So, I’m making up for the fact that I couldn’t make it to this year’s Digital Storytelling Festival by poring over my old copy of Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace by Janet Murray. Dr. Murray is one of the professors at the MIT Comparative Media Studies program, which is looking better and better to me all the time. The first time I flipped through this book, it didn’t do much for me – in part because I was coming at digital storytelling with my designer’s glasses on. Now I’m approaching it from a writer’s perspective, and the book is much more satisfying. An intriguing read.
I also finally picked up a copy of The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics by Dennis O’Neil, which is really quite cool. It has a number of tips good for any kind of writing or storytelling, touches on Aristotelian drama theory, and, basically, argues that if the finest writing advice available is to “write tight”, no other form of writing can compare to comics. I am inclined to agree… Definitely a genre I want to take a crack at sometime.
Storyteller, scholar, consultant. Loving son, husband and father. Kindhearted mischief-maker.
I'm the Director of the Games and Simulation program at Miami University in Ohio, where I am also an Assistant Professor in the College of Creative Arts' Emerging Technology in Business and Design department. I'm also the director of Miami's Worldbuilding and Narrative Design Research Laboratory (WNDRLab). I have a Master's in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and a PhD in Media Arts and Practices from the University of Southern California.
In past lives I've been the lead Narrative Producer for Microsoft Studios and cofounder of its Narrative Design team, working on projects like Hololens, Quantum Break and new IP incubation; in a "future of media" think tank for Microsoft's CXO/CTO and its Chief Software Architect; the Creative Director for the University of Southern California's World Building Media Lab and the Technical Director, Creative Director and a Research Fellow for USC's Annenberg Innovation Lab; a Visiting Assistant Professor at Whittier College and director of its Whittier Other Worlds Laboratory (WOWLab); the Communications Director and a researcher for the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab; a founding member of the Convergence Culture Consortium at MIT (now The Futures of Entertainment); a magazine editor; and a award-winning short film producer. more »
The opinions put forward in this blog are mine alone, and do not reflect the opinions of my employers.
