Adaptations

AMST MA 1st year 2nd semester

Zaharcu Emma

Professor Nicolaescu

Storyworlds Across Media

By Marie-Laure Ryan

narratives that refuse to leave the stage : novel - based franchises : Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire;
movie based franchises: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Batman, Spiderman; comics based franchises : Tomb
Raider, Warcraft -> great success
Sequels / prequels / adaptations / transpositions / modifications components of the body of these franchises
all these spin a story and provide instant immersion
Purpose : to provide new directions which the study of media incarnations of narrative has taken; world instead
of narrative => acknowledgement of the concept of world on the broader cultural scene, not only present in
narratology
Nowadays there are multimodal representations of storyworlds that combine various types of signs and virtual
online worlds that wait to be filled with stories by their player citizens but also serial storyworlds that span multiple
installments and transmedial storyworlds that are deployed simultaneously across multiple media platforms,
resulting in a media landscape in which creators and fans alike constantly expand, revise, and even parody them
the stories and their worlds are modified by what is afforded and by what is limited in the media in which
they are realized
storyworlds = representations that transcend media -> expands the scope of narratology beyond its native
territory of language- based narrative, provides a center of convergence and point of comparison to media studies
new media types 20th century + role in daily life -> understanding media is the key to understanding the
dynamics of society and culture -> media has the power to shape opinions, participates into the social
construction of reality BUT the stories transmitted by the media do not concern the real world in order to produce
real behaviours => interrelation between fictional narrative representations and real social interaction
media convergence- media has control over culture, over our lives-> narrative placed at its center => it consists
of a story and different media converges around this storyworld in order to present various different aspects of it :
examples -> The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Batman, Tomb Raider / media incarnations of Greek myths / biblical
stories in the Western civilization-> the tendency to migrate from one medium to another in any imaginable
order
STORYWOLDS capture the mental representation that a text must evoke in order to be defined as a narrative
NARRATIVES = blueprints for a specific mode of world-creation ( Davide Herman); world
imagination while the author creates the storyworld through signs, it is the reader/listener/spectator/player -
who uses the blueprint of a text to construct a mental image of that world
NARRATIVITY common center of media convergence, organized around a storyworld
distinction between medium- free, transmedial, and medium- specific narratological concepts : from medium
free to medium specific, with various degrees of transmedial validity in the middle / the transmedial
applicability of narratological concepts ranges from all media to one or perhaps even to none exemple: a
medium that allows users to touch the head of the characters in a visual display and see the 3D film of their own
thoughts
candidates for the medium- free pole - the defining components of narrativity: character, events, setting, time,
space, causality

