I’ve been thinking about publishing and fiction and the internet for over a year now, in a dedicated way. I’ve been thinking about storytelling my entire life.
How do stories take hold in the mind of the audience? How is any story changed by the medium of expression? What are the necessary ingredients of a story? What is the craft knowledge any storyteller should have?
I don’t have all the answers. I can get fifty pages into a work and be as lost as anyone who ever wrote. But I also think I understand the basics, and after fifteen years of thinking about interactive storytelling I think I know where the limits are as well.
In time the internet will become a storytelling medium itself. It’s not there yet, but the potential is considerable. To further that goal I’ve put up a site that I hope to grow over time. It’s a storytelling experiment in low-tech transmedia, aimed at entertaining an audience while also discovering and advancing useful internet-based storytelling techniques.
I’ll be discussing NeilRorke.comin greater detail, but for now I wanted to let you know that it’s up and ask for feedback. What do you think?
– Mark Barrett
Blog fiction sees the internet not as a distribution pipeline or as a means of presenting stories, but as a storytelling medium itself. Text, sound, image and movement have all been used to create and embrace fictional characters, events and places in other mediums, and the internet will be no different.
Blog fiction attempts to advance the cause in two ways. First, by being honest, open and upapologetic in this aim. Second, by calling attention to ways in which internet storytelling might move toward mature craft techniques similar to those in print, film, television and theater.
The first step on the journey to realizing the potential of blog fiction is clarifying the medium for the intended audience. Just as a book has its cover, a movie its opening credits, and the stage its rising curtain, blog fiction requires demarcation. Without such a portal the audience may be confused about the intent of the experience, or distracted by authorial intrusions.
To see version 0.1 of a proposed technical and craft solution, click here.
