Paper Nations, a South West England-based creative writing incubator dedicated to diversity and innovation, has commissioned three writers with links to the region to develop exciting and experimental writing projects that use smartphone technologies to tell immersive stories. Paper Nations is led by Bambo Soyinka, Professor of Story at Bath Spa University.

The “Beyond the Book” commission, led in partnership with The Writing Platform’s co-editor Kate Pullinger, aims to develop innovative models for writing and publication, promoting dialogue between writers, technologists and new publishers. By supporting writers to work with technologists as part of a commission, Paper Nations is helping early-stage experimental writing to flourish. This will lead to a body of research into how to support and champion emerging digital writers, which will be shared both nationally and internationally.

In February, our three commissioned writing teams were beginning their projects. They each gave us an update on this early stage as they balanced story and technology with their wider ambitions of what they wanted to achieve through the work. They are all now in the middle of their projects and we have caught up with them again to see how they have been progressing, particularly during the national lockdown in the UK due to Covid 19. We will check in with the writing teams again in a couple of months as they reach the end of their projects. 

The Fog – Lucy Christopher and Rajiv Edward

Lucy Christopher and Rajiv Edward, a writer and technologist team, have been commissioned to develop “The Fog”, which uses smartphone sensors, such as geolocation, to tell a story about a mission to save Bath from a time-freezing fog.

It seems that a nationwide lockdown isn’t bad for all projects, not if the two project partners live together already at least. In fact, Raj and I used some of the lockdown time to do a lot of thinking about our digital project, The Fog, and to do a lot of talking about it too. Crucially, we feel like we have made some big leaps forward. For example, we have a structure for the project finally; something that had been evading us for months and causing me, as the primary writer, many headaches. Now, it feels like we know what we are doing in regards to the story arc and what we are trying to achieve. But, perhaps most crucially, we are starting to build the story on a digital platform. We have a prototype for the first 5-10 minutes of the digital consumption of The Fog. We can see it coming together. It’s exciting. 

So how have we got here? Well, Raj has been busy learning ‘React’, a Javascript library, in order to help with the technical build of The Fog, while I have been scribbling on lots of bits of paper trying to work out where parts of this story should go to make the most sense. 

It’s so different writing this to working on a novel. I have to think more about structure, and I have to think more concisely – two things that don’t necessarily come naturally to me as a novelist. I’ve always been the kind of writer who likes to feel my way into story. This is harder to do in this medium – Raj can’t necessarily feel his way into building a digital platform and me working intuitively like this will inevitably cause more work for him. I’ve learnt that a more accurate road map from the start is needed; a more accurate purpose and idea of where we want to take it. 

There’s still loads of work to do. I need to write the rest of the text, and make sure the components of the story arc are still thought about carefully. Raj needs to do loads of super tricky building and coding to make The Fog look pretty and exciting on the screen. We are still very much in the foggy middle of The Fog, but at least now we can see a little more clearly to the other side.

The Wallet Chapters – Lucy Telling 

Writer Lucy Telling is developing “The Wallet Chapters”, which will use e-tickets accessed within the Wallet app, on both Apple and Android, to create an overarching story inspired by the information supplied in the tickets (dates, times, locations and other details). 

It’s fair to say that the world has changed since my first blog post. In the lead up to the Coronavirus crisis, I made good headway with regards to developing the technology for The Wallet Chapters, and the story I want to tell. 

Back in January, I was occupied with questions relating to the possibilities and restrictions within the Wallet application. At this mid-way point, I feel I now have answers to many of those questions and a much clearer understanding of the parameters within which my story will sit. This is important in relation to the narrative I am writing, but it also allows the concept to become a platform, which could be used for multiple different stories in the future.

Your Wallet is full of tickets, which allow for a range of locations, modes of transport and events. A quest story, therefore, fits well. Initially, I imagined the story would span a period of ten years, but I now know it’s not possible to add tickets retrospectively. So, I have decided the story will be contemporary and delivered in real time, probably over the course of a week or two.

 Each ticket sets the scene for each new chapter. When a ticket is available, as a reader, you receive an email with a link to download it into your Wallet. The layout relates to that particular ticket, so it looks like a train, event or flight ticket. This gives basic info about the ticket, but no story. When you turn the ticket over (virtually) you will be able to access a back page where you will be able to read a text synopsis of the chapter and further content via web links.

 There are various options regarding the links. For one, this offers the opportunity to add audio, so it is possible to listen to a full version of each chapter. I imagine this will be a location recording made by our protagonist describing each event just after it has happened. The links also offer scope for additional content that could add finer detail, depth and texture including audio recordings of (fictional) overheard conversations, Youtube videos and links to existing websites that could be woven into the story or (perhaps in future iterations) fictional websites.

