Kristina Olsson

New tools, timeless
tales
Simon Groth
For the last few months I’ve
been working with a small tech
start-up company with big ideas.
Called oolipo—a nod to the
oulipo movement that pioneered
experimental constrained writing
techniques—this company is taking
the nineteenth century idea of
serialised storytelling and bringing
it to a contemporary audience via
that most twenty-first century
device, the smartphone. Stories for
oolipo aren’t just existing narratives
repackaged for a handheld screen,
they are stories written specifically
with the device in mind.
One of the stories I am working on
is called Valhalla. It’s a very modern
take on Norse mythology, combining
fantasy, history, humour, and a
whole lot of arse kicking.
I’m not the writer of Valhalla; I’m
the producer. This is a new kind of
role, somewhat akin to an editor,
but expanded into taking a text
and translating it into something
a designer and engineer can work
with in producing a work unique to
reading on a phone.
Just think about the reading
experience on a phone. Forget
any other device. Just concentrate
on the phone. What can you do?
You can combine text and images.
Animation and video is a possibility,
as are sounds that complement
the story. But that’s just the
beginning. Phones have GPS and
accelerometers. A phone knows
where you are on the surface of
the earth, your coordinates on the
map and even your altitude. Most
importantly, a phone is networked. It
has a live connection to servers and
other devices proliferated around
the planet. It is not simply a passive
device for consuming content; it can
help create and share.
That’s a lot of additional tools
available. So how does a story for
such a container come together?
As a writer, you may be tempted to
turn your story into a multimedia
assault. Or maybe you fall into
another camp that sees nothing
wrong with sticking to long, elegant
blocks of text. A story for the phone
might work at either of these
extremes, but more likely you’ll
want to navigate a path somewhere
between larding up the narrative
with distractions or creating an
impenetrable wall of text that brings
nothing to the reading experience
beyond what ink and paper does.
This is where the producer comes
in. Use the possibilities of the
platform, imagine how the features
of the device can bring something
unique to the story. And at the
same time never lose sight of the
reading experience. The producer’s
job, like the editor’s, has much
to do with balance and restraint.
The writers of Valhalla have built
their story around a narrative voice
that relies on short but evocative
strings of text. When released,
Valhalla will combine this voice with
background textures, black and
white illustration and the subtle
use of animation, sound loops and
three-dimensional parallax effects
into a kind of ‘hand-made, hightech’
aesthetic.
For much of this year, I’ve been
grappling with the question of
what skills and capabilities writers
will need in the future. We can’t
know for certain how our devices
and media may evolve, but we can
assume that the fundamentals of
good storytelling will remain. The
choice of medium must always
serve the story. And the reading
experience must always serve
to take a reader deeper into the
story world. All the cool ‘features’
in the world will add nothing to
a story if they’re not relevant.
And all the beautiful prose in the
world will never reach a reader
if it’s frustrating to access. More
than anything, what writers will
need is not that different to what
writers have always needed: an
understanding and appreciation of
how their stories are experienced.
In the meantime, I need to get
on with turning Valhalla into a
database-readable spreadsheet.
Yes, being a producer has its
glamourous moments too.
The oolipo app is available to
download now from the App Store.
The first season of Valhalla will be
released in January.
Simon Groth’s books include
Concentrate and Off The Record: 25
Years of Music Street Press. His two
novels have been shortlisted in the
Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards
and the Text Prize and his short fiction
has been published in Australia and
the United States. Simon is director of
if:book Australia, a leading developer of
experimental publishing and exploration.
His work and reporting on how readers
engage with digital publishing has seen
him travel the globe to discuss and
explore the challenges and opportunities
for writers in a digital space. He
tweets at @simongroth and blogs at
simongroth.com.
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WQ