Multimodal stories
The form your story takes may be negotiated with your teacher. Instead of writing a short story, you could create a graphic novel or a picture book, a digital story, a fictional or autobiographical hypertext narrative, a spoken story (in prose or song), a play or a narrative poem (ballad).
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Before you make this decision, you need to understand the characteristics of different forms of multimodal texts.
- Multimedia texts combine graphics, sound and text - you may like to read Requiem for a Beast, a multimedia work for image, word and music by Matt Ottley, as an example of how different modes can be combined to tell a story (Ottley, M 2007, Requiem for a Beast, Hachette Livre, Sydney).
- Graphic novels and picture books, plays, films and songs are also examples of multimedia texts.
- Hypertextnarratives are computer-based texts which offer readers hyperlinks to other pages and/or web pages or sites. The Vasalisa Project at www.rockingchair.org is an example of a hypertext narrative.
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Hypermediatexts are computer-based hypertextual multimedia which allow users to interact with the text - you may like to read/view the hypermedia story Inanimate Alice at the link below. Each chapter is presented as a separate story set in a different country and explores a different idea/adventure. (You could consider writing an additional storyline/chapter set in Australia and developing unique or iconic Australian features, events, settings or characters for it. Discuss this option with your teacher.)
www.inanimatealice.com - Examples of digital stories can be found through the sites listed on the 'Suggested reading' page.
- Your teacher may refer you to other texts to consider.
As you read these texts discuss how the structure, elements and features of multimodal texts are similar to and different from traditional print stories, and consider how you could create a multimodal story.
