The Way Ahead: The Teaching of Hyper-narrative at Bournemouth University

Abstract

Interactive, multi-media storytelling continues to excite the imagination of writers and visual artists, and yet still has not crossed from academia and the artistic avant-garde into mainstream consciousness. Considering the possibilities for creative expression and for wonderful reading experiences, it is still surprising that ‘hyper-narrative’ is so unknown. Unless something changes in the way writers and readers gain access to hyper-narrative, both as an expressive means and an entertainment, then hyper-literature (as opposed to narrative gaming, which of course has become hugely commercially successful) might well remain in its current backwater. This paper aims to help enhance the visibility of hyper-narrative by developing the teaching of it to creative writers, who are interested in the form but nervous of sophisticated multi-media writing and design tools. The paper therefore first offers a guide to creating stories that incorporate multi-media and interactivity. It then describes a software package, created by the author of this paper, which can be used to enable non-web-specialist writers to easily create interactive narratives – the Genarrator platform is a dedicated digital writing and design program which also hosts the finished pieces. The paper then outlines an approach to the teaching of hyper-narrative. Overall, the paper offers writers and teachers engaging ways to approach creative writing in new-media.