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 interactivity example of transmedially medium free concept impact of the audience on narrative
performance, not to literary narrative> applicable to video games, hyper-text fiction, improvisional theatre,
storytelling, tabletop role-playing games
medium specific concepts developed for a certain medium can be extended to other media through
metaphoric transfer : exemples -> gutter / frame / arrangements of panels on a page > tailor-made for the
medium of comics
borders between the 3 types of concepts not clear -> example: narrator a constitutive of narrativity (medium
free) BUT other narratologists see it as a transmedial concept which is applicable only to narratives with a language
track
MEDIALITY & TRANSMEDIALITY-> expansion of classical narratology, concerned with literary
narrative into media-conscious narratology and interrelation between medium free/ transmedially
applicable and medium specific terms and concepts
Medium polyvalent term : technological, cultural, semiotic dimension -> it depends on the medium but all
must be taken into consideration the narrative limitations and affordances
STORYWORLD:
LOGICAL conception : admits no contradiction ex. If a text rewrites an existing narrative => modifies the
plot, adds different features to the characters => a new storyworld that overlaps with the old one; therefore, these
new texts must respect the facts of the original text if they are to share its logical storyworld
IMAGINATIVE conception: the storyworld consists of named existents and of an invariant setting; features of
them and their destinies vary from text to text
Concept of narrator -> caused controversy among scholar: if its medium free constitutive of all narratives,
limited to media with a language track / optional within these medial; cinematic narrator / narrator ersatz ;
(Patrick Colm Hogan) the dramatic narrator worth examining for what it will tells us about drama (
dialogues between characters, takes as much time on stage as in the storyworld )
the speech of the characters is not limited to communicative speech acts and time does not pass at the speed
necessary by the dialogue; soliloquies addressed to the audience, access to the mind of the character ( Hamlets
speech -> report of thought can be attributed to an omniscient narrator )
The dramatic narrator can turn off / on the power to read the mind of characters, transpose the results of these
reading into what looks like speech
Storyworld plays a major role in the idea of a large world containing far more facts, thoughts, events than the
play can represent -> essential to selectial / construal notions: it is as if when reading/watching Hamlet,
Shakespeare contemplated a complete world in his mind, where certain events took place and even if there were
many ways to emplot these events, he chose the ones that would caught the attention of his audience
Narrative representations provide protorypical features -> experientialities / qualia -> issue of subjectivity
what narrative strategies a narrative representation may employ in order to represent the mind of a character
Jan-Nol Thon -> various manifestations of subjectivity in different media
transmedial strategies of subjective representation allow the reader/player/spectator to assume he/ she has a
kind of direct relationship between a characters consciousness and the narrative representation
Point of view / perspective/ focalization -> vague, open to misunderstanding
A new distinction between subjective, intersubjective and objectives modes of representation => allow for a
analysis of local/global structures of subjectivity
Intersubjective representation storyworld elements represented as perceived by a group of characters =>
objective representation/subjective ones
1. Objective representation -> storyworld elements not perceived/imagined by any character
2. Subjective representation storyworld elements are subjectively perceived/imagined by only one character ->
strategies of subjective representation : point-of-view sequences, (quasi-) perceptual point-of- view
sequences, (quasi- )perceptual overlay , representation of internal worlds
the medium- specific realization of these transmedial strategies of subjective representation in the media of
contemporary feature films / graphic novels / computer games, emphasizing the dual perspective of a
narratology : transmedial in analytic scope / media conscious in methodological orientation
Frank Zipfel -> various manifestations of fictionality in different media

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 medium- specific realization of the transmedial concept of fictionality for literature / theatre / film
approaches fictionality based on 3 components: a world criterion - in order to pass as fictional, the storyworld
must comprise invented elements; a cognitive criterion - readers / spectators must engage in a game of make -
believe; institutional component describing the cultural practices and representational conventions, related to the
medium
make-believe takes on different nuances in theater and film, where the make-believe of the actors induces make-
believe in the spectator, as opposed to literature, where it is a unilateral action of the reader responding to the text
institutional component of fictionality -> there are 3 medium-specific differences : number of worlds involved (
theatre - performance art, depends on a distinction between the fictional world of the invariant text / the production
world imagined by the director / the highly variable world created by the actors in every performance ); the role of
the text - major in literature and theater ( drama can be read as a form of literature, but minor in film - scripts -
usually not published); the possibility to present both fictional and nonfictional worlds- available in literature
and film but not in drama ( the most historically accurate play departs from the real world through its use of actors to
impersonate the characters)
Werner Wolf - investigates the medium- specific clues that lead audiences to apply a narrative frame to the
interpretation of a text -> FRAME 2 levels : MACRO -> refers to the global cognitive model that users
activate to make sense of a text; corresponds to the narrative and descriptive text- types, which can be realized in
either language- based / visual texts; MICRO -> refers to the internal / external clues that activate a certain type of
macro-frame; one specific clue could be the paratextual devices -> genre labels for literary texts : novel / memoir /
biography / titles for a painting
in some contexts, the paratextual indicators are either absent or ambiguous- ex. Many paintings lack titles /
their titles may be deceptive : Marcel Duchamps La Marie mise nu par ses clibataires, mme (The Bride
Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even) - abstract work - mocks the narrativity promised by its title; in literature,
while the term novel sends the reader on a search for narrative design, this search may be frustrated ( postmodern
novels) - lyric poetry
contrasting features: literature is a temporal art with immense narrative resources, while painting is a spatial art with
limited narrative potential
paintings suggest stories, which are known to the spectator from other sources / they correspond to stereotypical
scripts -> seduction / rape of a young woman depicted in paintings by William Hogarth
distinction between temporal and spatial forms of art should be regarded as one of the cornerstones of a
media- conscious narratology
MULTIMODALITY & INTERMEDIALITY - different kinds of relationships between media -> important for
the project of a media-conscious narratology ;through multimodality (replacing multimediality), different types of
signs combine within the same media object ex. moving image/spoken language/ music/ text in film -> Kress and
van Leeuwen
through intermediality, texts of a given medium send tendrils toward other media and can include cross medial
adaptations ( films -> video games)/ references within the text to other media objects ( a painting important role in
a novel) / imitation of a medium using the resources of another medium ( hypertext structure in print) / ekphrasis /
other forms of description of a type of sign through another type ( music/ visual artifacts described in language) ->
Rajewsky
Multimodality on 2 levels the level of the medium and the level of genre
1. multimodality = a feature of medium when the specific nature of the latter implies multiple types of signs ex.
inherent to the medium of film is its inclusion of images/ language /music
2. multimodality = a feature of genre when monomodal / multimodal works - possible within the same genre /
same medium, since medium is a defining feature of genre => innovation -> creates a new subgenre -> ex. a
musical composition that includes narration such as Sergei Prokofieffs Peter and the Wolf as compared to a
Beethoven symphony / a novel that includes images compared to a traditional text-only novel
Wolfgang Hallet -> narrative affordances and limitations of multimodal media ; deals with generic type of and
observes that, with its combination of text and images, the multimodal novel comes closer to perception and
cognition than monomodal novels do because our ways of worldmaking (Goodman) involve all the senses in
addition to language

