by Nowis Ankara , published on 7.01.2010

Every story has an effect on its audience. An audience listens, and suddenly, its mental universe is reconfigured, and by ricochet, its action on the world is modified. At the beginning there was the word. The world is not the same once we begin retelling it. Every storyteller necessarily impulses a process of transformation on reality.

This is a phenomenon that belongs to the magical realm: the action of spirit over matter:

A story told is like a stone thrown in the water: it ripples on the surface. Storytelling techniques are in fact ways of acquiring a perfect mastery of these ripples. Humanity is a big interweaved fabric that we must learn to thrill.

Today, the multiplication of screens and narrative spaces is creating a constant bombardment of our reality’s surface. Numerous ripples of different intensities and lengths come together to create bigger waves and lower ebbs, others yet annul each other.

But generally, the media environment is buzzing. An the storyteller must spend a lot of energy to protect himself from interferences and acquire a significant resonance. The mission is increasingly difficult.

Today, only the transmedia storyteller can really benefit from this chaotic state of affairs. The enormous quantities of narrative energy that he happens to be handling can be mixed and articulated to give transmedia universes a phenomenal power, a capacity to accomplish the unthinkable: nothing less than coming to life.

What’s the condition of this miracle? Simply the same that allowed the appearance of life: a border separating an interior environment form an exterior environment as well as the interfaces allowing the exchange of information between these two environments. It’s the same for bacteria, plants and animals.

What that means concretely for us, is that the transmedia universe has to be conceived to be able to:

-          Coordinate the ripples generated by the multiple media to create a permanent chain reaction.

-          Establish feedback loops that allow it to synchronize its internal mechanics with the ambient media tempo.

These characteristics will give it a precious “narrative plasticity”, which will manifest through a real survival instinct. From there on, we must slightly change our perspective and understand the spiritual nature of the forces that underlie the emergence of stories.

Like Anne Larroque reminded us, storytelling never stopped being a ritual.

And what the dawn of transmedia will shatter, is first and foremost the form of the magic ritual, which consists in conjuring a story into our reality.

Until now, the storyteller was like the Shaman who wandered alone into other worlds to seek information and communicate it to his community.

Today, the multiple participants of the transmedia story are so many channels that allow a narrative entity to access its physical manifestation.

Entity? Entity.

Some call it an Egregore, others a Meme. Characters, stories, ideas are autonomous spiritual entities, from the moment they are “charged” with a narrative.

This way, the multiplication of the expression of points of view on a same story allows us to crystallize the maelstroms of occult energy in a story that first and foremost belongs to itself.

And it’s this crystallization phenomenon that needs to be constantly updated to allow the entity to access our life force reserves. That is precisely the function of the ritual.

Until now, a mono-media ritual crystallized a story in an unchangeable form, closed in on itself, doomed to the degradation of time.

The transmedia ritual, on the other hand, will create this membrane that isolates the interior of the narrative universe from its environment, and which simultaneously serves as a communication interface between the story and reality.

From there on, it’s precisely on its quality that the creators have to work: to create a good transmedia ritual, a fair ritual that sparks a conscious practice in order for the stories to come to life.

Nowis Ankara, scriptwriter