Insights from South by Southwest

I have always been freaked out and scared of modern “transmedia” interactive stuff, I consider it artificial and awkward and alien – not to mention ignoble and embarrassing. I approached one panel here at South by Southwest, “The Future of Storytelling,” with that fear/bias. And immediately the moderator (I wish I could remember his name) wiped that slate clean – by pointing out that “interactive” and “transmedia” story-telling is the ORIGINAL form of story-telling: when the narrator is there in person the audience gets to comment and ask for further information, acting out of certain scenes, etc. Even a child knows to ask questions like, “But mommy, WHY did the 3 little pigs’ mom throw them out of the house? What COLOR straw did the first pig use? What noise did the wolf make while he was blowing down the house? How big was the little pig?” and so on.

So it’s not some Brave New World concoction. It’s human nature. That was a BIG orientation shift for me. Now I know longer cringe at the idea of applying interactivity to my work – anything “promotional” done in that spirit isn’t just promoting the story, it is potentially truly ENHANCING the story, giving readers more inroads to enjoying it.

In fact, the moderator pointed out that Gutenberg (whom I still do worship, as should every one of us who ever uses a key board) was the one who created an alien, artificial kind of story telling – nobody in the world had ever conceived of a static, permanent, mass-produced story that went out into the world and allowed no 2-way relationship between teller and told. THAT was FAR weirder than what is happening these days – the interactive/transmedia folks are RETURNING us to what was normal pre-Gutenberg.

Thanks for listening, have a great day…