The Structure of Transmedia Storytelling: A Case Study of 19 Reinos

With technology and platforms for storytelling becoming more diverse, the potential for novel methods of storytelling has been expanded. The phenomenon known as transmedia storytelling involves telling a story across multiple media and has gained popularity both in terms of audience interest and research, especially given the wealth of methods for storytelling. The problem is that authors of transmedia potentially have little background knowledge about how to structure such stories, and how to best portray certain parts of the story to the audience using transmedia. This paper will analyse a transmedia story using a visual aid. This will help better understand the structure of the story, the specificity of media being used and how the platforms used, including the connections between them, reflect both narrative progression and also migratory cues which direct the audience. This can then be used as a basis for other transmedia story analyses. The visual representation was compared to the author's intentions of the story, with a clear connection between an intended 3-act structure and the final product. This raises further questions relating to narrative/platform progression duality and how connections between platforms can be used to facilitate this progression.