Digital Narratives

From Whiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

English Department, Duke University Instructor: Whitney Trettien (whitney.trettien@duke.edu | @whitneytrettien) Fall Semester, 2013

For as long as anyone can remember, novelists like Gore Vidal and Phillip Roth have been sounding the death knell of narrative, killed off (we hear) by the rise of screen-based digital media. While it’s true that the sale of printed novels has declined, other forms of interactive storytelling – from video games to “netprov” and virtual reality fiction – have demonstrated how narrative persists , even prospers, in new media. In fact, in Japan, SMS technology has breathed new life into the novel through “cell phone literature,” a popular genre written and distributed in text-message-sized snippets.

This course considers what it means to tell stories in an age of digital media. We’ll begin by writing a traditional short story (fiction or creative non-fiction), focusing on plot and structure. We’ll then experiment with “translating” this narrative into a variety of new media forms. How does your story change when told as an interactive fiction? as a video game? as a hypertext novel? or on different platforms like Twitter, YouTube, Facebook or Second Life? With each “translation,” we’ll read relevant texts on narratology and media theory as a way of giving us a shared vocabulary for discussing these new genres, and we’ll explore some of the best examples of creative writing in them.

This course will be run as a workshop. While there will be a significant amount of reading (or playing, or watching, or listening) each week, emphasis will be on 1) learning some basic skills necessary to work within new media genres and 2) playfully, creatively experimenting with these skills. You’ll leave this course with a deeper understanding of the architecture of new media, including the World Wide Web and audiovisual forms like digital film and video games, as well as with a suite of basic technical literacies applicable across all disciplines.

Assignment

The core assignments of this class are:

  • a weekly remediation, or rewriting, of your story
  • and a final project that significantly augments or expands one week’s remediation, paired with a short “artist’s statement” contextualizing your work.

Think of the weekly remediations as series of experiments in form. How does your narrative change when told only in images? or audio? What is your story like as a first-person interactive game? The goal is not to create, e.g., the perfect hypertext – indeed, some of your stories won’t fit well in certain media – but to test the limits of narrative under strict conditions, while expanding your horizon as a storyteller (and gaining a few useful skills along the way).

In the final project, you will transform one of these prototypes into a polished, ready-to-publish piece. You will contextualize this work with a brief (4-6 page) artist’s statement, drawing on some of the critical literature and examples we’ve looked at all semester. This project is an opportunity to apply what we learned about different forms under strict experimental conditions to a mixed-media narrative. You will be graded on how effectively you use different media to tell your story; a more detailed rubric will be forthcoming.

Begin thinking about the final project very early in the semester – as early as the first week, while you are writing your story.

Readings

All readings are either available online (links provided in the schedule) or via our class blog.

Most of the readings are offered as examples of storytelling within a given week’s medium, or descriptions of how someone has used the medium effectively. Explore them for inspiration. Although you won’t be tested on the content of the readings, I will refer to them frequently in class and will expect you to be able to discuss them.

Grading

Each of the 8 iterations of your story account for 7% of your grade each, for 56% of your total grade. If you complete a given week’s story on time and show a thoughtful engagement with the task, you’ll receive all 7 percentage points for your story. I will deduct 2 percentage points for every day your story is late, and reserve the right to deduct percentage points if your work shows that a lack of time or attention when into it. If you don’t turn an assignment in at all, you’ll of course receive 0 percentage points for that week.

Participation in class workshops (10%) and our class blog (9%) accounts for another 19% of your total grade. “Participation” means not only showing up for class but thoughtfully and attentively taking part in our discussions of each other’s work both online and in person. If you do this, you’ll receive all 19 percentage points. If you have any concerns about whether your in-class participation is adequate, please get in touch with me.

You’ll turn in your sketchbook and a portfolio collecting all 8 of your stories at the end of the semester. This is worth 5% of your total grade.

Your final project is worth 20% of your total grade. A more detailed rubric on how I will be grading these projects is forthcoming.

