Digital Storytelling: A Creator's Guide to Interactive Entertainment

Equally useful for seasoned professionals and those new to the field, Carolyn Handler Miller covers effective techniques for creating compelling narratives for a wide variety of digital media. Written in a clear, non-technical style, it offers insights into the process of content creation by someone with long experience in the field.

Whether you're a writer, producer, director, project manager, or designer, 'Digital Storytelling' gives you all you need to develop a successful interactive project.

*Learn about the ground-breaking work being done in new forms of narrative like Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), webisodes, user-generated content, mobile entertainment and transmedia storytelling

*Gain insights from case studies of cutting-edge projects from a variety of different media, including the Internet, video games, interactive television, virtual reality and interactive cinema

*Discover new uses of digital storytelling for both entertainment and entertainment blends — projects that teach, inform, and promote

*See how to combine the best of both worlds – classic and twenty-first century storytelling techniques

Carolyn Handler Miller is one of the pioneering writers in the field of non-linear entertainment, and as an award-winning Hollywood screenwriter, brings a unique perspective to the craft of digital storytelling. She has worked as a writer or writer-content designer on over forty new media projects, including the landmark Carmen Sandiego series and the interactive version of the Pixar-Disney film, Toy Story, one of the most popular CD-ROMs ever released. Her work as a digital storyteller includes entertainment, educational, informational and training projects made for video games, the Web, interactive TV, smart toys, and transmedia projects. She is also an international speaker and teacher on the subject of digital storytelling, having given workshops and talks in Johannesburg, Rome and Paris, as well as teaching interactive narrative and video game development for the University of New Mexico.

Carolyn Handler Miller, as one of the pioneering writers in the field of nonlinear entertainment, and as an award-winning Hollywood screenwriter, brings a unique perspective to the new craft of digital storytelling. Her work as a digital storyteller includes entertainment, educational, informational and training projects made for CD-ROMs, kiosks, the Web, smart toys, and integrated media projects.

PART I NEW TECHNOLOGIES, NEW CREATIVE OPPORTUNITIES:

1. Storytelling, Old and New

2. Backwater to Mainstream: The Growth of Digital Entertainment

3. Moving Toward Convergence

PART II CREATING STORY-RICH PROJECTS:

4. Interactivity and its Effects

5. Old & New Tools

6. Characters, Dialogue and Emotions

7. Structure in Digital Storytelling

8. Tackling Projects for Children

9. Using a Transmedia Approach

10. Creating a Work of Digital Storytelling: The Development Process

PART III: HARNESSING DIGITAL STORYTELLING FOR PRAGMATIC GOALS

11. Using Digital Storytelling to Teach and Train

12. Using Digital Storytelling for Promotion, Advertising and Other Business Purposes

13. Using Digital Storytelling to Inform

PART IV: MEDIA AND MODELS, UNDER THE HOOD:

14. Video games

15. The Internet

16. Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs)

17. Alternate Reality Games (ARGs)

18. Interactive Television

19. Smart Toys and Life-Like Robots

20. Mobile Devices

21. Interactive Cinema

22. Immersive Environments

23. DVDs

24. Electronic Kiosks

PART V: CAREER CONSIDERATIONS:

25. Working as a Digital Storyteller

26. Creating Your Own Showcase

Conclusion

Glossary

Additional Readings

Index