 The story revolves around what Alfred Hitchcock termed the “MacGuffin” – a mysterious object that sets the chain of events in motion. The object itself, although central to the story, is largely unimportant in itself to the reader, but of utmost importance to the main characters. The first chapter is a train ticket. Our protagonist has just had an unnerving encounter, where she helped a homeless man who had collapsed outside the station. Moments before he was taken away in an ambulance, he gave her something and asked her to return it to “Virginia”. He leaves before she has a chance to ask him any questions.

The story revolves around this intriguing object and his instruction, which, over time, becomes her mission – to carry out what ends up being his last wish. In her quest to discover more about it, she finds herself in new and increasingly weird situations. A series of coincidences lead her to believe she is on the right path. She feels compelled to follow, but becomes mixed up in a strange, dark world that causes her to question her own life choices and, at points, the nature of reality itself. 

seer – Melanie Frances

Writer Melanie Frances is producing “seer”, a reader-led interdimensional journalistic investigation where readers will act as the protagonist, a journalist who is investigating a new technology that claims to allow people to see into alternative dimensions. 

I both love and hate the middle of a project. I find that it is here, in the middle, that you really get to grips with what your piece is doing, what it is saying and with the experience you are creating for your reader. 

In a non-linear, interactive project like this, in the middle of a process you begin to step into the middle of what you have created. I have the stories, the routes and journeys, the characters and moments, the hundreds of post-its surrounding my office walls. Now I begin to shape what I have made. I reshape and refine – see where to push and pull and what needs more or less. 

Central to seer, the piece I’m making, is the idea that two people can look at the same information, the same stimuli, and understand two different stories – that our perception and our perspective shape what we believe to be real and true. The experience of this difference, of the multitude of ways we can put together information to build a narrative, is an experience that lies not in words but in the gaps between them, the connections we draw – in what is left unsaid between two people, the discrepancies between one account and another. To tell a story of many perspectives, you have to tell a story in the gaps. 

seer is experienced on a website that presents the reader with an archive of information to search through. The reader plays as a journalist and to progress they have to ‘publish’ stories, making choices about what information they think is important, and what they want to know more about. 

Now that the website is up and running, I am getting a sense for the first time of how the reader will experience the world of my piece, what it means for them to guide themselves through the narrative and make choices. In this moment I centre my audience, and begin to understand our conversation. It is a conversation of perspectives and perceptions, a conversation that lies in the gap – the gap between what I’m saying and what they’ll say back. 

For more details on Beyond the Book and the writers visit Paper Nations.

Writer Profiles

Lucy Christopher and Rajiv Edward 

Lucy Christopher and Rajiv Edward are a creative and real life partnership interested in all the possibilities that digital storytelling presents. Rajiv is a Frontend Web Developer and UX designer who works at the University of Bath, and is looking to push further into app development. Lucy is an international bestselling Young Adult author, including novels Stolen, Flyaway, and Storm-wake. Her books have won the Branford Boase Award, the Printz Honor, and have been shortlisted for the Costa and Waterstones prizes. Lucy also works as a senior lecturer. Through her work leading the MA Writing for Young People at Bath Spa, she has helped to kickstart the careers of many writers who have gone on to have several books published themselves

Lucy Telling 

In 2009, Lucy Telling co-founded Stand + Stare, an interactive design studio, with her brother Barney. Since then, the Bristol and Stroud-based writer has worked on numerous creative projects, including a recreation of two sets from The Muse by Jessie Burton, using touch tech to trigger audio extracts from the novel in 2018. An extensive list of her projects through Stand + Stare can be found on their website. Lucy is also an award-winning playwright and film-maker whose work has been performed across the country, both in theatres and schools.

Melanie Frances 

A writer with many hats, Melanie is a theatre-maker, artist, game designer, and mathematician who is also Co-Artistic Director of digital, interactive performance company Produced Moon. She has authored several app-based works, including The Inventor’s Squad, an audio guide that tells the stories of female scientists, mathematicians, engineers or inventors, such as Ada Lovelace and Hedy Lamarr.

Paper Nations, a South West England-based creative writing incubator dedicated to diversity and innovation, has commissioned three writers with links to the region to develop exciting and experimental writing projects that use smartphone technologies to tell immersive stories. Led by Bambo Soyinka, Professor of Story at Bath Spa University, Paper Nations promotes collaboration across all sectors.  

The “Beyond the Book” commission, led in partnership with The Writing Platform’s co-editor Kate Pullinger, aims to develop innovative models for writing and publication, promoting dialogue between writers, technologists and new publishers. By supporting writers to work with technologists as part of a commission, Paper Nations is helping early-stage experimental writing to flourish. This will lead to a body of research into how to support and champion emerging digital writers, which will be shared both nationally and internationally. 

