Transmedia Storytelling

I think I have a good idea. And I’ve realized only lately how much potential for lateral growth it may have. 

I’ve written a multimedia eNovel about a theme-park designer with marital problems. I’ve embedded in the text about 20 minutes of video and audio plus graphics, concept sketches and a few scripts in JavaScript to animate graphics on the page. I completed the writing in mid-2019, months before Covid-19 entered the consciousness of the US, so the story’s main focus is the political polarization in the Trump era prior to the pandemic. 

While researching multimedia long-form fiction, which is almost non-existent, I ran across the concept of transmedia storytelling, which seemed like a good way to promote the unpublished novel to try and get the attention of a literary agent. The concept of transmedia narrative then began to appeal to me in its own right as a way to expand the narrative and flesh out the characters even more. In September, I created an Instagram account with the central character’s name and have the character posting images, videos and text that add details to characters in the story and the fictional studio where the central character works. 

I’ve realized since then that the character logically would have a LinkedIn account, a blog on Blogger or WordPress, a Flickr account, a YouTube channel, an email address and so on, and the fictional studio would have a website where they promote their online streaming entertainment and news channels and the new theme park they’re building. With a limited budget, I can’t get to all that on my own. But it would be interesting if an immersive-entertainment company took on the project as transmedia promotion for an actual theme park, which would be integrated into the eNovel and replace the fictional theme park currently in the story. 

A transmedia promotional campaign, for a theme park like Europapark or some other non-Disney park, that takes advantage of free access to social media to reach targeted audiences that number in the millions and that engages their continued interest with a serial narrative. That seems like a good idea.