Hot on the heels of my euphoria of slotting in that Stephen King quote, I’ve had a breakthrough in my THESIS research. Two years of research into world-building, narrative creation, storytelling, and all the associated media forms have just boiled down into one fantastic sentence, which I am hereby giddily dubbing “Long’s Law of Transmedia Aesthetics”:
A storyteller looking to craft a potential transmedia narrative should carefully craft the world in which that story exists, and then make passing references to other events, characters or places in that world during the course of the narrative to simultaneously spark the imaginations of his or her audience through negative capability and provide potential openings for future migratory cues.
Rereading it now, it strikes me as so bone-headedly obvious, but maybe that’s the sign of a great observation. I’ll probably think better of this post later this afternoon and yank it down when I get back, but right now I’m going to take a well-deserved break. Be back in a bit.
Boo-yah. If nothing else comes out of this thesis, I’m going to be happy with just this.