This document provides an overview of transmedia storytelling and best practices. It discusses what transmedia storytelling is, the importance of building immersive storyworlds and having the audience at the heart. It outlines some of transmedia's top five best practices, including discoverability, participation and retention. It also discusses expressing your premise, providing audience participation opportunities, starting to write a transmedia narrative by scoping the project and developing the story and characters. The document concludes with an example transmedia project called Appi Citi that was created for a festival to increase feelings of connectedness among attendees.

1. How to Approach Transmedia Narratives
BAVC, San Francisco Oct 2012
Robert Pratten
CEO & Founder, Transmedia Storyteller Ltd
@robpratten

2. Conducttr brings your story to life

3. What is Transmedia Storytelling?

4. Storyworld
4

5. Your cause
Storyworld
Your cause
5

6. Audience at the heart

7. Transmedia’s Top 5 Best Practice
Discoverability
Participation Retention
ignite the Core all Appetites

8. How do you
express your premise?

9. Audience participation opportunities
FEEL
Companion Actor
Moral dilemmas, Role-play,
meaningful choices provide building blocks
Outsider Observer
Reflection, consideration Exploring, discovering
THINK
DO
What will the audience do? How will they be engaged?

10. Incitement Be surprising, playful and live?
Bristol,UK 2012; by splash & ripple
Incit

11. Participatory Learning

12. Client’s objectives:
• Teach ethics and financial responsibility
• Self-guided problem solving
• Collaborative working
• New media comprehension
Solution:
• Simulation of real-life scenario

14. Students love to role-play
Fictional environmental activist

15. Traces of hope

16. Starting to Write

17. Scoping the project

18. Story development

19. Example

20. Appi Citi for TransbayFest
• Background
– Something fun & “transmedia” for Transbay Fest
– Theme of “Connectedness” and “Resilient Cities”
• Premise
– connectedness = happiness
• Goal
– Everyone to have a fun time (by connecting)
– Connect people to theme of connectedness
• Participation
– Casual: tweet your mood - “@MCU02 #happy4”
– Deeper: find node pieces – head, heart, soul and ego

21. Story & Characters
• HarryHackster – protagonist
• MCU02 – Harry’s computer
• WingmanSF – Harry’s (comic) friend
• GhostSh3ll – Hackbot (villian)
Story
Harry is local hipster/coder working on a tech start-up called Appi Citi
Appi Citi measures the mood of the city and responds to increase the connectedness
The heart of Appi Citi is a computer called @MCU02

22. Appi Citi
Social media Opening Closing
participation night night
party party

23. Characters and Platforms
• Tumblr – long form content (Story), discovery
• Twitter - discovery #transbayfest, ease-of-use
• SMS – immediacy
• Flyers - discovery
• Optional: Mobile app – discovery + stickiness

24. Appi Citi – initial sketch
Tweet me your mood! #happy1 Collect 4 node pieces from
thru #happy5 or if you're sad around SF to become a node:
#sad1 thru #sad5 where 5 is the Heart, Head, Soul, Ego. Tweet
strongest feeling. #TransBayFest the codeword you find on flyers
#AppiCiti at #TransBayFest

25. Appi Citi - overview

27. Appi Citi on Mobile app

28. Key points
• Know your premise
• Know your audience
• Write for participation

29. The End
Robert Pratten
robert@tstoryteller.com
@robpratten
USA: +1 415 287 4150
Europe: +44 207 193 4567