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How do you build a reading community around a book with a dark, difficult premise?

Andrew Davidson's first novel, The Gargoyle, opens with some tough passages about car accidents and burn victims. His book site features real people telling real stories about being "burned by love." Read a couple and submit your own. Check it out:

"We met at work. He seemed nice. I was a virgin. He seduced me and made me think that if I gave it up for him that we would last."

Bookninja alerts us to some happy news. Choose-your-own-adventure style interactive stories are making a comeback. 

In even odder news, The Avocado Papers is selling first paragraphs to writers. While this seems like one of those kooky web stories that may or may not be true, the satirical site does have an impressive catalog of evocative paragraphs.

That said, the whole battle is figuring out what crazy, unexpected and strange elements I need to put in my first paragraph. Without that process, writing would be pretty boring. What do you think? (Thanks, GalleyCat.)

What if books had more than one ending? How could you create enough characters to sustain that kind of plot?

If you are looking for ways to make an interactive book--online or on paper--you can learn a lot from novelist Heather McElhatton. Her book, Pretty Little Mistakes scored a big hit last year.

Instead of writing a single narrative, her book let readers decide what sort of choices the character made. In an exclusive interview on The Publishing Spot, she explained how she created a rainbow of characters: "I go out and look at living people. I take pictures of people with my camera phone, just because I like their nose, and want to describe it. I cruise people's vacation blogs and online Flickr accounts, just to pirate, kidnap and liberate single details."

In addition, she also told us how to:

How To Support Your Book Online

and How To Revise Your Novel

and How To Survive Long Enough To Write Your First Book

and How To Write for Radio

The novel opens when a body falls from the sky. Now, you can help the writers figure out what happens next...

I'm serious. Over at the blog for the novel Flight Paths, you can actually write your way into the the book. The idea began with Kate Pullinger, a web writing pioneer and novelist. I've dug her digital work for years. She's joined by Chris Joseph, another digital author. Both teach at the Institute of Creative Technologies at De Montfort University.

The book will allow readers and writers to interact online and in real life, sharing stories, videos, and images on the website. You can actually particiapate as they write a new networked novel. My head is already buzzing with short short video ideas that I want to share.

If you are unconvinced, this Wired Magazine article takes a closer look at the evolution of the networked book: "From the complete expressive freedom of "A Million Penguins" to the careful scripting of "These Wicked Games", each crowd created concrete works, though vastly different in length, content, salability, and final format. What I have learned is that it would be possible to crowdsource a novel, but I think it would have to be done in a more controlled way than we did," said Jeremy Ettinghausen, Digital Publisher for the U.K.'s Penguin Books."

Last year I attempted a networked story on this site, but never managed to muster the support I needed. Read Writing War Stories For Children here.

We have the power to write the most interactive stories ever invented. How do we do it?

A few months ago Clive Thompson (collision detection), asked that question in a review of the game, Hotel Dusk--basically an attempt to write a fully interactive videogame private detective novel. His review pointed out  how these new game designers are 21st century novelists, opening my eyes to a whole new genre of interactive writing.

Fledgling writers should pay attention as this literary genre evolves. Slashdot Games is one of the most innovative, community-driven sites that we can use to study the form.

Today, the writer Zonk has an essay for videogame writers that we should all check out, answering the brilliant question:

"What can Star Trek teach any writer?"

Unless you pay attention, you are going to miss the next generation of storytelling. 

Every few months I like to write Alternate-Reality Games (ARG)--the 21st century storytelling genre where readers get to play out a fictional story in the real world.

These are intricate scavenger hunts written by novelists, marketing folks, nerds, and gamers. They use the Internet as a springboard to launch stories into the real world.

The website Eurogamer has the scoop on a brand new ARG promoting the videogame, Halo 3. The trail of clues includes chatroom chatter, comic books, and obscure computer graphics, all part of an mystery that players must solve, on and off the Internet. Check it out:

"'Iris' is a spiral campaign designed to take gamers on an incredible journey through the Halo Universe," a spokesperson for Microsoft told us. "Led by an 'unknown' hand, users will discover bits of previously unknown information about the Halos, the Flood, the Forerunners, and the true origins behind the Halo trilogy."

If you are interested in following this story, there's more information at the Halo 3 website and xBox 360 Fanboy and this fan-controled Iris wiki. As web writers, we need to pay attention to the work of these pioneers. (Thanks, slashdot)

I first met Josh Goldblum when he cited this website in an academic paper he wrote for the 2007 Museums and the Web conference, entitled "Considerations and Strategies for Creating Interactive Narratives."

After reading that mouthful of an essay, I realized Goldblum could teach you interactive storytelling a hundred times better than I ever could.

Goldblum runs Blue Cadet Interactive, a firm that specializes in building complex, interactive digital stories--he is setting the standard for how we use digital graphics, photographs, audio, and video to create more complex stories on the web.

This week, he's teaching us the fine art of interactive storytelling in my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. Click here to read the complete interview.

In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.

Jason Boog:
How can a fledgling journalist build something more interactive than a simple slideshow? How do we make better interactive narratives? 

Josh Goldblum:
[Readers] know when a lot of work and craft went into a project. They can also generally see when something is based off a template. Continue reading...

"Senior year at any high school across this country is a major transitional period; a period in which students reaffirm their community ties while, at the same time, they prepare to separate from that community. Hurricane Katrina prematurely forced this transition and moment of separation on thousands of seniors throughout New Orleans ... Y06 allows the students themselves to acknowledge exile while transcending it as they explore these transitions online together, while giving the rest of us a unique way of understanding the personal impact of the New Orleans disaster."

