to the field of semiotics (in the Narrative and Media book). Although this material is interesting and useful, it is sometimes difficult to absorb and appreciate without having a background in literary studies. Nonetheless, there are several important points being made across the readings in terms of semiotics, which are briefly summarized here:

• The term text is used much more broadly in semiotics than it is in the everyday public vernacular. A text in this sense is not simply printed words on a page, but rather any expressive creation that communicates. In this sense, an image, movie, Web site, tapestry, wood carving, cave painting, or even the environment in which you sit reading this can be analyzed and commented upon as a "text." Barthes' quote explaining the chain of meanings within these texts is quoted in "An Introduction to Narrative" (online).
• Semiotics may provide us with a way to consider the deep structures of narrative, which are touched upon in the analysis section of this module.
• Semiotics can be approached from two different perspectives: the structuralist perspective, which amounts to studying the relationships between ideas/concepts of objects and the arbitrary linguistic symbols used to refer to those ideas/concepts within a language, and the post-structuralist perspective, in which a more socially constructive process is acknowledged in terms of the meaning-making process. The former perspective is generally associated with the works of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), while the latter is largely informed by American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914). Huisman discusses these different approaches on pp. 20-22.
• The Umwelt is the "semiotic world of the interpreter" (Huisman, 2005, p. 21). This refers to the personalization of semiosis using Pierce's triadic model, meaning that the objects one knows and names are largely influenced by subjective and cultural ideologies.

In addition to semiotic terminology, Huisman also outlines several other definitions and concepts which are important when reading theoretical works about narratology. Several of these terms are shown here:

• Focalisation is the mediation of perspective within a narrative. As McQuillan (2000) explains, "focalisation can be internal (the story told through the perspective of the characters), fixed (only one perspective), variable (different perspectives adopted in turn to comment on different events), multiple (different perspectives adopted to comment on the same event), external (presentation is limited to a character's words and actions but no thoughts or feelings), or zero (when there is no locatable focalisation)" (p. 318).
• Temporality refers to the chronological elements generally seen as essential to narrative. Although various temporal elements may be used in a story (flashback, flash forward, time travel, etc.) it remains true that the reader should have some general idea of the order in which events unfold within a story. Duration and pacing are also grouped under the heading of temporality and have precise meanings within the context of narratology (pp. 13-14).
• Mimesis is the idea of "showing" what is occurring in a story through the speech or actions of characters. This is in contrast to diagesis, in which the author herself is speaking -- the writer is telling us about the character's speech rather than establishing dialogue using the character's exact words (Huisman, 2005, p. 18).
• Metanarratives are defined by Huisman as the "grand master stories" than encapsulate and sustain cultural myths and ideologies (p. 16). Manifest destiny, or the belief that it was our duty and destiny to territorially expand and spread the ideals of democracy, is a metanarrative built into many popular adventure stories (and even science fiction novels, to some extent). Huisman discusses additional metanarratives, such as the metanarrative of patriarchy, in her chapter.

From a social context, the semiotic complexity of the narrative form is useful as a semantic bridge for connecting people with different backgrounds, areas of expertise, and cultural ideologies (or, to consider the flip side, for propogating sterotypes or bias through personal narratives and certain subversive metanarratives or even racially or gender-biased jokes and limericks). Much of what Lambert (2002) writes tackles issues of connectivity and empowerment. For instance, he writes of folk music's impetus to "help find a guitar for each person in countless living rooms, music halls, and outdoor gatherings, teach them eight chords, a set of licks, and song forms that could be grasped, and set them off to record their own experiences" (pp. 2-3). In this class, we will use digital technologies instead of guitars, Wiki postings and blog entries instead of chords and licks. Depending on the particular texts we choose, we will find different ways to arrange and communicate our experiences using the narrative form. It is finding the correct representational content, and then structuring that content using the appropriate arrangement and style of narrative within a given medium, that will pose the greatest challenge.

The readings assigned for the first two weeks stress two of the dominant themes this course is designed around: community and deep structures. In terms of community, we have seen in the background section of this module the ways that narrative is able to forge connections between diverse populations. Given the inherently social nature of narrative, it is important to take advantage of our diversity and use our life experiences to inform and educate one another by weaving stories about our own lives and cultures into the content of this course.

The synergy of story and community is perhaps best demonstrated through a simple example, which I will borrow from a recent presentation I attended. The Story Bridge in Brisbane, Australia (see figure 1) offers adventurous travelers the opportunity to scale its heights and take a scenic voyage over the Brisbane cityscape. At a recent teaching workshop, I had the pleasure of listening to a keynote in which Milton Cox recounted his initial trepidation when a student encouraged him to scale the Story Bridge during a trip to Australia. He went on to describe how he was able to overcome his fears through his engagement with a strong and supportive community. In this sense, he used a personal story both to educate his audience about the facets of community and to build up that sense of community during the talk to better engage with his audience. This story about a literal story bridge was also a metaphorical bridge that enabled many of the members of the audience (with a casual or intuitive knowledge about community) to recognize, learn from, and engage with the ideas about community from an expert in this field. While it was likely that very few of the participants in the room had scaled the Story Bridge themselves, each and every one of them could identify with and relate to the story about the Story Bridge. After all, everyone has been in fearful or uncomfortable situations before at some point in their lives.

