What is Transmedia Storytelling?

With the introduction of digital media into the world of marketing and communications, traditional methods of “print and publish” are no longer sufficient to captivate both the time (and money) of consumers. This is where transmedia storytelling comes in. As defined by Henry Jenkins, “Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story” (Ryan, 2). In other words, transmedia storytelling boils down to a cross-network of various media that are founded off of a central idea/story but focus on different and unique elements of said story. The prime example of George R.R. Tolkien’s A Song of Fire and Ice, the book series upon which the T.V. show Game of Thrones originated from and where various fan-written stories (aka fanfiction) have been derived from. Each piece of media related to the series – books, movies, television, Internet, music – focuses on different aspects of the novels, but are all still connected under one unifying story.

Figure 1. Process of transmedia storytelling.

Transmedia storytelling has become the new way of media distribution and consumption because of the intimacy and power it provides to the consumers at hand. Stories are meticulously detailed and allow the consumer to develop a strong emotional connection that advertisements and newspapers have failed to achieve. In the spectrum of transmedia storytelling, there is a foundation layers that engage the audience into expanding and searching the story world created for them, “transmedial universes can be understood as intersubjective communicative constructs with a normative component” (Thon, 32). There is a dialogue that is created in transmedia storytelling that isn’t achieved in traditional mediums of communication; a non-linear, two-way connection between the sender and the receiver. This connection is created in a way that makes sense to the audience, as if they themselves are placed directly into the content that they interact with, “The early transmedia storytelling strategies that led viewers through different narrative experiences, separated by a linear temporal structure as well as different devices, have evolved into a layering of experiences onto a single narrative moment” (Evans, 125).

With this new way of communicating, established mediums are already taking heed and integrating transmedia storytelling into the content they produce and the marketing campaigns they run. One example of this is in comics, “…transmedial unity and its entities need to be created and re-created in a process that is continual and historical, showcasing its historicity in the temporal significations of the visuality involved in its storytelling” (Packard, 72). Comics, in particular, tend to adhere to transmedia storytelling because of the nature of its content. Superheroes and villains exists in fictional worlds where the writers have the ability to collaborate with other writers and artists to create a crossover between two characters from different worlds. The intangibility of content like this allows the story to be told in any different ways and through various other outlooks. The emotional investment and the feeling of control that the consumer gains from engaging with it is why transmedia storytelling is so powerful and why it has become the forefront of how media communication works in the 21^st century.

Works Cited:

• Ryan, Marie-Laure. “Transmedia Storytelling: Industry Buzzword or New Narrative Experience?” Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, 2015, pp. 1–19. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/storyworlds.7.2.0001.
• Evans, Elizbeth. “Layering Engagement: The Temporal Dynamics of Transmedia Television.” Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, 2015, pp. 111–128. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/storyworlds.7.2.0111.
• Thon, Jan-Noël. “Converging Worlds: From Transmedial Storyworlds to Transmedial Universes.” Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, 2015, pp. 21–53. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/storyworlds.7.2.0021.
• Packard, Stephan. “Closing the Open Signification: Forms of Transmedial Storyworlds and Chronotopoi in Comics.” Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies, vol. 7, no. 2, 2015, pp. 55–74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5250/storyworlds.7.2.0055.