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.
Storyteller, scholar, consultant. Loving son, husband and father. Kindhearted mischief-maker.
I'm the Director of the Games and Simulation program at Miami University in Ohio, where I am also an Assistant Professor in the College of Creative Arts' Emerging Technology in Business and Design department. I'm also the director of Miami's Worldbuilding and Narrative Design Research Laboratory (WNDRLab). I have a Master's in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a PhD in Media Arts and Practices from the University of Southern California.
In past lives I've been the lead Narrative Producer for Microsoft Studios and cofounder of its Narrative Design team, working on projects like Hololens, Quantum Break and new IP incubation; in a "future of media" think tank for Microsoft's CXO/CTO and its Chief Software Architect; the Creative Director for the University of Southern California's World Building Media Lab and the Technical Director, Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab; a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier College and director of its Whittier Other Worlds Laboratory (WOWLab); the Communications Director and a researcher for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab; a founding member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (now The Futures of Entertainment); a magazine editor; and a award-winning short film producer. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.
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