That's the logic behind the Yearbook 2006 storytelling project, a unique multimedia package that shares stories, pictures, diary entries, audio, and video from the New Orleans tragedy--all seen through the eyes of high school students.

Josh Goldblum is a digital storytelling wizard who founded the design firm, Blue Cadet Interactive. He shaped the Yearbook 2006 project from the ground up.

Goldblum is our special guest this week, teaching us the fine art of interactive storytelling in my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.

Jason Boog:
While describing your Yearbook 2006 project, you wrote: "However, we felt we would need to deliver these photographs in some novel way to differentiate our story from the preponderance of audio slideshows developed by such news organizations as NYTimes.com and WashingtonPost.com." What did you mean by this?

Josh Goldblum:
Well first off I hope I wasn’t being too harsh a critic of the audio slideshow. Continue reading...

Josh Goldblum, has written it all.

The founder of Blue Cadet Interactive has built interactive sites for gigantic publishers like Random House, international activists like John Prendergast, and the Smithsonian (Catlin's Campfire Stories).

Along the way he's won the 'Best Education Site' award from the Museums and the Web, and a Macromedia Site of the Day award.

Goldblum is our special guest this week, teaching us the fine art of interactive storytelling in my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions.

In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.

Jason Boog:
In your opinion, what are the best interactive journalism and narrative sites? Where should young journalists look for inspiration?

Josh Goldblum:
I like to check on Interactive Narratives which aggregates some great narrative work and has a great podcast. Continue reading...

"The road was all ice. And all I could think about was, "How did I ever survive this?" Because I was dressed in the heaviest jacket with sweaters, with hat - and I was freezing! And I was there as a child with a little blanket and thin prison uniform and - and I made it. It's... hard to believe."

That's Judge Thomas Buergenthal describing his return to the site of the concentration camp of Auschwitz, nearly 55 years after he survived the Jewish Holocaust in Europe.

His story--along with the memories of countless other death camp survivors-- will be preserved forever in digital format at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The virtual exhibit includes photographs, audio, text, and Flash illustrations to help new generations remember one of the worst chapters of human history. 

Josh Goldblum (the pioneering writer who founded the design firm, Blue Cadet Interactive) helped design this complex story. Goldblum is our special guest this week, teaching us the fine art of interactive storytelling in my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions.

In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.

Jason Boog: 

 
Josh Goldblum:
I first became aware of the “Life After Holocaust” project while I was working with the Holocaust Museum on a separate Ripples of Genocide project. Continue reading...

"We found inspiration in the journals of Dan Eldon, which are some of the most elaborate, moving and personal expressions in publication today. By incorporating collaged visual elements into the design of a mock travel journal, we had now finally arrived at a structure for the narrative that added even more context to either point of view."

That's Josh Goldblum explaining how he built the Ripples of Genocide interactive story project using Angelina Jolie's travel diaries from Africa.

Josh Goldblum is a digital storytelling wizard who founded the design firm, Blue Cadet Interactive. His group specializes in building complex, interactive digital stories--he is setting the standard for how we use digital graphics, photographs, audio, and video to create more complex stories on the web.

Goldblum is our special guest this week, teaching us the fine art of interactive storytelling in my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions.

In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.

Jason Boog:
What are the most important web skills that young journalists and creators need now? In your opinion, what are the best programming languages, publishing software and web platforms to know? What's the best way to study these methods (in school or independently)?

Josh Goldblum:
I think it is really important for journalists to know the craft of creating sites or at the very least to know what the tools are capable of. Continue reading...

We have the power to write the most interactive stories ever invented. How do we do it?

Clive Thompson, one of my favorite web critics (check out his blog, collision detection), is asking the same question. He just reviewed Hotel Dusk, basically an attempt to write a fully interactive videogame private detective novel for Nintendo. I've never wanted a Nintendo more in my life...

Thompson delivers a nice history of interactive storytelling, and then decides we should stop classifying these interactive stories and just write them.

Dig it: "Maybe we need to throw out the words 'novel' and 'game' and 'interactive,' and think of new categories to describe these things. What makes Hotel Dusk cool is the otherworldly nature that comes from its mongrel heritage: The quiet, Myst-like pace, the sense of being locked inside a puzzle, the comic-booky quality, the sheer magic realism of watching illustrations come to life."

These questions don't just apply to fiction writers. Journalists have the same powerful tools. Check out  Interactive Narratives for a collection of image and audio-rich blogs written by some of the most innovative journalists working today. The site was founded by Andrew DeVigal, who teaches web journalism at San Francisco State University. What can we do with these new tools? 

We don't pay enough attention to interactive web writing, even though our kids will take the genre for granted someday.

Think about it. Hypertext gives a story all these features that will be standard storytelling tools twenty years from now: access to encyclopedic knowledge about parts of the text, interaction with other web-pages, and a literal connection to other writers inside your story. 

Using an H.P Lovecraft story, web writer Joshua Birk has come up with a simple model that allows the reader to move through a text in new ways, navigating optional endings without altering the primary text.

Nick Montfort explains everything at the group blog, Grand Text Auto. Dig it:
 
"Joshua Birk of the blog Cathode Tan sheds some new, phosphorescent light on an H.P. Lovecraft story. His The Case of Randolph Carter is a AJAX hypertext, well-written and frequently engaging, designed to play out in nine different endings and to incorporate some elements of interactive fiction. One clicks to select words and actions rather than typing commands."

(Thanks to Steve Bryant for the link. There's no reason for me to read blogs anymore, because he gives me the good stuff.)