On Attendance

Because this class only meets once a week, it is imperative that you attend every class. This class is run like a workshop; your classmates are relying on your attendance to receive feedback on their work.

That being said, I understand emergencies. You may miss one class this semester, no questions asked. Each additional unexcused absence will result in a reduction of 3 points from your participation.

If you find yourself needing to be absent and you’ve already used your one freebie, notify me as soon as possible to arrange for an excused absence. In the case of excused absences, you’re still responsible for turning in any assignments on time. I reserve the right to require additional work from you in the case of an excused absence.

Late Policy

As I note in the “Grading” section above, each day that one of your weekly remediations is late will result in a 2-percentage-point reduction from your 7 points possible for that assignment.

Except under emergency situations, I won’t accept late final projects. If you anticipate needing to turn your project in late, be in touch with me as early as possible to make an arrangement with me.

As for being late to class: don’t. It will result in a deduction in your participation grade; but, more importantly, it’s just rude.

Technology Policy

Please bring your laptop to class. We may be using it to look at different examples together. However, know that I know when you’re looking at your time-wasting website of choice (trust me, it is really obvious to every one of your professors), and will probably ask you to put it away. It’s really rude to hover behind a screen when one of your classmates is sharing work he or she may have sweated over for hours.

Please turn your cell phones to silent during class.

Creating Community

Our class is a semi-private community, brought together by the shared goal of creating knowledge together while improving each other’s work. Be prudent in how you discuss your classmates’ work outside the classroom. We each write with the knowledge that it will be shared with 15 classmates, not with each person’s Twitter followers, Facebook friends or lunchmates. If you want to share some aspect of someone’s work, ask her permission first.

Respond to your classmates with openness and courtesy. Sharing one’s writing is difficult. We’re practicing not only our storytelling, but the art of giving, receiving and responding to criticism.

Don’t plagiarize. If you’re unclear about what counts as plagiarism, talk to me.

Approach me with any concerns. You can review Duke’s Community Standard here: http://www.registrar.duke.edu/bulletins/communitystandard/

Getting in Touch

I’m here to help you learn and improve as a writer and as a critical thinker. Please approach me with any questions, comments or concerns. The best way to get in touch is through email (whitney.trettien@duke.edu). I’m also available to you on Twitter (@whitneytrettien). I don’t hold office hours but am happy to make an appointment with you.

Schedule

August 29: Introduction

September 5: Text

Readings:

  • Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, “Introduction,” Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics (London: Taylor & Francis, 2002), 1-6.
  • Ruth Page and Bronwen Thomas, “Introduction,” New Narratives: Stories and Storytelling in the Digital Age (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 1-16.
  • Mieke Bal, “Introduction,” Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 3-10.

In-class examples:

Assignment:

  • Write a story. It should be roughly the length of a 3-5-page paper, between 600-1500 words. It should have enough narrative content to give you material to work with throughout the semester, but not so long that you’ll need to remediate a novel every week. You should be interested enough in it to want to spend the next three months working with it. This story can be fiction, creative nonfiction, nonfiction, or anything in between. It should have a plot (i.e., something should happen – this is not an imagist poem), but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t focus on crafting your language. Think of this as a first draft of a story you would want to publish in a venue appropriate to the genre.

September 12: NO CLASS

Although we won’t be meeting this week, use this time to begin exploring the hypertext packet. You will thank yourself in a week.

Possible visit to Special Collections.

September 19: Print

Readings:

  • N. Katherine Hayles, “Print is Flat, Code is Deep: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis,” Poetics Today 25.1 (2004), 67-90.
  • David Foster Wallace, “Host,” The Atlantic Monthly (April 2005).
  • Chapter 1 of The People of Paper, by Salvador Plascencia.
  • Chapter 1 of Woman’s World, by Graham Rawle (pp. 1-23).

In-class examples:

  • Jacques Derrida, Glas (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986).
  • Guy Debord, Memoires (Paris: Editions Allia, 2004).

