xviii Introduction
Some of these chapters commence with very short stories as examples
of the practices to be covered, a kind of extended narrative epigraph. Sev-
eral describe real stories and the process of either consuming or produc-
ing them. Others are mildly fictionalized accounts of my experiences with
digital storytelling workshops. Still others are instances of what Bruce Ster-
ling and Julian Bleeker describe as “design fiction,” stories that imagine
the lived experience of a new object.6 The purpose of these is partly to give
the reader a sense of what the chapter will explore, but also to use a very
small form of storytelling in the service of discussing that art.
At a meta level, some chapters address a somewhat dizzying phenom-
enon, the practices described being nested within stories presented in other
media, like digital storytelling matriochka dolls. This means mobile device
storytelling appears as a plot device within other stories, blogs are depicted
in print science fiction, and classic interactive fiction is mimicked for politi
cal satire. It’s a sign of how widespread or compelling these practices are
that they can be taken up or reproduced elsewhere with hope of audience
engagement. Indeed, we can probably identify a nascent metafiction sub-
genre, a body of stories about new digital stories.
A Note about the Writing of This Book
It is appropriate that a book about new forms of digital storytelling
should partake of those new media platforms. I blogged about digital sto-
rytelling old and new in two different venues and also aggregated and
tagged examples on a social bookmarking service.7 Another way I “dog-
fooded” the book was by crowdsourcing topical discussion during the
manuscript’s penultimate month of preparation. I had been using Twitter
to explore digital storytelling ever since joining the service. Then in
August 2010, I ramped up the process. Every day, I tweeted at least one
observation, note, or query to the world and read back as Twitterites (or
“tweeple”) returned their thoughts. This book owes much to them, to faith-
ful correspondents and capable observers like riven home wood, dethe,
and derekbruff. In a very real sense, our Twitter conversations through the
course of writing this book constituted a digital story.
This book’s social networks are not to blame for any errors or gaps in
the text. In covering a broad, rapidly developing, multidomain world, I am
certain to have committed some of these. I expect the distributed Argus
eyes of social media to identify each one, both sins of omission and com-
mission. All gaps, slips, gaffes, and errors are solely my own.
