Transmedia: Storytelling for the Digital Age

Chuck Wendig:  "[...] I wanted to take a look at the film for some of the storytelling lessons it offers — in this case, not negative lessons (of which you could find some, I’m sure), but rather, positive takeaways that might wet your mind whistle when it comes to thinking about your story or other stories or, I dunno, delicious enchiladas."

Richard Edwards:  "Ever wanted to know how Star Wars keeps all of the movies, comics, books and TV shows all in line with each other? Meet the story team" ...

Katharine Trendacosta:  "Whatever question you had after seeing the original movie? The shows answered them. Who built the Stargates? Why are there so many symbols on them? The evil alien pretending to be Ra, where did he come from? Are there other planets out there?"

David Zax:  "San Andreas director Brad Peyton talks about how a childhood rooted in imaginative play has helped him succeed in film."

Charlie Jane Anders:  "Worldbuilding is the bedrock of science fiction and fantasy. We obsess about it constantly, because characters and plots are often only as compelling as the worlds they inhabit. We've decried bad worldbuilding before -- but what makes worldbuilding great?"

Karim Ahmad:  "Consider: your film exists in a storyworld. The time, the place, the characters; you’ve created all of it already. A community of stories, ready to be told. "

Frank Rose:  "Behind the savage bloodshed, naked power lust, and epic betrayals that make HBO's Game of Thrones so enthralling to watch are the languages created for the show."

Borys Kit:  "Marvel's success with "The Avengers" prompts five studios to develop interlocking superhero movies, from Warner Bros.' "Man of Steel" sequel to Sony's "Spider-Man" expansion plan."

Mike Jones:  "Like any narrative genre, Post-Apocalyptic fiction can be understood as a response to social fears - a metaphoric framework for exploring ideas about humanity that stem directly from where we are in the present day " ...

Adam Rogers:  "Kevin Feige helped Marvel unite its superhero movies into one interconnected universe. With a Superman and Batman movie on the way, will Warner Bros. be able to do the same?"

Image: Jon Favreau in Iron Man (Marvel)

Wow! Everything Pixar, a giant transmedia storyworld?! You can see why it took Jon Negroni a year to research this. What do you think?

Al Kennedy:  "I do care about everything I write, but dealing with a hugely loved character and 50 years of world-building – that felt different. Different in the sense of being horrifying and wonderful."

Adam Rogers:  "The shared universe represents something rare in Hollywood: a new idea. It evolved from the narrative techniques not of auteur or blockbuster films but of comic books and TV, and porting that model over isn’t easy. It needs different kinds of writers and directors and a different way of looking at the structure of storytelling itself. Marvel prototyped the process; Lucasfilm is trying to industrialize it."

Adam Rosenberg:  "Like many of the stories coming out in the run-up to The Force Awakens, Uprising exists in a strange place. There's 20 years of history separating Return of the Jedi from the December film, which is a lot of time for any one piece of fiction to cover."

Owen Duffy:  "The original card game has 20 million players worldwide. Now, its publishers are revisiting its leading characters’ origins in an effort to get bigger still" ...

James Whitbrook:  "When a franchise is around for four decades, it can get impossibly unwieldy to try and grasp its lore — and Star Wars canon is no exception. Here's a guide to the origins of Star Wars Canon, the rise and fall of one of the most prominent Expanded Universes in fiction, and where the saga stands with Disney today."

Lauren Davis:  "Earlier this month, Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling released a short piece of prose that offered a quick look at Harry Potter and his Hogwarts classmates as adults. The response indicated that fans are still hungry for stories of the wizarding world—and perhaps it's time for someone other than Rowling to give it to them."

Esther Inglis-Arkell:  "Worldbuilding is a major challenge for science fiction creators -- building a plausible world from scratch involves thinking about lots of variables. But sometimes, to imagine the future, the best way is to look to the past. Classic literature can help you build a world more believably alien than anything you've yet imagined."

Mike Jones:  "What place has a writers-room in the development of a museum exhibition? How do you write a spatial, immersive narrative for a museum audience? What is the role of Genre and Dramatic Storytelling to a Museum collection?"

David Colson:  "Games have always fascinated me far more than any other medium of entertainment and art because of how many levels of interaction they have" ...

A very interesting article on creating storyworlds in video games.

Kirsty Stark (Producer), Ella Macintyre (PMD) and Victoria Cocks (Writer/Director):  "One of the first questions we’re asked when people hear about Wastelander Panda is “How did you come up with the idea?”  It’s a strange concept – the meshing of two ideas that don’t necessarily fit – but this seemingly incongruous pairing is one reason we believe the project has had so much attention so far" ...

A great article about a great project!

Charlie Jane Anders:  "Worldbuilding is an essential part of any work of fiction. But especially for science fiction or fantasy, it's the lifeblood of storytelling. But when worldbuilding fails, it can wreck your whole story, and leave your characters feeling pointless. Here are seven deadly sins of worldbuilding" ...