Transmedia Toe-dipping: Kiss Kill by Jeni Mawter in Viewpoint magazine Vol 20 No 2, 2012, Pp. 20-21

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How do you man up when you’re down? When 16 year old Mat meets Elle she seems perfect. But over time Elle becomes more controlling and aggressive. Feeling like no one will believe him Mat isolates himself more and more. Their relationship fragments then explodes.

Stories are shaped to fit their form. The oral narratives of the past included epics, sagas, lyric poems, ritual songs, genealogies and panegyrics (praise poems) which were modified to suit a particular audience or occasion, and were often told with an intention to recycle knowledge back to the listener. With the development of writing and printing, story structures changed and moved from an oral-aural-sensory focus to a visual focus. With print, “words became things” that could be arranged on a page (Ong 1988, p. 118). With print, story closure was encouraged, a finality not seen in the oral tradition.

Today we are in the midst of another technology explosion so that once again, stories can change. I seek to take storytelling into the future. As a futurist I am inspired by the views of Brian O’Leary and Hugh McGuire in their book A Futurist’s Manifesto (2012), and by Mark Pesce who I first heard speak at the Sydney Writer’s Festival in 2010. In terms of transmedia storytelling, inspiration comes from Frank Rose’s The Art of Immersion (2011), and by transmedia storytellers such as Jennifer Wilson, Jeff Gomez, Carlo Scolari, Brian Clark, Lina Srivastava, Simon Pulman, Rob Prattan, Andrea Phillips, Scott Walker, April Arrglington, Alison Norrington, Lance Weiler as well as Australia’s own Dr Christy Dena and Gary P. Hayes.

David Varela has stated that “the medium carries a lot of the story’s power” (personal author notes, 2011). The Kiss Kill story is about a disintegrating and explosive relationship. In these fragments lies its power, with multiple texts and transmedia giving the fragments form. Varela’s comments confirmed what I had already been experimenting with. I combined prose with other narratives such as scripts, songs, notes, poems, comics, essays, texting, photos and more. Transmedia was used through blogs, YouTube, iTunes, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.
What is Transmedia storytelling?

Definitions of transmedia storytelling differ but Simon Staffans says that transmedia ‘is telling stories over a number of media platforms, stories that are connected to a higher or lesser degree, but always connected and rooted in a common story world’ (2011, p 6). For Kiss Kill, Mat’s world is the story world.

Not only can readers interact with the story, in transmedia they can also participate in the story. Henry Jenkins (2003) makes this distinction between interactivity and participation:
“interactivity” refers to “preprogramed entertainment experiences” and “participation” to “tak[ing] the resources offered by a text and push[ing] it in a range of directions which are neither preprogrammed nor authorized by the producers.” So, to put it simple, interactivity gives the users a pre-set choice (ending a, b, or c; should the character do this or that next) while participation has users ‘do their own thing’ with the existing content – expanding it, altering it, continuing it, etc

Kiss Kill was written with no order. Mark Twain said that, “Ideally a book would have no order to it, and the reader would have to discover his own.” This appealed to me. Ideas appeared organically, were researched, created, randomly collated, and only after these processes did the novel take form. Mat’s story is a story of a boy who triumphs over a relationship with his abusive narcissistic girlfriend. The potential of Narcissism to destroy relationships (friends, family and communities) is explored, but Kiss Kill takes the traditional abuse story and inverts it so that young males can also be victims of relationship and emotional abuse, or bullying. With a rise in the incidence of Narcissism (Twenge and Campbell 2009, Twenge 2010) Kiss Kill is a modern cautionary tale. Despite the subject matter Kiss Kill is humorous and heart-warming, ending with optimism. However, out of concern for my readers I can direct those in need to organisations such as “Headspace, Australia’s National Youth Mental Health Foundation” and “Mensline Australia”.

Traditional storytelling involved ‘Listen, why I tell you a story.’ Transmedia storytelling changes this to ‘Let’s tell a story together’. Young adults (teens to twentysomethings) are adept at reading multi-platform narratives. They are used to reading non-linearly and they are used to interacting with narrative through sharing (social media) and co-creation. Mash-ups are a popular example of co-creation. Kiss Kill consciously provides multiple openings into the story for co-creation and the multiple platforms allow for engagement and participation. Readers can engage with me as the author on my blog (www.jenimawter.com), or Mat the character on his blog http://www.whyidontgetgirls.com/. Facebook, Twitter (@mawter @kisskilldigital) and Pinterest are also used for sharing the story experience. Kiss Kill readers share their creations on Mat’s blog. They have created music and recorded their own versions of ‘Thought I Knew’ as well as made a YouTube for the haunting scene ‘How Do You Define a Man?’ Individual as well as community creation is encouraged so that this story can continually evolve.

