Constructing The Pier: Writing for Comics within Transmedia Narratives

Storytelling across media presents a variety of concerns for the practitioner in terms of production and consumption, for 'A transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole' (Jenkins, H 2008, 97/98). Expanding, not necessarily adapting upon the same story to generate interrelated narratives within a cohesive cosmos. Narratives that may be perceived and engaged with separately and yet may also advance a larger consistent story. The Fallow Narratives is a transmedia storytelling project developed to explore narrative and the transformation of story across media, and examine what creative writing, particularly scriptwriting may reveal of its production related media. The themes of identity, memory and perception are explored within each story across the project, told through: Fallow (animation), The Pier (comic), Desistance (video game), The Deep Machine (songs), Observance (journal), Dell Arte (mixed media), Stain (music video) and The Quay (novel). The Pier, tells the story of a boy, Casper Fallow, who loses his younger brother in a late night fire at a pier where they had gone to imagine and play out a Punch and Judy show. It is the story of his subsequent healing and harmful journeys after he is taken to a sanatorium, his release, and his years as a Punch and Judy puppet maker and storyteller. This paper will discuss the process of writing for comics while considering a transmedia cosmology, and what this may reveal of comics through examining the development of The Pier. Also exploring how the same primary story can be transformed across each of the interconnected narratives and still extend the core subject matter and themes (Miller, 2008). Jenkins, Henry (2008) Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.New YorkUniversity Press.