Assignment:

  • Compose a printed story from your text. It can be bound or unbound; it can be cut and paste from found print­­ed objects or designed on your own in Word or InDesign, then printed. Use the examples I've provided for inspiration. The aim in this exercise is to investigate about how physical substratum of a printed text can alter or augment its meaning.

September 26: Hypertext

Readings:

  • Jay David Bolter and Michael Joyce, “Hypertext and Creative Writing,” Hypertext ’87 Papers (November 1987).
  • Michael Joyce, “Hypertext Narrative,” in Of Two Minds: Hypertext Pedagogy and Poetics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), 189-197.
  • Michael Joyce, afternoon: a story.

In class examples:

  • Edward Packard, The Cave of Time (Choose Your Own Adventure) (Bantam, 1979).

Assignment:

  • Remediate your story in hypertext. Although you are welcome to design your website with pretty colors and fonts, please focus on the mechanism of interaction – which words link where, which pathways through the story are open to your reader, which are closed. Many examples of hypertext fiction use sound or images, but we'll be focusing strictly on the text.
  • Note that this week you should also begin thinking about next week’s exercise: transforming your story into an event unfolding in time. Begin choosing what medium you wish to use (Twitter, SMS, Tumblr, a blog), set it up and begin marking out a schedule for this work.

October 3: Unfolding in Time

Readings:

  • Brenda Laurel, “Two Selections by Brenda Laurel,” in New Media Reader, ed. by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Nick Montfort (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), 563-573.

Assignment:

  • Produce your story as an event that unfolds over time on the web. The story’s unfolding needn’t be finished by class but should be significantly underway. If you’re stuck, imagine yourself as staging a play for the internet. What would be your theatre? Who would be your actors? How would people watch it?

October 10: Audio

Readings:

Assignment:

  • Produce your story entirely in audio. You needn’t (and in fact shouldn’t) just read your initial text story; rather, think of this as a radio play. What kind of sound effects do you need, if any? What kind of background noises? Will you only speak the dialogue, or will you need to narrate some of the description?

October 17: Visual

Readings:

  • Scott McCloud, “Setting the Record Straight,” Understanding Comics (HarperPerennial).
  • Bayeux Tapestry.

In-class examples:

  • Chris Ware, Building Stories (Pantheon, 2012).

Assignment:

  • Produce your story entirely in visual material. You may interpret “visual material” however you like – photographs, art, colors, and so on. You can even sculpt your story if you’d like. Because we want to focus on the narrative potential of visual material, whatever you use should be silent and without text.

October 24: NO CLASS

Possible visit to the DiVE.

October 31: Game

Readings:

  • Marie-Laure Ryan, “The Interactive Onion: Layers of User Participation in Digital Narrative Texts,” in New Narratives: Stories and Storytelling in the Digital Age, ed. By Ruth Page and Bronwen Thomas (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), 35-62.
  • “I. Cyberdrama” section, First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, edited by Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2004), 1-34.

Assignment:

  • Storyboard and/or prototype your story into an interactive game. Who are the players? How do they win (or lose)? What medium would it be played in (board game, video game, interactive fiction)?

November 7: WORKSHOP

Workshop final project ideas. Details forthcoming.

November 14: Augmented Reality

Readings:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FsemGrYvYs

Assignment:

  • Storyboard and/or prototype your narrative as an augmented reality experience – that is, a narrative that can be read, experienced or played within a particular space. Where would your narrative be played? By whom? What are the mechanisms of interaction and experience (i.e., the tools and technologies you’re using)?

November 21: WORKSHOP

Workshop final project ideas (7 classmates). Details forthcoming.

November 28: NO CLASS

December 5: Final Projects

Show and tell of final projects. Email any digital materials to me by 2pm on the day of class.

Retrieved from "http://whitneyannetrettien.com/whiki/index.php?title=Digital_Narratives&oldid=2910"