Figure 1: Story Bridge in Brisbane, Australia

(Creative Commons License, Wikimedia Commons)

View a short promotional video of the Story Bridge Adventure Climb (MOV Quicktime File).

So how does this bridge actually get built? In other words, how can we construct stories robust enough to act as connective entities, yet general enough to be familiar and recognizable to our target audiences? Tropes such as synecdoche, metaphor, and metonymy, discussed by Huisman in chapter two, are helpful in this regard. These linguistic structures are bountiful in the art of storytelling; they allow authors to craft stories which are meaningful for a variety of different audiences and individuals. Even industry has recognized the potential of narrative as a means for facilitating knowledge exchange -- take a look at NASA's Ask Magazine to observe how NASA has used the narrative form for educating and informing employees and the general public about engineering practices.

Given the intuitive and personal nature of storytelling, though, it is easy to become lost in the excitement and pleasure of what I call narrative's surface structures. Surface structures include elements such as characterization, focalization, plot, causality, temporality, etc. -- precisely those elements we tend to think of when we talk about stories with one another. It is important for us to understand these surface structures, but we also need to consider and give due attention to the deep structures of narrative. These are the underlying rhetorical effects and influences of narrative as well as the psychological constructs which influence the way in which we cognitively arrange and process our life experiences as stories.

Many of the arguments Fulton presented in her introductory chapter encouraged thinking about narrative in terms of its deep structure. For instance, she notes that narratives and media actually undermine the potential of the narrative form as a universal human structure in their use as tools for the commodification of the Western world. She writes, "The economic function of the media, to generate profits, undermines the idea of narrative as some kind of innate or universal structure common to all humanity. Narrative in the media becomes simply a way of selling something" (p. 3). Do you find this to be a contentious claim? Can you think of any examples in which narrative and media are combined for non-commercial applications or uses?

Fulton also considers what she calls the "constructed audience" in this chapter (p. 5). As we proceed through the remainder of our course, we would do well to keep in mind both the literal, known audiences of our narrative texts as well as the constructed audiences we call into being through our acts of imagination and creation. It is important that the bridges we build between our texts and our audiences (and perhaps between our selves and our audiences) be stable enough to allow purposeful movements between our transmedia stories and our audiences. Taking this a step further, we might even adopt the policy of striving for the empowerment of our audience(s), as Lambert (2002) notes was the tradition with many folk singers and storytellers in the 1960s.

This is perhaps a meaningful way to begin thinking about your transmedia story assignments. Who are the audiences you hope to build bridges to, and how will you empower these audiences? Keep in mind that empowerment does not necessarily mean revolution; your empowerment can be as simple as freeing individuals from the stresses of life for a few minutes to engage in some creative entertainment, or it can be as complex as encouraging individuals to learn new skills or to think about the world in a new way through reading and interacting with your story.

1. Fox's Family Guy. View two clips from Season 4, Episode 7, "Brian the Bachelor" (Frost & MacFarlane, 2005). In these clips, which require an AVI video codec to view (Apple Quicktime will play them), Stewie chides Brian for the lack of progress on his novel. Look for a summary of the elements of narrative you've been reading about in your texts as well as an interesting social commentary on the Umwelt of reality television. These clips are available from within the WebCT account (click on the "media clips and supplementary readings" link from the home page). 

    

2. Orlando Regional Healthcare : orhstories.org. This is a polished implementation of story and technology that is used to advertise for the Orlando Regional Healthcare network. Click on several of the stories (baby Sabrina is an especially emotional story) and consider the points Helen Fulton makes about narrative and commerce in her introductory chapter. Is ORHC taking risks by advertising in this fashion? Are you more likely to use their services after hearing a few of these stories? Do the stories follow the rules of temporality and causality outlined by Huisman in chapter two? What is the primary method of focalisation in most of these stories? What feelings do these stories engender? 

    

3. Also on the "media clips and supplementary readings" section of our WebCT site, you will find a recently published book chapter by Fiore, Metcalf, and McDaniel. You may find the section on narrative theory, which I wrote, to provide some additional details and background on narrative and semiotics.

Fiore, S. M., Metcalf, D., & McDaniel, R. (2007). Theoretical Foundations of Experiential Learning. In M. Silberman (Ed.), The Experiential Learning Handbook (pp. 33-58): John Wiley & Sons.

Frost, S., & MacFarlane, S. (Writer), & S. MacFarlane (Director) (2005). Brian the Bachelor [TV], Family Guy. USA: Fox.

Fulton, H. (2005). Introduction: The Power of Narrative. In H. Fulton, R. Huisman, J. Murphy & A. Dunn (Eds.), Narrative and Media (pp. 1-7). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Huisman, R. (2005). Narrative Concepts. In H. Fulton, R. Huisman, J. Murphy & A. Dunn (Eds.), Narrative and Media (pp. 11-27). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lambert, J. (2002). Digital Storytelling: Capturing Lives, Creating Community. Berkeley: Digital River Press.

McQuillan, M. (Ed.). (2000). The Narrative Reader. London: Routledge.

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