As a writer I am aware that today’s young adult readers want convenience and connection. They want characters with emotional appeal, relevant to their own social networks, and about whom they care. Issues such as relationships, bullying and depression are relevant to them. In this way I targeted my reader and was actively involved in creating my audience. My ultimate goal is to build Mat’s fan base. The inclusion of the character blog deepens the audience’s emotional engagement as well as connects the character with my author brand. It inspires community comment, sharing and creation. Kiss Kill went on to leverage a community of creators, such as musicians and actors who produced the iTunes and YouTubes, and YA bloggers who wrote reviews.

Transmedia is not a new form of storytelling. However, it usually involves large entertainment corporations with big budgets such as television (BBC Sherlock series, Nike promotion); film (Breathe by Yomi Ayeni); alternate reality gaming (Perplex City) or live action theatre (Clockwork Monkey). In terms of children’s stories David Levithan’s “39 Clues” (Scholastic USA) was one of the first multiplatform stories published for children, but again with a sizable allocated budget. To the best of my knowledge Kiss Kill is one of the first transmedia young adult novels published. It is published for a global market, by a small publisher, on a minimal budget.

As a solitary writer I needed to educate myself on: multiple platform storytelling; writing non-linear narrative; and technology developments that seem to change daily. Instead of a steep learning curve, I am on a trajectory. Traditional publishing is yet to embrace transmedia storytelling so I was delighted when Sarah Bailey launched her ePublishing house “Really Blue Books” and rose to the challenge of transmedia. Every step of the journey has involved forging new pathways. Traditional processes in publication, distribution, sales, reviewing, publicity, and competitions are not applicable. These words of another storytelling futurist could well be my own:
I soon discovered that innovation is a messy business filled with long stretches of doubt, countless false starts, and a constant black cloud of indecision. There was no road map to follow, no guarantee that a story told this way would result in anything more than a pile of broken parts, (Patrick Carman, 2011).

Australia does not yet have a huge transmedia community. Last year I was fortunate to attend a conference on Creativity and Technology in New York and to speak with Bob Stein from if:book New York. Through social media I can communicate with transmedia storytellers globally. Online groups such as Digital Story World, Tools of Change, Transmedia LA, as well as bloggers and transmedia storytellers keep me up-to-date with the latest developments. Last year I attended the if:book non-conference in Melbourne and was fortunate to meet with Dr Christy Dena. Australia’s App developer Karen Robertson (Treasure Kai) has been both an inspiration and support.

Finally, I must make the point that not all stories are suited to transmedia. There will always be a place for traditional narrative. However, it is my belief that through daily digital technology developments Kiss Kill barely scratches the surface of possibility. It is exciting to explore new territories such as alternative income generating systems like crowdsourcing through Kickstarter, Indigogo and Pozible (Australia) instead of Advances and Royalties.

Where to from here? Who knows! I’m writing my future history in the ‘now’.

References
Carman, Patrick “Read Beyond the Lines: Transmedia has changed the very notion of books and reading” in http://www.thedigitalshift.com/2011/11/transliteracy/transmedia-and-its-multiplatform-brethren-has-changed-the-very-notion-of-books-and-reading/ November 4, 2011

Jenkins, Henry “Transmedia Storytelling: Moving characters from books to films to video games can make them stronger and more compelling” in http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/13052/page3/ published by MIT /January 15, 2003

O’Leary, Brian and McGuire, Hugh A Futurist’s Manifesto: A Collection of Essays from the Bleeding Edge of Publishing, O’Reilly Media Publisher (2012)

Staffans, Simon One Year in Transmedia Storytelling 2nd Ed Blog posts are extracts from the blog SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS at http://muchtoolong.blogspot.com

Twain, Mark (n.d.) BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved March 27, 2012, from BrainyQuote.com Web site: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mark_twain.html

Twenge, Jean M “The Narcissism Epidemic” in Psychology Today, May 12, 2010

Twenge, Jean M. & Campbell, W. Keith The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. (2009)

Ong, Walter J Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, New Accents. Ed., Terence Hawkes, New York: Methuen, 1988

David Varela, Digital Storytelling: Seminar organised by the Australian Society of Authors, Sydney 2011.

Books that have a Transmedia Component

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For the upcoming SCBWI Conference Sydney 2012 I will be speaking on a panel, ‘Going Digital’.

