The Future of Storytelling

Live Fiction is a dynamic new storytelling format that integrates traditional narrative fiction with online media and real-world events. The platform presents the story as a rich web of interlinked literature, audio, visual art and live performance – that draws the audience into a comprehensive fictional world, and offers writers and publishers with new opportunities for innovating storytelling beyond a linear narrative.

The story is gradually revealed through key websites that compel the visitor to follow links to creative content scattered across the internet. As the story develops, physical remnants of the fiction spill over into the real-world through live performance, theatre and art installations. Thus, the story becomes an interactive and immersive experience, engaging the audience in active plot discovery, real-time interaction with characters and direct participation in the storytelling process.

Background

Every stage of human development has revolutionised the art of storytelling. The oral tradition is defined by an intimate and organic relationship between teller and listener. The advent of print and recorded media has shifted storytelling into a highly fixed and linear form, which is generally constructed and executed in isolation from an audience that consumes in private.

The internet presents the latest creative mass distribution platform, which has yet to be fully harnessed for its storytelling potential. It currently hosts a multitude of stories, told through innovative combinations of prose, film, imaging and mapping. Often the stories present accounts of real people and events, or are simply internet versions of more traditional story-telling formats. Live Fiction is the first attempt to use the internet itself as the main storytelling vehicle, crafting a single fictional narrative through multiple sources and formats, providing background, context and direct audience interaction in the form of virtual and physical theatre.

The platform can be used to showcase and support a team of artists and writers, or to promote future events and affiliated products, particularly among younger audiences. The tool can also be used by publishers to enhance the reading experience through additional commercial services and educators to turn narratives into an interactive and relevant experience.