CREATIVE IDEAS

GENERATION: TOOLS
FOR CREATING CONTENT
Creative Ideas Generation
• Building a storyworld
• Six words stories
• Three tools for creating content
Learning Objectives
• Shape your ideas into compelling
and well structured narratives
and complex story worlds
• Evaluate existing and emerging
technologies to share your story
with the world, and help your
audience participate in the larger
storyworld you create
Building a
storyworld
Six words stories
Three tools
for creating
content
Welcome
BUILDING A
STORYWORLD
The Story World
THE PARTICIPATORY WORLD
DESIGNING THE STORYWORLD
DEFINING THE WORLD
DEFINING THE STORY 1/2
What you are attempting to do here is pull out from
the narrative key entities and elements that you might
later use to either encourage participation, stimulate
ideas around participation or simply to (justify?) prove
a context for the actions you’re requesting. The key
parts to note are:
• Premise – What is the message the writer wants to
convey? What does she believe to be true?
• Themes – What themes are explored?
• Characters – Who are the main and interesting
(perhaps minor) characters?.
DEFINING THE STORY 2/2
• Locations - What are the main and interesting (perhaps minor)
locations?
• Periods - Thinking of the storyworld timeline, what are the
significant periods?
• Objects - What are the significant or iconic objects in this
storyworld? (e.g. rings, goblets, sonic screwdrivers, Martini
cocktails?)
• Factions - What are the main rivalries or tribes or sects? NB:
this can help the audience identify and choose a group to
belong to
• Hierarchies - What levels and ranks are there within the
factions? NB: this can be useful for community forums and
games where people can “level up” depending on activity or
success
DEFINING THE PARTICIPATION
Focusing on your goals and the premise, this stage involves
brainstorming different opportunities for audience
participation. The process provides a framework for
considering four different kinds of activities:
• Observing - what information or questions might the
audience be given to make them think about and reflect on
the premise?
• Exploring - what additional information (in world and out
of world) can the audience explore?
• Gaming - what (moral) choices might the audience be given
to make them feel the premise?
• * Role-playing - how will you enable the audience to role-
play and create their own entertainment?
PARTICIPATION GRID
AUDIENCE AND STORYWORLD
DEFINING THE EXECUTION
The key considerations then, are:
• Timing - what content and experiences will be made
available and when?
• Events – what are the “tent pole” events or prominent dates
in your calendar and how does the storyworld fit with
them?
• Platforms – you defined the platforms in phase 1 but how
do they now fit against each other
• Pacing – what’s the release plan? How are the content and
experiences going to be madeavailable in relation to each
other?
SIX WORD
STORIES
Story ideas
• Transmedia storytelling is constantly evolving.
But at the core of all stories, is a creatively
told, interesting and engaging story.
• One of the simplest models of thinking for
creating new transmedia stories is conceptual
blending.
• Analogies and metaphorial thinking can also
aid this process.
A six-word story
• Stories have been around for thousand of
years, and different forms of telling stories
have also been for thousands of years.
• But, the six-word story has a more recent
history. The idea for the six-word story is said
to have come form a challenge to the well-
known writer, Ernest Hemingway.
Six words stories- a viral idea
• Since then, it has become a viral idea, which
has been explored across multiple platforms,
websites, blogs, videos, memes, Twitter,
books and magazines.
• If you Google six-word story, then millions
sources are found.
• The idea of this technique is that with less
you can do more.
• The challenge in creating a really good six-
word story is moving beyond the obvious.
• The best examples can suggest a whole life,
or help you to imagine a real person in just
six words.
• Six-word stories can move us to tears or make
us laugh out loud.
 Six words stories