I have put together a preliminary list of published books with Transmedia Elements as follows:

1) MARK Z. DANIELEWSKI: HOUSE OF LEAVES House of Leaves (2000)
One of the pioneering cross-platform books from 2000. Portions of the manuscript were available on various sites around the Web, hyperlinked to one another. The author’s sister, the singer/songwriter Poe, recorded the album Haunted as an extension of the novel, featuring tracks like “House of Leaves”, “Exploration B” and “5&½ Minute Hallway.”

2) SEAN STEWART & JORDAN WEISMAN, CATHY’S BOOK: IF FOUND CALL (650) 266-8233 (2006).
October 2006, Running Press Kids, an imprint of Perseus Books, published the novel Cathy’s Book: If Found Call 650-266-8233, written by co-authors Jordan Weisman and Sean Stewart.

3) RICK RIORDAN, THE 39 CLUES: THE MAZE OF BONES (2008).
Scholastic’s The 39 Clues. Rick Riordan, the author of the first book in the series, created an outline for the overarching story over the course of the books to guide subsequent work-for-hire authors including Gordan Korman, Peter Lerangis, and Jude Watson.

4) J.C. HUTCHINS & JORDAN WEISMAN, PERSONAL EFFECTS: DARK ART (2009).

5) PATRICK CARMAN, SKELETON CREEK: RYAN’S JOURNAL (2009) [hereinafter SKELETON CREEK].
Patrick Carman’s work on the Skeleton Creek transmedia novel series represents another model for transmedia publishing being part book, part online video series.

6) ANTHONY E. ZUIKER & DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI, LEVEL 26: DARK ORIGINS (2009).

7) SPARROW HALL: TWO BLUE WOLVES and NIGHTWORK (2011) Paperback with Digital Download
Expanding the book experience by having the story unfold across multiple mediums, through various perspectives. The two short stories include music, video, art, live performance, and web-specific content developed by a cadre of artists from around the world.

8) AMANDA HARVARD: THE SURVIVORS – IMMERSEDITION (2011)
An interactive e-book that allows readers to dive deeper into the history and mythology of the story world. The book includes a soundtrack of thematic songs curated around the story.

9) JENI MAWTER: KISS KILL (Really Blue Books, 2012)
Young Adult novel told with multiple text-types and encourages audience interaction with author and character via blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. Audience co-creation seen on iTunes, YouTube and digital artwork.

10) MAX GIOVAGNOLI: THE SECRET MESSAGE OF FALLING STARS (Anagramma, 2012)
Max Giovagnoli has recently published his novel “The Secret Message of Falling Stars” which is soft fantasy about parallel worlds, which uses complimentary iPad and iPhone apps to track characters through two alternate realities.

11) J.K. ROWLING: WONDERBOOK – BOOK OF SPELLS (2012)
J.K. Rowling’s ‘Book of Spells’ aims to bring a magical book to life on the PlayStation 3 via augmented reality.

XMediaLab Global Media Ideas 2012 in Sydney, Australia

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Attended the mind-expanding XMediaLab Think Tank in Sydney last week and am sharing my favourite quote(s) from each presenter.

1) Don’t tell me what I want. Tell me what I NEED to want.
Kenneth Hertz on Music, Marketing and Money

2) Use creativity and innovation to do some ‘good things’ for others along the way.
Ian Charles Stewart on More Interesting Dreams

3) Don’t hate. Participate and Digital media = Participatory media
Corvida Raven on Learning to Listen

4) Interaction Design designs for people’s behaviour in order to provide a service for the way people wish to act, examples include iPod, WiiFit, Instagram
Steve Baty on Beyond the Interface

5) Our future will include UStream ie live video streaming globally.
Michael Naimark on Global Time, Global Space and Global Data

6) Our aim is to create an un-holdable China.
Helen Chen on Creative Futures in China

7) Indians today have personal aspirations for a different future for themselves and their children.
Domestic consumption and entrepreneurship is creating a huge industry of local Start-Ups going global so that they’re seeing Reverse Innovation.
Rajiv Prakash on India Start-Ups

8) Collective individualism gives communities a collective vision
Devices are the enablers of new collaborative and collective experiences eg smartphones
Bonnie Shaw on The Collective Individualism of People, Place and Technology.

