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.

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.wordpress.com
Jeni’s blog www.jenimawter.com

Why Kiss Kill is Pioneering in the Art of Storytelling

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As a traditional author my focus was to write the best story I could possibly write. It would be a prose narrative, following the three-act structure. I would put it into the hands of my publisher who would put it into the hands of the readers. End of story – except for a short burst of publicity commitments after publication.

As a transmedia storyteller for Kiss Kill my brief has broadened considerably so that now I must also be involved in:

– Audience creation with the goal of building a fan base
– Online engagement (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Blog)
– Brand building as ‘Jeni Mawter: Digital Storyteller”
– Connecting fictional characters with my brand (Mat’s blog
http://www.whyidon’tgetgirls.wordpress.com )
– Deepening my audience’s emotional engagement
– Providing many entry points into the story
– Inspiring community creation
– Leveraging a community of creators around the brand such as musicians, actors and friends (YouTube, iTunes, reviews)
– ongoing commitment to a story in evolution
– educating traditional story-tellers into new ways of telling
– educating the educators about the changing face of story
– upgrading technological skills and knowledge on a daily basis
– staying at the forefront of transmedia developments
– trying to belong to some sort of story-telling community but not knowing where I belong
– marketing, marketing, marketing
– moving into a world traditionally involving big entertainment creators such as television (BBC Sherlock series, Nike promotion); gaming (Perplex City) or theatre (Clockwork Monkey)
– exploring new income generating systems such as Kickstarter, Indigogo and Pozible (Australia) instead of author Advances and Royalties
– Writing as auteur, rather than author
– Writing non-linear narrative
– Finding or forging new pathways for digital reviewing, selling, publicity, competitions etc

As a writer what do I believe?

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I believe in the Power of Story.
I believe I must think outside the square.
I believe in innovation.
I believe in breaking rules.
I believe in looking to the future.
I believe in our community.
I believe in family.
I believe in our youth.
I believe in good mental health.
I believe in the human spirit.
I believe in the passion inside me.
I believe in the power of the little person.
I believe that I will never be happy to be put in a box.
I believe life is fragile sometimes, just because.

Chenoa Fawn Interview about Kiss Kill on her blog Sibylline Syllables

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Chenoa Fawn Interview http://chenoafawn.wordpress.com

1. Many of your previous books have had comedy at their heart, how do you maintain your sense of humour through the publishing process?

To be honest, the journey to publication of Kiss Kill was a shocker. The manuscript was rejected by my agent, then sat in slush piles at major publishing houses. As weeks turned into months, which turned into years, my self-esteem eroded to the point where I described myself as a writer in solitary confinement on Death Row. Nothing I tried could unlock that cell door. Frustration and despair festered. My sense of humour deserted me, to the point where I no longer liked the person I had become. Creativity was absent. If this sounds bleak, it was!

2. Your latest book, Kiss Kill, is your first foray into direct to digital publishing. Tell us about what brought you to this decision?

Firstly, the story of Kiss Kill (www.reallybluebooks.com) is about how a 16 year old boy gets into a relationship with a narcissistic girl. Over time the relationship unravels, fragments and explodes. The digital form complements this in that I could deliver the story in fragments. In a way, the medium helps to define a story. Secondly, I chose not to write this story as a prose narrative. In part this was because I wrote it organically so that fragments were written in a random order. It was only much later that I wove them into a narrative. Thirdly, I wrote the story in multiple texts to reflect the type of reading young readers are doing today. Reading flicks all over the place, from prose to monologue, blogging, poetry, critical essay, script, songs, Facebook entries, notes etc. Digital suits this perfectly. Also, I want the story to be interactive with reader’s contributions helping the story to evolve. One way of doing this was to have my character blog at http://whyidontgetgirls.wordpress.com Another way was to encourage audience involvement through performances on YouTube (How Do You define a Man?), with song recordings (Thought I Knew You) and through Twitter @kisskilldigital and Facebook .

3. Kiss Kill is about a sixteen year old boy’s relationship with a girl with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. What sort of research did you undertake for the book?

As with all my books I do extensive research. I researched teenage relationships and relationship problems. I researched relationship abuse, emotional abuse and bullying. I also read everything I could on Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I read books, research papers, articles, watched interviews, personally spoke to ‘victims’ of NPD, went to chat lines, men’s chat lines (because they wear their abuse in silence, against a community backdrop of disbelief). I used my own personal experiences, workplace experiences, experiences of family members in relationships with a person with NPD. Not only did I need to get into the mindset of NPD, I needed to understand how someone gets ‘trapped’ in a relationship and why is it so difficult to extricate yourself, even when life is so unpleasant. Also, as this is a digital story that uses multiple platforms I needed to do a huge amount of research on telling stories using transmedia. I wasn’t just on a steep learning curve, I was on a trajectory. I went to a conference on Creativity and Technology in New York and got involved with if:book, the Institute for the Future of the Book. I joined Digital Book World, went to seminars on digital storytelling and have grown from there.