Resolution
Stage

Conflict

Action

Time Spent
Adding images

• Memes extend the six-

word verbal idea by also
adding an image.
Sometimes just by
changing the photo in a
meme, it changes the way
the story is understood.
• Adding images also make
words and stories more
memorable.
AND MORE CONTEXT
NEEDED FOR STORY
IDEAS
Considering the idea of six-word
stories can help us to build context
for our narratives.
A premise
• A six-word story can also be a premise.
• A premise in the idea generationg process
can be a simple statement, which helps to
frame the concept and which could help to
lead us on the pathway to the conclusion, a
bit like a headline in a newspaper article. A
book or a movie title can sometimes be its
premise.
Personal traits
• What personal strengths and weaknesses are
you aware of as you create stories?
An environment
• What environment and surrouding help you
to be more creative?
Processes
• What creative processes do you use, or
consciously avoid using, to help you to stay
focused on creative tasks?
A contrast checklist
To create a contrast checklist and to use it as a gap
analysis tool.
• What would you like to see or do in a transmedia
world?
• What stories do you think might be missing?
• Write a list of things that you really enjoyed as
transmedia stories in one column and describe why
you think they engaged you. Then in another column
write a list of things you would like to see, and that
you feel are mising as creative new stories.
THREE TOOLS FOR
CREATING CONTENT
Tools for creating content
• We exlore some of the way we can approach getting new
ideas to use for transmedia stories. It can be useful to map
out options and different ways to create new ideas by using a
diagram which is described as a thinking model.
• These types of models are useful tools to help us to structure
our creative process.
• Sometimes they described the different idea generation tools
I like to use as being a bit like a toolbox. So inside our mental
toolbox are different creative techniques that can be applied
as different tools to create new ideas for different purposes.
And unusual and unpredictable ways.
A tool box for creating ideas
Top Three Transmedia Tools.
• It is important that we have a good tool box full of
possibilities. Where we can select a tool to apply to our
personal inspiration to come up with an idea, that is
unpredictable or unusual. Audiences love the
unpredictable and unusual, as they're more memorable
and engaging in the transmedia storytelling world.
• So let's start with an idea list, using an alliteration to
help it to become more memorable. Let's call this idea
list the Top Three Transmedia Tools.
• We will look at re-framing, random stimuli, and
designing a desktop and notebook to help us to
research our stories.
It is a thinking model we can call the
three r's, re-framing, random stimuli
and research and references.
1. Re-framing
• re-framing is used constantly to evolve and
develop good stories. When we look at the
history of storytelling and explore the types of
stories that have become well known, we can
see that there are patterns in some form of
stories which are repeated.
• Re-framing stories can involve changing the
place, the time, characters, or changing the
plot sequence. It is sometimes described as
viewing an idea through new lens.
Re-framing
• We filter information and ideas and
regenerate them when we add re-
framing to the mix.
• What type of traits do the characters in
your story have?
• What processes do they use as they
move through the story?
Re-framing
• And what environments or story
worlds do they live in?
• The hero's journey identified by
Joseph Campbell is one of the best
examples of extensive re-framing in
storytelling.
Campell’s hero journey
• He compared many myths from lots of
different countries and found powerful
common themes amongst them. Campbell's
work influenced George Lucas in the writing
of Star Wars. With the character of Luke
Skywalker as the hero on a journey.
Campell example of re-framing
2. Random stimuli
• Ask five friends to email you their favorite
photo. Take the first three that you receive and
write a three act story that combines aspects
of those randomly received images.
• Why do we use techniques and tools like
random stimuli? They help us to avoid
predictable pathways and habitual ways of
creating when we are coming up with new
ideas.
Random stimuli
• Here's a visual example of how our brains
work in relation to that type of idea. So
imagine that our brain is made up of many
masses of neural connections and what our
brain loves when we come to say design a
new story is that we'll look at the patterns
that our brain has made a connection
through designing a story before.
Random stimuli
• But each time we come to the process of
designing a story and writing its script, we
need to try to force our minds to work in
different ways.
• And this is where the different tools and
techniques come in. The power of random
selection is that it can help you to explore
useful associations that would not emerge
intentionally.
Random stimuli
• Random stimuli can also be used as a
personal tool. Imagine you've got a box
that's called a story bank. Into it, you put
lots of different things that inspire you,
move you, or intrigue you. Pick one out
at random, then another, then another.
Consider these three things and write a
story that links them.
3. Research and references
• This is to carefully consider how you
research and reference your ideas.
• To do this, we can consciously
design your desktop and notebook.
Research and references
• A desktop is not just the virtual one on your
computer. Having a real world desktop which
is organized, provide inspiration is important.
The more personal this is the better, consider
pictures from places you've traveled, objects
that have special meaning for you, and
inspiring quotes.
Research and references
• To keep a notebook which you deliberately
design to be 50% visual and 50% verbal.
Writing things down and drawing physically
embeds the information in our brain and
memories. In many different ways then
typing and filing things away on a computer
screen.
Research and references
• Using a notebook creates a sequence and
personal story in itself.
• So how we research and what we reference
in the content of our stories is important.
Notebooks also provide a physical tool for
random stimuli as we turn over several pages,
new connections can occur to us.
A thinking model call the three r’s: re-framing,
random stimuli and research and references
• Using these three tools can help extend our
creative ideas generation in less predictable and
more interesting ways. Try each of these three
tools yourself, take an existing story and re-frame
it by changing the time, place, characters, and so
on. Randomly select some personal images and
include them into your story. And research using
a real using a real desktop or notebook ensuring
that you have real images in your mix.
Case Study
• A case study picked by the teacher or from
practices have done by members of group
Discussion
• What we can learn from a case study
• Best practices
• Take-aways
Summary
Creative Ideas Generation:
• Building a storyworld
• Six words stories
• Three tools for creating content
Resources
• Getting Started with Transmedia Storytelling - a
practical guide for beginners 2nd edition by
Robert Pratten
• https://www.coursera.org/learn/transmedia-
storytelling/lecture/hiWpM/key-concept-the-
premise-and-six-word-stories
• https://www.coursera.org/learn/transmedia-
storytelling/lecture/aFixx/key-concept-three-tools-
for-creating-content
For deeper reading
• Max Giovagnoli . TRANSMEDIA
STORYTELLING . Imagery, Shapes and
Techniques. ISBN: 978-1-105-06258-2
QUESTIONS?
SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIVISM
PART
Edunext
• What are some simplest models of
thinking we can apply when we are
creating new transmedia stories ?
How about six-word story?
• What are three tools for creating
content? How do they work?
Preparation for the next lesson
• How to develop your conceptual
story idea with content? Give an
Example.
• How to connect your story to a
larger storyworld?