9) There is a strong relationship between ‘Play’ and ‘Story’
Warren Coleman on Play Stations

10) The Art Form of storytelling is changing with the Internet unlocking of new voices.
Arvind Ethan David on ‘Small and Global’

11) The digital landscape in Indonesia is vibrant today.
Shinta W. Dhanuwardoyo on Vibrant Story in Indonesia

12) The challenge for Australian homes when they get the Next Generation Broadband Network is what to do with its enormous potential eg ambient intelligence.
Colin Griffith on Broadband Innovation

13) The new competition for television comes from new multiple digital platforms in terms of: Search; Digital Retail; Social; Consumer Devices + Apps; and Connected TV (XBOX 360).
Tablets are the consumers’ Second Screen, linking viewing on TV with smart phones.
Gerry Gouy on The War for Your TV

14) Networking, personalisation and mobility will radically change user patterns to create new paradigms in a multimedia market.
Computers are being turned into an appliance.
Anuraj Gambhir on New Paradigms: Visions of Future Mobility & Immersive Experiences

15) Because network activities are measured we are able to use this data to make it into a game.
Dr Steffen Walz on Network Detox: Connected Futures in Play

Came away from this incredibly successful day with mind explosion and brain strain 🙂

Twelve Steps of Recovery from Relationship Abuse with a Narcissist – by “Mat” from Kiss Kill …

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Narcissism: One boy's story of survival

Mat survives his NPD girlfriend

Masochists Anonymous

The Fellowship of Recovering Teenage Masochists

Hello. My name is Mat and I am a recovering teenage masochist.

The only requirement for membership to the Fellowship of Recovering Teenage Masochists is the desire to disentangle from a relationship with a psycho bitch (PB) and to raise your self-esteem and to stop setting yourself up for pain.

For a long time you have been heavily emotionally invested in feelings of anger, fear, rejection and humiliation. Be emotionally honest with yourself. Ask yourself: What’s in it for me? Why don’t I let go? Why do I keep coming back for more (more of what)?

The Twelve Steps of Recovering Teenage Masochists.

1. I admit that I am powerless over the psycho bitch – that my life has become unmanageable.
2. I believe that a Power far greater than myself can hurtle me towards insanity. (Remember, the psycho bitch believes she is God)
3. I have made a decision to reclaim my will and put my life together and will no longer be influenced by She Who Thinks She is God.
4. I have made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself and my relationship with She Who Thinks She is God and concluded I’m a really nice guy.
5. I admit to myself the exact nature of my wrongs and realise my error lay in the malignant optimism of the abused.
6. I am entirely ready to remove from my life She Who Thinks She is God and all defects in her character.
7. I humbly ask myself to forgive myself for the delusional shortcoming that She Who Thinks She is God can change.
8. I include myself in the list of people that She Who Thinks She is God has intentionally harmed.
9. I apologise to myself for putting me in a position to be injured.
10. I continue to search my heart and soul so that when I encounter another person who thinks they are God I will promptly admit it to myself and run.
11. I pray that I retain this knowledge and have the will and the power to always carry this out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these Steps, I will try to carry this message to all other masochists caught up in this cycle of pain and to practise these principles in all my relationships.

Pain can be physical or psychological. Physical pain includes hitting, slapping, punching, shoving, kicking, biting, hair-pulling or that inflicted by the use of a weapon. Psychological pain occurs when someone embarrasses you, puts you down, swears at you, controls or manipulates you, prevents you from seeing your family and friends, spreads rumours or gossip about you, or makes you feel bad about yourself.

In conclusion, repeat out loud every time you make contact with a psycho bitch: ‘I have seen the enemy and it is me’. Repeat a thousand times if you have to.

This site is sponsored by recovered teenage masochists who are no longer PB-magnets or under PB- attack.

Jeni Mawter and Kiss Kill: A Foray into Transmedia Storytelling

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Kiss Kill was written a few years before I’d heard the word ‘Transmedia’. I wrote Kiss Kill on the back of two series, the humorous ‘So’ series and the adventure/mystery ‘Freewheeler’ series, both published by HarperCollins Publishers Australia. For several years I had been in the blessed position of writing books on commission. Year in, year out, I wrote with a clear sense of story structure and audience. When the series stopped I found myself in a position to write something completely different. For the first time in a long time I could return to early writing roots and basically “play”. As writers we’re often told to “write what we know” but I have always been afraid of offending someone, because my ‘knowing’ seems to be so different to everyone else’s ‘knowing’.

