Professional profile – Marissa Cooke

http://marissacooke.wordpress.com/

How did you get started working as a writer of cross-platform and interactive writing?

I began on an interactive TV show called Fat Cow Motel – I was a scriptwriter in the traditional sense but I also produced the interactive (cross-platform) content and was the lead interactive writer. Fat Cow Motel was a pioneering project – a world first interactive drama ARG (alternate reality game). Produced by Hoodlum Active for Austar and ABCTV it used interactive platforms (predominantly online, mobile, plus iTV on the Austar platform) to extend the fictional world of Fat Cow established in the linear TV series, it engaged audiences in solving a weekly mystery before the resolution was revealed at the beginning of the following week’s TV episode. The interactive content and user experience was immersive, involving deep engagement with the fictional assets of the TV series – the characters, locations within the town itself, as well as narrative events. So yes, that’s when I ‘crossed over’ to digital media platforms as a writer and content creator.

What is different about writing for stories across multiple media platforms?

One obvious difference is the role of the audience and the necessity to ‘build in’ interactive opportunities and incentives in to the story itself – a ‘complete’ story leaves no room for audience participation. Essentially, cross-platform stories need to be ‘incomplete’ in some way in order to invite meaningful participation, even if this is simply having the ability to communicate directly with one or more of the characters via mobile, without necessarily changing the story outcome. Participation could also be encouraged by inviting your audience to respond to your story or a particular aspect of your story in some way, e.g. by uploading a video or still image, making a blog entry, chatting with other audience members or sending an SMS to elicit a further response from you and your story material. You also need to drive and incentivize audiences to ‘jump’ between platforms in the most intuitive ways possible so that there is minimum barrier for participation.

Multiple distribution channels are naturally another key difference – you can tell the same story point, for example, using a range of different mediums, taking different points of view and using different levels of audience interactivity to achieve different results. This decision-making process is one of the key challenges but also creative joys of digital storytelling. I guess it’s kind of the equivalent of a shot choice or a point of view shift in other storytelling forms, but with an additional dimension that enables audience interaction and response.

The distinct traits of the digital mediums being used are also a key difference. For example, using mobile devices to distribute story elements will inform the content and writing approach because it is a mobile, portable medium; content can be scheduled for particular times; it has a small screen; is a personal one-to-one communications device; and can enable an intuitive, direct response from the audience member via SMS, MMS, etc. Effective writing for multiple platforms requires that you consider the characteristics, strengths, weaknesses and audience-use characteristics of each platform so you can really leverage the interactive potential for that particular medium, rather than cutting and pasting story in a generic, non-customised way across multiple distribution platforms – which is not very effective at all.

What skills suit such writing?

I think it’s very useful to be a visual, structural thinker and strategic in your approach in terms of what you are trying to achieve or elicit from your audience at each point throughout the narrative or story form. It also helps to be able to think contextually about your writing, in terms of the environment, platform or audience community in which your story is being distributed to. To write effectively for cross-platform and interactive media, being able to approach your storytelling from multiple points of view is also an invaluable asset. For example, you might offer one character’s particular point of view via mobile or interactive/messaging, while distributing another character’s differing point of view, perhaps of the very same events/subject matter, via a YouTube video, Facebook presence or Twitter feed. Crucially, you must also be able to assume the point of view of your audience at all times – Where are they? What are they doing? What response will the material evoke in them and how might they feel compelled to respond to it? Leverage those audience insights in your writing.

'Experience' and 'audience' are two areas that figure prominently in your approach. Could you elaborate on why these are important and how they affect what you write?

Because of the nature of digital and cross-platform storytelling, it is or has the potential to be very experiential as opposed to simply mono- or bi-sensory. Beyond simply creating story content for your audience to watch or read, you’re really writing interactive experiences. For your audience, reading or watching content is only one facet of the whole experiential range which may also encompass creating content, rating, tagging, posting, blogging, instant messaging, voting, photo-sharing, video-messaging, skypeing, MMSing, downloading, playing, listening, touching or connecting with a community across a wide range of online and offline environments. With that in mind, creating infrastructure, ecosystems, functionality and tools in addition to content is extremely important. You need to consider the opportunity, incentive and facility for the audience to interact, respond to, immerse themselves in and even contribute to your story – to elevate the engagement from watching or reading to experiencing.

How do your skills as a scriptwriter, copywriter, developer and strategist inform each other?

The strategic work really informs and enriches the other skills. Being strategic as a writer, content producer, game designer and so on is beneficial because it makes my writing, storytelling and interaction design more effective, targeted and appropriate to the audience and the platform(s) I’m distributing it to. Script writing/fiction writing skills are also useful in informing my approach to concept development, interaction and game design because of the instinct for characterisation that it provides. I find these instincts really useful in applying to environments, functionality and interaction design. Imbuing the assets that you’re creating with their own ‘character’, by making them idiosyncratic, unique, personalised and distinctive in the same way that you would when creating individual characters in a story, can make all the difference between a mediocre and generic experience and a compelling and meaningful one.

How do you stay current (professional development, networking)?

It’s actually a tricky balance to achieve between working and keeping up with new trends, but yes, I stay up to date via networking events and conferences, interaction with colleagues, as well as online research and newsletter subscriptions – there’s almost nothing Google can’t answer! Probably the most effective and inspiring way of staying up to date is by checking out other examples of great, innovative and award-winning work in the public domain.

What is a valuable thing you discovered whilst working on cross-platform projects that you didn’t know before?

Probably the creative scope involved in creating, planning and writing for multiple, interactive platforms. It’s truly, madly, deeply imaginative – so rich and complex in terms of the depth and dynamic potential of the mediums. I’ve found the creative challenge extraordinarily stimulating and satisfying beyond my expectations.
 

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