Transmedia is the latest and perhaps one of the greatest advances in storytelling in a long time.
Narrowly defined it is an approach to storytelling in which the story is laid out across multiple platforms of communication. Instead of just reading a book-- the idea is that now you’re reading a book, as well as communicating with other people also reading the book, in many different ways. Instead of just the book you could all be also playing a video game together, set in the books reality with the books characters and you’re able to interact with them. Instead of the video game perhaps you’re now on a social networking website looking at the profiles of different book characters, or even a Google-maps based website set in this reality to get an idea of what this place looks like. There are tons of different ways that this transmedia idea can work; incorporating ad campaigns, mobile applications, video games, and networking sites are just the beginning. The whole idea behind the transmedia concept is to submerse the readers as wholly as possible to get them interested in worlds that can only be done through the use of different media outlets. Some people might only want the book, or others might only want the video game, or other people something else; with this concept it is up to the user to choose his or her level of interaction with this story.