I decided to take a completely different approach. Instead of planning this time I would free-fall. Instead of using logic and intellect I would use emotion and intuition. All of these led me to Mat, the main character in Kiss Kill, and to Elle, his abusive girlfriend. Abuse doesn’t have to be black eyes or bruises, it can be subtle and insidious. It is often invisible, and when it is visible, it can be dismissed or denied. I immersed myself in stories, men’s stories in particular. I sat in chat rooms, visited forums, read blogs, and websites, viewed YouTubes. And slowly my story began to form. The more I read the more engrossed I became with narcissism, or Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) as it is known in the extreme. And a whole world opened to me. Suddenly, many of my own life experiences or those of younger family members started to make sense. I collected snippets, the bits that ‘spoke’ to me and began to collate them into experiences – first love, self-doubts, façades. I likened it to collecting ‘moments’. For a long time I didn’t know how these moments would come together, I just knew they needed to be put into words, or pictures, or graphics, trusting that at some stage they would be given a form. I also had a clear view of my audience, techno-savvy young adults struggling with toxicity of NPD and the rising incidence of narcissism.

I have never been one to conform with the rules, to climb in the box, to join the back of the line. I have a lot of trouble looking backwards and describe myself as a futurist. As a writer I need to fly. I wanted to experiment with the ways we tell stories. This story screamed at me ‘I don’t fit. Find a new way.’ Different scenes demanded different ways of telling. Where prose was adequate for some, others demanded poems or monologues or photographs. My earlier experiences of writing for the Critical Thinking about Humour and Text set of books (Macmillan Education) held me in good stead. I’d already stretched myself as a writer, tackling every way I could think of to tell a story – cartoons, poems, word games, pictures etc. It was a long time before the scenes for Kiss Kill wove together. Everything seemed so random. I had headings like ‘Manscaping for Dummies’ or ‘If I Don’t Cry Tears I’ll Cry Bullets’ or ‘How to Seduce a Cow When You’re a Short-sighted Donkey’. If people asked what I was writing I didn’t really have an answer. It wasn’t a novel. It wasn’t a magazine. It wasn’t fiction, or non-fiction. I tried to work out how it would fit in a market. If it wasn’t a book, and wasn’t a mag, was it a mook? It languished as “Entity Unknown” for quite some time.

In 2010, a few years after I’d written Kiss Kill, I had one of those life-changing moments. At the Sydney Writer’s Festival I heard the futurist, Mark Pesce, speak. I couldn’t sleep for 3 days. Finally, I knew what I had created. Finally, I knew how to breathe life into this story. Enter the world of technology. Enter the world of digital publishing. Kiss Kill was now ‘of its time’. I began to explore, to open my eyes and my mind to new ways of telling stories. And I came across the world of transmedia. It became very obvious it was my world, a world of possibilities, where stories could be told across multiple platforms, where issues of ownership and territories and rights were no longer set in concrete. I loved the idea of putting a text out for someone else to play with, have always adhered to the saying that the sum of the parts is worth more than the sum of the whole. By now I had a hunger, a deep need to learn as much about “story” as possible. In 2011 I attended a conference in New York on Creativity and Technology and went on a mind bender. I felt like I was in the creative hub of the universe. Alternative realities, gaming, mash-ups, the long-form story, serendipity, enabling. I discovered all these things, and more. I listened to Frank Rose and Jeff Gomez and was introduced to the worlds of transmedia. They called it stories that flowed across multiple platforms into which ‘seeds’ are dropped for the future. This was where I belonged.

I knew I had to learn more and began to immerse myself into the transmedia world, joining forums and discussion groups and Digital Story World. The more I learnt the more hungry I became to learn. I discovered the generosity of the sharing generation, of thought leaders and innovators. I was introduced to concepts like crowdsourcing and engagement and fan-driven narrative – projection mapping and kinect hacking and audio fingerprinting. My brain was exploding.

Then along came Sarah Bailey, the founder of Really Blue Books, Australia’s first digital only publisher and I knew we had to meet. When Sarah accepted Kiss Kill I don’t think she really knew what she’d taken on, but as we worked together, as she began to understand my vision, she embraced the transmedia idea one hundred percent. To be honest I don’t think she quite knew what hit her, but to her credit she remained open to every suggestion, every possibility, taking the way we tell stories into new frontiers. I owe a lot to Sarah Bailey and Really Blue Books for giving life to my creative vision. With transmedia and Kiss Kill together we are literary pioneers.

Kiss Kill listed on Amazon! http://t.co/h3XUTe5t $5.95

Really Blue Books, http://reallybluebooks.com/ebooks $4.40.

Mat’s blog http://www.whyidontgetgirls.com/

Jeni’s blog www.jenimawter.com