VERBAL - INTERACTIVE GAME

Some years ago I began playing in the digital space and thought it’d be fun to create a location-based, interactive, fan-fiction platform to intersect with existing literary and film properties. The result was Verbal and if you want to promote your novel or film, it plays along the following lines...

Geo-locative Storytelling

Locations hold memories and layers of texture and meaning. They’re portals for entering history and fantasy. Verbal Fiction uses locations to enable audiences to create, share and star in their own fan fiction stories.

To assist your fans in creating story extensions, devise a “call to action” or two.

1. One call to action might take the form of an invitation – such as a letter requesting the recipient (the player) to “fix” a situation.

2. The second call to action might take the form of a visual diary or series of story beats matched to photographs of locations to provide an example of how a situation might be addressed or ‘fixed’. This visual diary will suggest ‘in-points’ in the narrative – a way for the fan to affect an aspect of a story (or subplot) without necessarily altering the primary storyarc.

Then, provide your fans with access to digital assets in the form of a sound library ie ambient sound recordings, sound fx, dialogue grabs, music or similar (or invite the players to create their own original assets and fill out the requisite release documentation). Players can then match the assets to a location in a way that suits the story extension they’re creating.

Instructions for players creating story extensions:

• Contemplate the story extension you want to write.

• Select/find/create/identify (let’s say) ten assets to use in your extension.

• Structure your story arc around your interpretation of the assets.

• Consider a location where each asset might belong. The link between asset and location might be a word, action, sound, image or an abstract reference to an architectural or historical detail. Surfing the net for information about certain aspects of the film or literary location might assist this process.

• Create a story extension using at least 3 locations that link in with your original source (eg a gothic door handle; a water source; a police station).

• For existing locations (provided by the source experience ie film or literary source), write your beat and nominate the matching asset.

• To include new locations, take a photo, fill out the requisite release documentation, add your beat and nominate the matching asset.

• Your story should culminate on the tenth beat.

FAQS

It is not necessary for the ‘problem’ presented in the call to action to be solved, it’s exploring the problem that provides the drama.

An asset, location photo and story beat can be arranged in any order – eg. as with a film, you might prefer the sound to play before the image is seen or the dialogue or narrative beat is read/heard.

Prototype developed with the assistance of MEGA Project (Department for Further Education, Employment, Science & Technology) and Alex Young and Rob Manson from MOB-labs.

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