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 the rise of the multimodal novel coincides with developments in cognitive science that put on equal footing visual
and language-based thinkingin contrast to the structuralist and post- structuralist claim that language is the
foundation of all mental life
Ex. 3 recent American novels whose heroes are children with exceptional cognitive abilities: a savant with
Aspergers syndrome/ a young inventor /genius cartographer => all characters construct the world by means of the
photos/ maps/ diagrams/ tables of data shown in each novel; give up the pictures, you will have a story; give up the
text, you will have only a collection of visual documents
the multimodal novel does not offer a simulation of perception as does the multimodality of film
it takes an interruption of the process of reading -> hypertextual practice of jumping from lexia to lexia, in order to
pass from text to image and vice versa -> breaking up of linear continuity
Jesper Juul - narrative affordances and limitations of multimodal media -> deals with an multimodal medium,
since most video games involve haptics, visuals, music, spoken language and written text
video games - not stories in the sense that films and novels are BUT fictional worlds in which a variety of actions
can take place => specific features of games / specific features of novels and films
principle of minimal departure -> players and readers engage in acts of imagination that conceive of the fictional
world in a way fuller than the textual representation ex: novel : a knife lying next to carrots in a kitchen => possible
to cut the carrot into sticks; same assumption for the game the action takes place in a virtual kitchen -> distinction
between interactive game worlds and traditional fictional worlds -> the player can find out that the knife
can only cut carrots and not peoples head
playing a game in a fictional world means learning which aspects of that world have rules => determines a games
level of abstraction.
novels, films -> immersion in the fictional world -> satisfaction BUT in games this satisfaction must be
complemented by a sense of achievement that the ability to play the game provides; the player must detect the
abstract structure determined by the rules, which attributes strategic significance to certain aspects of the
fictional world and treats others as decorative characteristics
Jared Gardner - analyses the relationship between graphic and audiovisual narratives from a historical
perspective (from birth til the end of the 19th century and the rise in popular demand throughout the 20th century
to the current situation, where film is the dominant partner)
encyclopedic knowledge of both film and comics history in order to show the way in which the texts of each of
these media are shaped by their intermedial relationship
Some changes in the ways Hollywood cinema narrates its stories can be explained by the influence of comics
conventions on both directors and spectators, as the advent of DVDs taught the latter how to read films as comics
readers tend to read comics
comics - resistant to digitalization, most capable of teaching us how to explore the multimodal narratives of the 20th
century; having multimodal storytelling strategies, comics - open to experimentation
Jeff Thoss - deals with the intermedial relationships between film and comics, focusing on a particular case
Edgar Wrights 2010 film adaptation of Bryan Lee OMalleys comic book series Scott Pilgrim
comic book + film version attempt to outdo each other in their imitation of a 3rd medium: pc games
the comic book series made its readers aware of the ubiquity of the intermedial references through its plot, which
revolves around Scott Pilgrims attempt to win over Ramona Flowers in Toronto; Scott must defeat her 7 evil ex-
boyfriends in a number of fights -> beat- em-up genre of video games
the film and the comic books - present a number of features: representational techniques/ extra lives/ save points ->
part of the world of computer games, even if present already in the comic book series
Marco Caracciolos comparative approach to capture a fundamental paradoxical feature of narrative: in order
to let recipients attribute mental states to the characters, stories must tap into their experiential background, yet at
the same time narrative expands this background so that recipients can share with the characters experiences that
they have never had in real life
addresses this paradox through a close reading of two texts that focus on altered states of consciousness -William
Burroughss novel Naked Lunch and the video game Max Payne -> both texts represent distorted experience
through textual clues that exploit the resources of their medium

