There has never been more opportunities for writers and storytellers than ever in the history of publishing, and Episode 52 of the Kobo Writing Life Podcast demonstrates yet another amazing opportunity that exists for writers.
KWL Director Mark Lefebvre interviews Jean Leggett co-founder of One More Story Games, a company from Barrie, Ontario that has developed a storytelling platform with a team of gamers, geeks, storytellers and programmers that creates a community for collaborative story game opportunities.
In the interview, Mark and Jean discuss:
- Jean's background as a recovering Haiku addict and recovering stand-up comedian
- How Jean's love of storytelling combined with her husband's similar love and a computer science background and background working in the games industry led to the formation of One More Story Games
- The underlying concept of bringing more reading into the game space
- How the experience of these games is similar to the "Choose Your Own Adventure" branching narrative experiences
- StoryStylus – the story creation platform that helps creators break down the elements of story (such as people, places, things, relationships, conversation and dialogue, etc) that publishes to an interactive games marketplace
- The fact that you don't need to be a programmer to be part of creating an interactive story game and how virtually any writer could participate in this process. (With a reminder that "Beta" means "patient, early adopters")
- A writer, photographer and graphic designer in Tillsonburg, Ontario (Dan Wilkins) who is writing an 8 part series for One More Story Games and involving real people, such as the town's mayor as characters in the story
- The manner by which a platform like this seems ideal for mystery stories, but the manner by which science fiction and adventure stories have already been built for it
- The exciting announcement that One More Story Games will be working with New York Times bestselling author Charlaine Harris (author of the Sookie Stackhouse - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sookie_Stackhouse - novels which have been adapted into the True Blue television series) to adapt her novel Shakespeare's Landlord
- How the Charlaine Harris project will include a "behind the scenes" look at breaking the book itself into various plot points and how it was developed into the interactive storytelling experience (https://onemorestorygames.com/2016/02/16/lily-bard-online/)
- The idea of making smarter more casual games available to the growing demographic of women consumers in their mid 30's who are interested in and playing these types of games
- The concept of how a game like this demonstrates the progression of writer to narrative designer for a storyteller
- Recommendations on how authors who are interested in exploring these opportunities might get started
Links of Interest:
One More Story Games
One More Story Games on Twitter
One More Story Games on Facebook
Story Stylus FAQ
Charlaine Harris Website
YouTube Tutorial Videos from One More Story Games
