How to Succeed in Digital Storytelling

Stop the presses: storytelling has just entered the digital age! Every month, daring authors are creating new kinds of interactive experiences that push the boundary of what’s possible, featuring such innovations as ‘branching storylines’, ‘non-linear narratives’, and ‘illustrations’ – none of which would be possible in printed books. These authors are being aided by risk-taking, forward-thinking publishers, and together they are trailblazing paths into imaginative new territories.

You too can be part of this revolution! But it’s not enough just to write a good digital story – the true mark of success is not critical praise, popular acclaim, or financial success, but rather, it’s being covered in mass media.

That’s why I conducted an exhaustive survey of digital storytelling coverage on traditional media such as newspapers, trade publications, and general interest websites. By means of a proprietary deep learning algorithm I developed last night, I extracted the precise elements that will help – or hinder – your quest to get coverage, and assigned each one a point value. Naturally, nothing is guaranteed, but if your digital story ends up with a high point score, you can be confident you’ll be lauded by the likes of the New York Times and BBC.

Without further ado, the guide!:

+10 points if you’ve been engaged by a traditional publisher (bonus 20 points if it’s by a well-known one such as Penguin Random House or HarperCollins)

+10 if you’re an established novelist (bonus 20 if you hate apps and have never used a smartphone before)

+10 if it comes out at the same time as the traditional novel it was so clearly originally written as

-10 if your digital stories have sold more than 10,000 copies (-20 if they’ve sold more than 100,000; no-one likes that populist stuff)

-50 if anyone has ever called or compared it to ‘a game’

+20 if it’s episodic

+20 if its chapters can be read in any order

+20 if it has pretty illustrations that’ll look great in an article (bonus 20 if it has animations)

+20 if you hate Twitter, would never use it, and are prepared to write a piece saying so

+30 if you claim you have never played games or interactive fiction, yet are confident that your story is superior and more innovative

+5 if it does stupid-ass locational bullshit that means the journalist can get a day out of the office to try it out

+10 if the author is willing to say that “this kind of thing is just a bit of fun and will never replace real books”

-20 if it’s science fiction, fantasy, or romance

+10 if it’s based on Shakespeare, Dickens, or similarly out-of-copyright classic authors

+10 if it’s for kids (bonus 5 points if it’s ‘educational’)

+20 if your story involves Google, Facebook, Amazon, or Apple (bonus 10 points if it’s actually made by them)

+20 if your publisher has raised $1 million+ in VC

-20 if your publisher is profitable

-30 if your publisher has existed for more than 5 years

With thanks to Naomi Alderman, who provided essential help on the survey