Make Your Own Multimedia Story

Did you know there is a day that celebrates your love of writing? Yup! This November, celebrate I Love to Write Day by expanding your writing skills with some of our favorite multimedia writing exercises!

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DJ for a Day

Create mixtapes or playlists designed to tell a story or portray a character. Write a paragraph on the character or story. Choose ten sounds (songs, soundbytes, any audio that will serve your story or character), considering the subject matter, the tone, the order of the sounds, the transitions and even how much of the songs you want to play. Share with each other without explanation and use your partner’s mix or playlist as a free write prompt. Compare and discuss the free writes and the original paragraphs.

For the adventurous, download a free trial version of the program dJay (http://www.algoriddim.com/djay-mac/download), and record the mix

New Media Storytelling

Take three of your favorite written exercises and decide where would be the best place to publish them online. Ask yourself, who should read this? What genre of writing does it fall under? How will people find it online? Think about what kind of new media add-ons (if any) may complement your writing and bring it to life, or take it in an exciting new direction. Options may include (but are not limited to) video, sound, podcasts, social networks, interactive maps, projections, physical computing, performance, photography, QR code, mobile apps, etc. 

Psychogeography Writing

Psychogeography is the exploration of inventive strategies for navigation of urban landscapes, aiming to take pedestrians off predictable paths and into a new awareness of their surrounding environment. With that in mind, think about a tour you would like to send people on. It can be of your local neighborhood, favorite restaurants, or fictional memories. Once you’ve chosen a series of locations write about why you chose them and what people will see when they visit. Explore use of Broadcastr or Google maps to create the tour and send it to at least three people you know. 

Storytelling Through Performance

Make a video of you (or anyone!) performing a piece you have written. No need to limit yourself to simply reading (though that can be fantastic)—consider exploring your work through drawings, dance, puppets, claymation, music, or any variety of approaches.

Visual Storytelling

You’re probably used to starting with writing; this exercise will get you to start with a visual prompt, and write from that, instead. Choose a random photo, photo of the day from Flickr, or do a Google image search for the first word that pops into your mind, and then write a short story or poem relating to the photo. Take at least 10 minutes to write about the chosen image. You can do this as many times as you want. Feel free to use your own photos if you like.

Remix 2050

Imagine you’re a GWN mentee in 2050: you’ve just been paired with a mentor from the future. Why have you both joined GWN? What is the program about in 2050? What are you creating and what tools are you using? Record a 2-4 minute conversation with your future mentor. You can write your responses on paper or do an audio recording using your phones! Androids and iPhones have built in voice recording you can use if you want to. You can also record your stories online for free! Go to http://soundcloud.com/ and open a free account. Once you have your account you can record yourself directly into the computer. Try it out and see how it goes!