Following an open call and a selection panel made up of experts, (Hachette Publishing’s Chief Innovation Officer and Innovation Program Director Maja Thomas, Forward Prize highly commended writer Louisa Adjoa Parker, Bath Spa University’s Steve Hollyman and Kaleider’s Andy Wood) three writing projects were selected for commissions of £5,000 each. These three projects each experiment with different opportunities that the smartphone offers for telling stories and adds to a growing creative field.

The writers are in the early stages of their projects and are scoping out what might be possible as they grapple with story and technology. We have checked in with each of them to share details of their process so far. We will return to them each in the middle and end of their projects to see their progress. 

The Fog – Lucy Christopher and Rajiv Edward

Lucy Christopher and Rajiv Edward, a writer and technologist team, have been commissioned to develop “The Fog”, which use smartphone sensors, such as geolocation, to tell a story about a mission to save Bath from a time-freezing fog.

The idea for our digital story came from the idea of fog – both literal and metaphorical fog. We saw the call for Beyond the Book and thought it looked like a fantastic opportunity that spoke to both of our skills – Rajiv is a web developer and I am a writer for young people – but we didn’t know how to approach it. Neither of us have engaged in digital storytelling before. We started by talking through loads of ideas. The problem was that every time we thought we’d found the best one, we got stuck.

“It’s like descending into a fog,” I said, looking out into a foggy afternoon in our hometown of Bath. “In fact, being in a fog is a good metaphor for having writer’s block in general.”

“So, why don’t we make the project about fog then?” Rajiv said.

It was a throwaway line, but it got us thinking. What if the impetus for the digital story was a fog that descended into the character’s world? What if the reason the story couldn’t be finished was because a fog was in the mind of the author, also? What if the only way out was to get the reader / digital consumer to clear the fog themselves … i.e./ finish the story?

Being a writer for young people, I’ve always been interested in the idea of writing for a very specific audience. I believe a story has as many different readings as it has readers. For example, read the sentence ‘He got into the car’ and we each imagine a different kind of man getting into a different kind of car, for a different kind of reason.

But what if a story could literally have as many different versions as it has different readers? In this way, our story would be like a Choose Your Own Adventure story, but with even more options and moments of uniqueness.

Through The Fog, Rajiv and I are exploring participatory creativity. We are exploring the act of writing as well as the act of reading. We want to create a participatory story that clears a fog and, together with us, creates a story. It’s ambitious, and we are still in some fog ourselves about how we will do it, but we have well and truly leapt in. 

The Wallet Chapters – Lucy Telling

Writer Lucy Telling is developing “The Wallet Chapters”, which will use e-tickets accessed within the Wallet app, on both Apple and Android, to create an overarching story inspired by the information supplied in the tickets (dates, times, locations and other details). 

As I begin the process of developing my project, I have a whole bunch of questions. My proposition is to use the Wallet app on a phone, often used to contain tickets for events, air travel and trains, to access a fictional narrative. My intention is that each ticket contained within the app will unlock a chapter and provide a time and place for that part of the story. I have had an iPhone for roughly ten years and am imagining the story could span that kind of time period.

With this type of project, I often find there is a balance to be struck between immersing myself in the writing and working out the parameters of the technology. At this early stage, I feel it is useful to understand what’s possible with the tech, before going too deep into the story. In fact, in the past, I have found working out constraints is often inspiring and liberating because it sets out useful boundaries.

Working in-house with my company Stand + Stare – an interactive design studio – we are beginning to figure out how to upload the chapters into the Wallets on readers’ phones. Existing platforms, such as Eventbrite, allow you to generate your own tickets, but we have also found a few apps/websites – e.g. Pass2U and Passkit – that look preferable because you can use these to create different kinds of tickets, which can be stored within the Wallet.

We need to consider the look of the tickets themselves, what info we can include and whether we can access web links from each ticket. Links would allow us to deliver parts of the story via audio or link to additional websites.

I have further questions about how the story will be sent to readers’ Wallets and how it will work alongside their own personal tickets. If the dates do go back 10 years, will the tickets appear chronologically amongst the tickets already stored in their Wallets? Will I need to somehow make the story feel like it is connected to them, or will it be okay to have a story appear that is not related to their tickets or connected to them personally? The other, more practical consideration, is how the tickets appear at all. Is there some kind of sign up process, and, then, would a reader receive all the tickets at once? Or would they appear one by one, perhaps daily? Or maybe a reader would receive all the tickets up to the present time and then a few tickets that are time sensitive, such as an epilogue? At this stage in the process, there is a lot to think about.