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 Naked Lunch - reader is walked between the world of a characters drug-induced hallucination and the real world
through the use of 3 strategies typical of literary narrative: metaphor / internal focalization / dialogue that brings the
hallucinating character ( also the reader) back to reality
In Max Payne - the experience of waking up from a coma is represented through the visual panels inspired by
graphic novels => borrowing of resources from another medium reminds us that digital technology is a meta-
medium capable of encoding and displaying any type of signs
uses cut-scenes - feature of computer games - to represent dream sequences, but allows the player a limited
form of agency - the player guides the dreamer in several locations, he does not watch the scenes as a movie; these
dream sequences blur the borderline between cut-scenes and interactive episodes, where the player must use his
abilities
limited form of agency => allegorizes the illusory nature of the players sense of free will because the games
developer is the one who shapes the course of events
TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING AND TRANSMEDIAL WORLDS -> term transmediality -> used to
describe the applicability of a theoretical concept to different media; in the age of media convergence, the
representation of a single storyworld through multiple medias transmedia storytelling (Jenkins) and
transmedial worlds (Klastrup /Tosca) - influential
Jenkins - [a] transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a
distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole
Lisbeth Klastrup / Susana Tosca- > transmedial worlds as abstract content systems from which a repertoire of
fictional stories and characters can be actualized or derived across a variety of media forms , favoring an
imaginative understanding of the concept of storyworld
Jason Mittell analyses how television gave rise to innovative narrative forms in the 2000s and beyond
Speaks of the history of transmedial representation ( biblical narratives to 19 th century transmedial characters ->
Frankenstein / Sherlock Holmes, rare forms of transmedial expansion in 20th century to the proliferation of
transmedia franchises in todays media culture)
focuses on contemporary forms of transmedial expansions -> introducing another text to a larger audience.
He examines 2 transmedial strategies, realized by the franchises surrounding the television series Lost and Breaking
Bad
Lost - characterized by a centrifugal, storyworld driven, by the use of transmedial expansions, which aims at
the representation of the storyworld across media and consistent storyworld expansion
Breaking Bad - characterized by a centripetal, or character- driven, use of transmedial extensions aiming at
providing additional depths to its characters; it does not aim so much at the expansion of storyworld =>
hypothetical scenarions/ alternative story lines to the audience
Colin B. Harvey -> consistency/ the lack of it - a central feature of transmedia storytelling
develops a taxonomy/classification based on the legal relationship between elements in a franchise / on the specific
forms of collective remembering / misremembering / non-remembering / forgetting
the possible combinations between analogue and digital media => a medium-based classification problematic
6 six forms play a role in a given transmedia storytelling franchise: intellectual property/ directed transmedia
storytelling / devolved transmedia storytelling / detached transmedia storytelling / directed transmedia storytelling
with user participation / emergent user-generated transmedia storytelling
ex. Doctor Who/ Highlander/ Tron franchises -> show that parts of a franchise are authorized in different ways
and these vary in the requirements they make on both the producers and the recipients memories; what parts of a
franchises previous stories should be remembered is subject to negotiations not only between the producers and the
recipients but also between the various parties of what one may call the author collective
contracts allow the legal owner of a given franchise to control the extent to which operatives and licensees are
allowed to remember/ forget/ non- remember/ misremember parts of the transmedia story/ its characters / its setting
Lisbeth Klastrus / Susana Tosca - explores the various ways in which fans can be involved with a transmedial
world and involvement through social media
transmedial worlds as abstract content systems and it can be identified through the common core of features
that defines its worldness: 1. the mythos -> backstory, key events 2. topos -> worlds setting in space and time
3. the ethos -> norms, values, moral codices, ethical conducts

