My Hometown Google Map: Winfield/Teays Valley, WV

Incorporating Storytelling from CGTS

I am really enjoying reading the Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling, and I’m finding a lot of interesting and relevant points to incorporate into my character’s story, and my group’s overarching story.

One of the first things the author, Andrea Phillips, discusses is the importance of worldbuilding, as she says on page 43, “…the most effective tool is to actually create a small piece of your world and give it to your audience to play with.” Because my group is telling a story set in a future time period, and in a world that functions a lot differently from our own, I think it would be really cool to create a physical artifact like Phillips suggests. In the universe of our story, people are sorted into social classes, and the very poor are used as physical labor for the rest of society, so perhaps some sort of government documentation papers would be an interesting, physical property for worldbuilding.

Another interesting point was how Phillips warns on page 48 that, “a common rookie mistake…is to place a character’s online presence in an unchanging state.” This is something I am really aiming to avoid with my character. Because she owns her own business, I am going to use her character blog as the website for “Mystical Madeline’s – Card & Palm Readings.” Her “psychic” abilities play a big role in the group story, so I want to be sure that I utilize her blog to emphasize her abilities and drive forward her interest in these activities.

The section on backstory and exposition was also very intriguing. My character actually has a very elaborate back-story, describing how she made it to the NYC-esque city where our group of characters finally meets. Madeline’s backstory helps create her personality, and how she reacts in certain situations, however her history never plays a huge role in the group story. It’s there to give Madeline more depth, and make her seem more real as a person.

Another thing that Phillips stresses is the importance of conflict in creating a story. Although our group plot has a clear state of conflict, I am not 100% certain on my character’s place in the conflict yet. I’m not sure what she has at stake, if anything at all. Phillips suggests thinking of something your character wants most in life, and then think of a situation in which they can’t have it. This is something I am going to keep in mind, as I continue to develop Madeline as a character and I try to find a balance between her backstory, her place in our group story, and her own personal conflict and resolution.

Twine Narrative

I am using Twine to tell the story of how my character, Madeline Rodgers, went from being a cocktail waitress in a Las Vegas casino to living on the run as a psychic fortune-teller. The actual Twine itself goes through the day she discovered that her long-time boyfriend was a criminal, and she learns that she has to leave town.

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It was 4 AM when Madeline awoke from a deep sleep. She hadn’t been dreaming, but she knew immediately that something didn’t feel right. She grabbed her cell phone off of the night stand. She knew that her boyfriend Ryan needed to be awake at 6:30 for work, so she didn’t want to call and risk waking him. She sent a quick text asking him to call when he woke up. Madeline still didn’t feel relaxed. She decided to call her mother and check in, knowing that there was no time of day when her mother didn’t mind answering a phone call.

Still laying in bed, Madeline dialed the number to her childhood home. A few rings, and her mother’s tired voice answered. “Madeline? Is something wrong?”

“No Mom, I’m fine. I just woke up and had a terrible feeling something was wrong. I just wanted to call and make sure you were OK.” Sharing her fears aloud made them seem more absurd.

“Me and your dad are just fine, sweetie. Try to go back to sleep, you need some rest.”

Feeling slightly relieved by her mother’s reassuring voice, Madeline quickly drifted off back to sleep.

When she woke up at 9 AM, and there was still no call or text from Ryan, she began to worry again. She called his office, knowing he was always there by 8:45. His secretary said he wasn’t in yet. Hearing this, Madeline decided to stop by his apartment on the other side of town. At best, he was sick or he overslept. At worst, however, she didn’t even want to think about.

She rushed out of her house toward her car, but before she opened the driver’s side door, she noticed something was wrong. One of her tires had been slashed. Her stomach sank in fear. There was no time to investigate, however, as she ran to the bus stop to get to Ryan’s as fast as possible.

Madeline became frantic when she met a policeman blocking the door to Ryan’s apartment. After multiple attempts to go in, and requests to see Ryan or speak to him, the policeman told her that he needed to take her to the station for some questions.

At the station, Madeline’s world came crashing down. In the span of just a few minutes, she learned that her loving, caring boyfriend was missing, and he was the lead suspect in 6 ongoing murder investigations in the Las Vegas area, and could she provide any information on his whereabouts.  She told the policeman what she knew about his past, which wasn’t much. He had grown up in Phoenix, his parents were divorced but his father passed away last year. He went to Arizona State for his undergrad, and if she had any more news she’d call.

She rushed home from the police station as soon as possible. She needed time alone to think about what had just happened to her life.

When she arrived home, she noticed an envelope stuck underneath of her welcome mat. It had her named printed on the front. She grabbed it and carried it inside with her, tearing into the envelope. Her blood ran cold as she read the message.

“I know the truth about RF, seek the future uncertainty and find me. Or don’t, and I’ll make sure that you’re just as guilty as he is. – 26505”

What on Earth could that mean? She plugged the numbers into Google. The first result that popped up was a zipcode listing for Morgantown, WV.

“I wonder what’s there for me,” she said to herself. “I guess I really don’t have much to lose at this point…”

Institute Review

I'm going to break my review for The Institute down into a list of "The Good" and "The Bad":

The Good

• It's a really interesting narrative they created. The story of the cult, and Eva, and trying to figure out the mystery is one that appealed to a lot of people. It naturally appeals to people's curiosity, and I believe this is one of the huge factors in how they got so many enthusiastic participants. 

• The beginning of the film was really attention-grabbing. I wasn't sure what I was watching at first, if it was real or fake. It was hard to pick out where the ARG began and the film about it ended.   

• In terms of the game itself, I think people were drawn to it because of how physical and tactile it was. More than any other examples we've seen in class, this one placed the most emphasis on the player actually holding and acquiring items, and actually physically doing things with their bodies. Even the movie itself is like an object of the ARG, because it continues the narrative that the game began.          

 The Bad

• The bright, flashy, "down the rabbit hole" graphics and color scheme of the movie was very distracting and difficult to watch in some places. I was too preoccupied with the things on the screen rather than what was being said. 

• I wish they would have discussed more of the logistics of the game. What I really wanted to know the whole time was how they managed to plan such a large scale event, including how they got the physical properties ready and available for the players. For instance, I would like to know how many of the keys with a map they made and how they made them.                

• While the way the movie worked as part of the transmedia storytelling narrative of the Jejune Institute, I think that as a movie, it would have been more successful with a straightforward and traditional documentary approach. By immersing the movie within the world of the ARG, it makes it alienating to people who don't have any previous knowledge of the game or how those games work in general.

Overall, I liked the movie because I thought the content was interesting. If I was not familiar with the concept of ARGs before watching it, however, I doubt I would have liked it at all. It really requires a familiarity with context to totally understand, especially from the beginning as you are shown the Induction Room and video from the perspective a player.