Significant objects don’t have to appear in every scene, but when they do they should be used with a specific narrative purpose in mind. The appearance of a plot-significant object (e.g. the ring in Lord of the Rings) focuses everyone’s attention — characters and audience alike – and should beContinue Reading
At the scene/sequence level character selection focuses on which of the “cast” members selected at the story level will be included in a particular scene. The majority of scenes in a narrative should involve major characters, although it doesn’t always need to be the protagonist. There may be scenes, forContinue Reading
A sequence is a series of scenes – typically two to five –in which each scene has a greater impact than any previous scene (McKee, 1997, p. 38). The scenes within the sequence are usually connected by either unity of location or unity of time. A potential point at whichContinue Reading
McKee’s hierarchy of story structure provides a set of breakpoints at which a story can be moved from one media platform to another or one medium to another. While McKee developed his hierarchy of story, act, sequence, scene, and beat (McKee, 1997, pp. 34-42) to describe the story structure ofContinue Reading
The fourth level of design tasks is at the scene/sequence level. This is the level at which the design decisions made earlier in the transmedia narrative design process are used in the development of narrative content. Story concepts and narrative structure are translated into individual scenes and sequences and theContinue Reading
The posts in this blog are based on portions of my thesis “Creating Transmedia Narratives: The Structure and Design of Stories Told Across Multiple Media”. I have posted a PDF of the full version of the thesis on SlideShare. You can download it from there. Now that I’ve finished myContinue Reading
One of the key aspects to understanding how to create transmedia narratives was developing an understanding of the many different elements that went into a transmedia narrative. Equally important was understanding the relationships between those elements. The result was an ontology.An ontology is a description of objects, entities, and conceptsContinue Reading
Rather than trying to include a bibliography of citations in the individual posts on this blog, I’ve decided to list the entire bibliography here. In addition to referencing individual aspects of the blog posts, this bibliography can provide a useful guide to literature relevant to transmedia narratives. Aarseth, E. (2004).Continue Reading