{"id":2770,"date":"2011-10-19T14:08:29","date_gmt":"2011-10-19T04:08:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zenashapter.com\/blog\/?p=2770"},"modified":"2021-06-06T10:07:43","modified_gmt":"2021-06-06T00:07:43","slug":"writing-on-the-go-a-mobile-story-project-about-creating-new-forms-of-literature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/writing-on-the-go-a-mobile-story-project-about-creating-new-forms-of-literature\/","title":{"rendered":"Writing on the go… a mobile story project about creating new forms of literature."},"content":{"rendered":"

A multimedia storytelling project that might just inspire you.<\/h3>\n
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Could you write a story… using only your mobile phone?<\/p><\/div>\n

A short time ago, I received an intriguing message through the Northern Beaches Writers’ Group website (which is the critique group I run in Manly, Sydney). The message was from a rather clever cookie at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Jessica Frawley, who was working on a collaborative storytelling project. Part of ongoing research into new forms of literature, the project was to explore the telling of local stories with writing, pictures, sound and images… using only<\/em> a mobile phone. Well, she had me at ‘writing’.<\/p>\n

The project has now completed its first stage, and the stories created are up on the mStories website*. The next stage is to analyse the creation process. Well, from my perspective, it was certainly a challenge…<\/p>\n

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Writing on the go was restrictive…<\/p><\/div>\n

Usually when I write a story, I devise a plot, characters, make notes on setting, then start writing. Occasionally I do this in my head over a series of weeks or months, until the story’s ready to burst onto the page. But more often it involves writing down my ideas and research (yes, I’m a planner<\/a>).<\/p>\n

But with no notepad or laptop, only a mobile phone, I found I couldn’t plan at all (ie. it forced me to become a pantser<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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…but it also challenged my imagination.<\/p><\/div>\n

Storytelling today involves so much imagery and visual stimulation, plus the mStories had to be inspired by our local area\/lives, so I knew I wanted to incorporate photos into my story. But I found this restricted my creativity \u2013 there couldn’t be any spaceships, alternate lifeforms, or magic in my story… at least, no obvious<\/em> magic. I couldn’t get away from my immediate surroundings, like I can in front of the computer at home, yet I still wanted to find some way to stretch my imagination.<\/p>\n

When the idea behind The Voice<\/em><\/a> finally came to me, I tapped through to my mobile’s text message application and started writing. I wanted to use text messages rather than email, because email would be too similar to Word and I wanted to embrace the challenge. The first paragraph of my story was three text messages. I saved them as drafts and snapped a photo. After repeating this sequence in several different locations, I had my story. Did I like it though?<\/p>\n

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Jessica Frawley and I celebrating the launch of the mStories website, with cake…<\/p><\/div>\n

I found it hard not<\/em> to write in clich\u00e9s, because it took so long to write using my phone’s keypad, even with predictive text, and that tested my patience.<\/p>\n

The story itself ended up being really short, because short bursts of creativity was all I could manage before being interrupted, one way or another.<\/p>\n

After writing the final line, I also couldn’t self-edit in my usual way and seeing repetitions in my work makes me cringe. A copy edit would have picked those up.<\/p>\n

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…yes, cake. Yum! Thank you, Jessica Frawley!<\/p><\/div>\n

Still, the essence of a story was there. The question now is whether that essence is enough. I’m still not sure.<\/p>\n

Follow the links* to read the mStories that other writers created with their mobile phones, and tell me what you think. There are stories from London, Sydney and Cambridge.<\/p>\n

Mine is called The Voice<\/em><\/a>, and it’s a journey of discomfort set in Sydney. You can read it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

*EDITED: Please note that the mStories website is now discontinued, but my story is still studied at university through the PhD thesis written by Jessica Frawley ‘mStories<\/span>: <\/span>Understanding the new literacies of mobile devices through a creative <\/span><\/a>participatory research project<\/a>‘ (as Figure 9, p.44).<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A multimedia storytelling project that might just inspire you. A short time ago, I received an intriguing message through the Northern Beaches Writers’ Group website (which is the critique group I run in Manly, Sydney). The message was from a rather clever cookie at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS),\u2026<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,6,7],"tags":[313,426,434,443,471,483,630,631,676,678],"class_list":["post-2770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookish-inspection","category-personal-news","category-writer-advice","tag-jessica-frawley","tag-mobile-phone","tag-mstories","tag-nbwg","tag-pantser","tag-planner","tag-text-message","tag-texting","tag-university-of-technology-sydney","tag-uts"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2770"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14177,"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2770\/revisions\/14177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/zenashapter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}