When I was a kid, and into my early adulthood, there were still many great storytellers on radio in the US. Jean Shepherd, most famous for his “A Christmas Story”, was on the air every night with his stories when I was a teenager. Paul Harvey would tell us “The Rest of The Story” which I would listen to midday, usually in my car while on the road as a sales representative for that computer company named after a fruit. I thought these guys were amazing craftsmen, keeping me riveted and my mind whirling as they’d get to that final finish. What satisfaction, to be immersed in this story for 10 or 15 minutes, forgetting about my homework or, as an adult, sitting in horrible traffic jams.
As much credit I give these storytellers for using their creative imagination and their voices to spin great tales, I realize that the stories were created in partnership: as a listener, it was up to me to create the visuals in my mind, to fill in the gaps where the storyteller would jump over details, or to decide who was a hero and who was a villain. Listening to those storytellers over the radio was an active process, and now I’m engaged in even more active storytelling by following a stream of tweets about a handful of characters wrapped up in a story about getting married, breaking up, having a baby, falling in love.
Toronto-based screen-writer/author Jill Golick decided to use the tools of the Social Web to tell the story “Crushing It! A Social Media Love Story”. It’s a comic soap opera, that takes place over the course of five days, specifically during Social Media Week, with a cast of characters that would most believably use Twitter, Facebook, blogging and YouTube in their everyday life. She hasn’t made the story strictly about social media either: the focus is on a couple about to get married, and there are no Social Media Gurus directly involved (although the title is a tribute to Gary Vaynerchuk, an early adopter of marketing his wine store through the Internet via his Wine Library webcast, and has since become an author of the book Crush It!, to inspire others). There is the best friend of the groom, co-workers, an extremely-pregnant best friend of the bride, a mom trying to figure Twitter out to keep up with her son…and intrigue! A “secret” twitter account, a spilt cup of coffee that leads to romance…and you, the audience, following on Twitter using the hashtag #cistory, gets to decide the ending.
The core story line is a work in progress, influenced by audience participation. It’s told in short bursts over the course of the day on Twitter, with additional entries to blogs and YouTube that fill out the background, enriching the experience. This is truly what transmedia is about, where many forms of media are used to tell this story, and real people interact directly with the story, affecting characters and outcome. Even Gary Vaynerchuk has started to follow some of the characters—who knows if he’ll offer some advice or get into the action?
What I find most interesting about the process is how the audience will mold and move the story. Much as Scott McCloud would say concerning cartoon/comic or sequential art stories, it’s about what happens between the panels that moves the story along.
I invite you to watch via twitter: http://www.twitter.com/crushingitstory/lists/crushing-it-story or following the hashtag #cistory. You can go on the website http://www.crushingitstory.com for more background on the story, the characters and credits as well.
Here’s the first video from the character Barbara Marks’ YouTube account, talking about how she’s about to get married (or so she thinks):
The story will take place from Monday, February 1, 2010 through Friday, February 5, 2010. Keep me posted on what you think by adding your comments here or on the website.
In the spirit of giving full disclosure about my involvement (and enthusiasm) with this story, I created the web site and am functioning as the administrator of the site. Although I’m not writing a character directly, I do play a part in providing the framework for the action to play out, and I’d like to hear what you think about the whole experience.
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