Stripping the Story
When a new digital author is sitting in the cafe, drinking espresso and jotting down initial thoughts for their story idea, the author needs to break the story into small parcels of information. Each of these parcels is a small coherent idea, much like a paragraph. Alexander & Levine define these small pieces of information as microcontent (Web 2.0 Storytelling: Emergence of a new Genre). Microcontent differs from a paragraph in 2 main ways. Firstly, microcontent is not restricted to writing: a picture, a short video, an animation, a podcast are all ways of presenting these small parcels of information. Secondly, the author needs to work out how the story will be affected if the microcontent is read out of the ideal order. The majority of information on the internet is found using search engines. The digital reader may happen upon any of the microcontents from the story (possibly from the digital author or from another digital reader's response). The digital reader may now follow the author's directions for reading the story, or may even establish an alternative set of directions for other digital readers to follow.
When a new digital author is sitting in the cafe, drinking espresso and jotting down initial thoughts for their story idea, the author needs to break the story into small parcels of information. Each of these parcels is a small coherent idea, much like a paragraph. Alexander & Levine define these small pieces of information as microcontent (Web 2.0 Storytelling: Emergence of a new Genre). Microcontent differs from a paragraph in 2 main ways. Firstly, microcontent is not restricted to writing: a picture, a short video, an animation, a podcast are all ways of presenting these small parcels of information. Secondly, the author needs to work out how the story will be affected if the microcontent is read out of the ideal order. The majority of information on the internet is found using search engines. The digital reader may happen upon any of the microcontents from the story (possibly from the digital author or from another digital reader's response). The digital reader may now follow the author's directions for reading the story, or may even establish an alternative set of directions for other digital readers to follow.
Employ Characters
Digitally, life can be given to any character. The fastest growing area on the internet is the social networking sector. The digital author needs to develop their audience and the best way to do this is through online social networking and through viral marketing. Developing audiences online is a major business which commands high professionalism; however, the amateur digital author has the advantage that people love supporting the underdog. To establish an online audience the digital author needs to take the following steps. Firstly, establish links with a digital publisher to provide the technical support and marketing guidance - New Digital Storytelling is a project that can provide prospective authors with this support. Secondly, work in multi-author teams. Maintaining multiple characters online personas will take considerable time as will producing simple videos, podcasts, etc.
Finally the story
A digital author (author team) following the steps above will find that the story jotted down in the cafe in paragraph 2 will be changed by the ideas and feedbackreceived. This feedback will come in 2 ways: directly from the digital reader (emails, comments on blog posts, etc.) and indirectly from the digital readers (reuse and parody of the author's ideas, writing and microcontent). The digital author (author team) following this process will produce a better story through this process but it is a difficult process to follow. The author (author team) must have enough self belief to survive the critisism and enough self confidence to understand the reason they will succeed and not the unscrupulous people who steal their ideas is the quality of their writing.
A digital author (author team) following the steps above will find that the story jotted down in the cafe in paragraph 2 will be changed by the ideas and feedbackreceived. This feedback will come in 2 ways: directly from the digital reader (emails, comments on blog posts, etc.) and indirectly from the digital readers (reuse and parody of the author's ideas, writing and microcontent). The digital author (author team) following this process will produce a better story through this process but it is a difficult process to follow. The author (author team) must have enough self belief to survive the critisism and enough self confidence to understand the reason they will succeed and not the unscrupulous people who steal their ideas is the quality of their writing.
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