Digital Stories... in search of the form

CHECK OUT - http://www.sixtostart.com/we-tell-stories/

An interesting mix of digital stories - and ideas for digital story forms - by Penguin.

Stories range from 'choose your own adventure' to tales told through multiple blogs and micro-blogs to 'live online' tellings and a mystery grafted onto google maps.

Personally, I found the google map project the most engaging - short, concise text that reads easily online - as well as a dirty big narrative hook (always helps)... the map aspect was novel, but under-explored - the constant ariel view kept me at a distance - at odds with the intimate nature of first person narratives. In this story, I think audio would have worked better in the places the author had text.

I find 'choose your own adventure' stories a bit lame - I lose the 'suspended disbelief' you need to get wrapped up in the text - it also seems like too much work (it it requires this much effort I may as well be writing my own story rather than colouring in between the lines of someone else's) - and then there is the nut at the end you don't really get... the thing narrative structure is designed to do... the author makes some kind of point or has something to say...

I didn't give the multiple-blog or online performance story much time - the approach was confusing as I didn't know where to start or a sense of what I was getting into - and the whole thing was quite old by the time I got to it for the first time... so it felt like picking over cold, half eaten fish and chips wrapped in yesterdays newspaper.

[From kyla brettle... B L O G S: Digital Stories... in search of the form]