THE FUTURE OF STORYTELLING

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE?

The idea of interacting and engaging with the 'story world' has been around for some time.
However, over recent years, there seems to have been a shift from old skool books like the ones above into the realm of new media and digital media technologies.

Why is this happening?

Well, unfortunately you won't find a definitive answer to that question within this blog post.  But perhaps its something that I can chew over between now and dissertation time.

Take the 'choose your own adventure' storybooks as an example. See above link (you know you want to). 

These books have been around for years and I remember reading some as a kid.  The idea was that instead of just reading a story, you could alter the outcome to a certain degree by making choices as you read.

At the end of a short chapter, the reader would be offered options similar to the following...

If you decide to taste the potion, turn to page 21
If you offer the witch a packet of spangles, go to page 34
If you take the path to the forest of doom, turn to page 11

This added an element of 'play' and interactivity to the story.  

The thing is, people bought these.  They were popular. Then technology arrived.

Readers became viewers, viewers became audiences and audiences became users.  It can be argued that users are now becoming 'produsers', or professional users and to some extent producers of their own media.

So, just like the 'choose your own adventure' series of books, media audiences are now becoming more and more interactive in their choices and viewing habits.  We are no longer in a culture of a 2.4 children family, settling down on the sofa on a saturday evening to watch, er 2.4 children together. Nor are we a society bound by TV schedules.

Instead, habits are changing with technology.  Just as families function differently, their interaction with media does so too.

Anyway, this is all for another time, and for another post before I start delving too deeply into the subject.

So, I'm showing my age again now by referencing a kids TV program which ran from 1987 - 1994 called 'Knightmare'.  This ITV programme had a similar theme, based inside a fantasy world and was a very early example of 'virtual reality' with what were at the time cutting-edge computer graphics.

So where is all this going I hear you ask?

Well, in a nutshell that's why I'm studying this degree.  To research, find out and hopefully predict the future of storytelling in new and future media technologies.
 
Some industry speakers are watching trends in media consumerism and are predicting rapid changes.  With questions hanging over how we will receive public 'broadcasting' services such as the BBC in the future, the world of media is evolving at a rate of knots.

Multi-layered storytelling is something which we are beginning to see on our screens.  This is where a viewing audience of, for example a scripted original TV Drama, may very well download the accompanying app, or indeed tweet responses to a dedicated forum, which could influence the outcome and the ending.

Watch this space...

and then the one on your wall, and the one in your pocket ;)