Fictional Story/ Character Development

Reading: A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling Ch. 11-16


Prompt: What principles of story telling can you take from CGTS and apply to your story/ character? Be explicit: quote the passages from the book, explain them in your own words, and describe how you will apply them directly to your work.

One passage from the book that I found particularly helpful was at the very beginning of Ch. 12, and explained the importance of story bibles. This kind of index is crucial to maintaining integrity and consistency in a character or story. I'd like to start tracking the information about my character- including his personality, what he likes/ dislikes, his background story, etc. It will also be good to keep a log of his experiences, or at least the ones he posts about, so that I can make each post different and evolve my character.

Something else that will help me in developing my character is using interactive mediums. The one we used recently in class was a map, which already gives the fictional character an anchor in the real world. Something I'd really like to do is create a video or photograph and edit it to fit his perceived environment. Even if it's just a shot of a desert, it will add dimension to the site and the character.

On pg. 125 Phillips talks about rewarding effort. This means that when you involve an audience, it's your responsibility to engage them, rather than wasting their time. I hope to develop my character into someone who can engage an audience, but following through is something I definitely need to work on. At the moment my character's "twist" is that he's schizophrenic, but many audience members may have realized this already- considering he's blogging from Mars.

I think by further developing my character's story I'll be able to engage an audience with the story, but I'll need to really work on making Tim an authentic character, and developing an interactive experience that's sourced from the blog.