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 Example: The Maesters Path - online game experience -> excitement for the launch of Game of Thrones, the tv
series based on the best-selling novel series A Song of Ice and Fire
explore the development, reception of the social game, the marketing campaign - February to July 2011
shown how fans responded to the affordances provided by the combination of online game elements and social
media in the context of transmedial world => their efforts illustrate how a text- based media analysis can be
combined with an interview - based qualitative and a survey- based quantitative approach to get a clear picture of
the specific patterns through which fans participate in transmedial worlds
Maria Lindgren Leavenworth - the problem of audience participation in transmedia franchises by focusing on
unauthorized fan contributions to the transmedial storyworld of The Vampire Diaries
the novel series and the tv series represent different stories with different characters=> 2 distinct storyworlds rather
but the franchise establishes some continuities
her focus on fan fiction allows her to draw attention to the fact that there is some kind of fanon -> modifying and
challenging the logically consistent storyworld of the canonical texts
transmedia franchises should be regarded as archontic texts -> scholars should grant equal status to unauthorized
fan contributions and to the sanctioned creations of copyright holders -> are used to question the authority of the
canonical products
The fan fiction of The Vampire Diaries demonstrates this rebellious spirit by negotiating and re-examining questions
of gender and sexuality in ways that subvert the conservative norms and values implied in the genre of the vampire
romance
Van Leavenworth - analyses the transmedial storyworld, which has developed around the writings of American
Gothic writer H. P. Lovecraft
the Lovecraft storyworld transmedial its represented across a wide variety of media and genres such as
traditional textual fiction/ interactive fiction/ short and feature- length films/ fan art/ comics/ music/ board games /
role- playing games / computer games/ interactive environments in Second Life
the resulting storyworld is not defined by a specific story but by a common thematic focus ex. the cosmic
fear inspired by the Old Ones, such as Cthulhu, whose very existence lies beyond the limits of human imagination
he examines the defining features of the Lovecraft storyworlds worldness by analysing a wide range of media
texts that contribute to the Lovecraft storyworld -> on the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Societys silent film The Call
of Cthulhu, Chaosiums role- playing game Call of Cthulhu, and Michael S. Gentrys text-based interactive fiction
Anchorhead: An Interactive Gothic
demonstrates how such case studies can be connected to broader issues of literary, medial, and cultural
historiography & all works rely on the notion of represented worlds as sites of creative activity in which cultures
elaborate their collective social imaginary
Storyworlds - hold greater fascination for the imagination than the plots, because plots are linear arrangements
of events that come to an end while storyworlds can always develop branches to their plots that continue immerse
people
Henry Jenkins: When I first started, you would pitch a story because without a good story, you didnt really have
film. Later, once sequels started to take off, you pitched a character because a good character could support
multiple stories. And now, you pitch a world because a world can support multiple characters and multiple stories
across multiple media
Conclusion: old / new media gives birth to different types of storyworlds and different ways of experiencing them ;
the concern of a media- conscious narratology -> gives attention to the similarities and the differences in the ways
in which media narrate