The inspiration for this project came partly from a Stand + Stare commission that I worked on for Birmingham Library, where we responded to the Wingate Bett Collection of travel tickets. There was no provenance, so I was free to write a fictional narrative. The story was a glamorous, yet tragic, tale of unrequited love told through diary entries between 1934 -1964. Each entry was inspired by a ticket in the collection.

I am always drawn to stories that span generations and reference historical events. I am considering using the Wingate Bett tale as a backdrop for this story, which could be set in the present day or in the recent past. It may link to characters or themes, such as music journalism or the experiences of a woman looking for love and a fulfilling career.  

It is vital that the story fits with the structure and that the tickets in the Wallet underpin each chapter. Once I have some answers to my practical/technical queries, I am excited about getting down to the planning and working out how this story will move the reader through time and place.

seer – Melanie Frances 

Writer Melanie Frances is producing “seer”, a reader-led interdimensional journalistic investigation where readers will act as the protagonist, a journalist who is investigating a new technology that claims to allow people to see into alternative dimensions. 

It feels somewhat contradictory to be sat here, writing about beginnings, considering what it means to start something, when in my work itself I am explicitly trying to push away this structure.

The piece I’m developing, seer, is non-linear and interactive. It offers not a story, but multiple potential stories for the reader to piece together, accounts to believe or doubt, reports to accept as fact or dismiss as fiction.

As I start – because as much as I riff on terms I am actually starting – I’ve been reflecting a lot on what it is to write a non-linear narrative well.

By ‘well’ I absolutely mean considering what good non-linearity looks like – offering meaningful choices, opening a dialogue with your reader, building a sense of the other potential routes they could have gone down – but I’m also asking myself ‘How do I write in a way that best facilitates this?’and ‘How do I write without a direction?’

How do I write without making the choices myself, but instead leaving them to someone else?

For now, my solution lies simply in embracing duality, celebrating multitudes. I accept that all versions of the story are true, all of them happened, and write as such.

“Multiverse” by Leo Villareal in the tunnel which connects the East and West buildings of the National Gallery of Art, Washington

This puts you at a distance from the world you create. If you want to leave the choices to someone else, you can’t also make them yourself. Each potential route has to be treated with the same care and respect. At the moment I’m finding pleasure in leaning into ambiguity and writing accounts that can be read a multitude of different ways. 

A surprise to me has been the ways in which this approach of embracing multiplicity is proving more broadly useful.

In my schedule, I have a period of research, a deep immersion, followed by a period of creation. I’d consume and then I’d respond. But I’m here at the start of my writing period and it feels important for the research to continue. I’m not ready to stop yet. 

I’m building a digital platform for the piece with a creative technologist. I want to be able to tell them exactly how the story will work – what all the choices will be, all the multitude moments I want to hit. But I haven’t written them. I want the platform to be ready so I can write on it, play with it. But I also want the whole story to be written so I can create a platform that suits it.

Everywhere I feel stuck in-between.

So, across the board, across the project, I am pushing myself to embrace duality, accept that things don’t have to happen in an order. I’ll do them all at once, not because that’s how it has to be, but because to make something truly non-linear, you have to inhabit the space of duality. You have to embrace the ambiguity, and celebrate it. Here I go.

For more details on Beyond the Book and the writers visit Paper Nations.

Writer Profiles

Lucy Telling 

In 2009, Lucy Telling co-founded Stand + Stare, an interactive design studio, with her brother Barney. Since then, the Bristol and Stroud-based writer has worked on numerous creative projects, including a recreation of two sets from The Muse by Jessie Burton, using touch tech to trigger audio extracts from the novel in 2018. An extensive list of her projects through Stand + Stare can be found on their website. Lucy is also an award-winning playwright and film-maker whose work has been performed across the country, both in theatres and schools.

Lucy Christopher and Rajiv Edward 

Lucy Christopher and Rajiv Edward are a creative and real life partnership interested in all the possibilities that digital storytelling presents. Rajiv is a Frontend Web Developer and UX designer who works at the University of Bath, and is looking to push further into app development. Lucy is an international bestselling Young Adult author, including novels Stolen, Flyaway, and Storm-wake. Her books have won the Branford Boase Award, the Printz Honor, and have been shortlisted for the Costa and Waterstones prizes. Lucy also works as a senior lecturer. Through her work leading the MA Writing for Young People at Bath Spa, she has helped to kickstart the careers of many writers who have gone on to have several books published themselves

Melanie Frances 

A writer with many hats, Melanie is a theatre-maker, artist, game designer, and mathematician who is also Co-Artistic Director of digital, interactive performance company Produced Moon. She has authored several app-based works, including The Inventor’s Squad, an audio guide that tells the stories of female scientists, mathematicians, engineers or inventors, such as Ada Lovelace and Hedy Lamarr.