Digital Storytelling is a pretty self-explanatory concept. It is telling a narrative through digital means. There are several forms that can be used to do this as I briefly showed in the video. I combined some of the several forms! I illustrated a comic using digital art and created a video along with adding a voiceover to introduce the topic. With the power of digital technology, traditional storytelling has been enhanced to sometimes include interactive elements as well as expand the ways people can consume it.

Just to go over a few, here are some examples of digital storytelling:

Podcasts are strictly auditory ways of conveying a story. There are podcasts that are conversational, educational, and narrative. Moon Graffiti is a “what if” story about the Apollo 11 crashing instead of successfully landing. The podcast uses voice effects along with other sound effects to bring the story to life without visuals.

Video story-telling is usually in the form of a movie or T.V. show. You have to use your imagination less, but the modern capabilities of computerized effects are so outstanding that we have to appreciate how far we’ve come from one of the first movies ever made: 1902’s Le Voyage Dans La Lune.

Visual novels and digital “choose your own adventure” stories are popular forms of interactive fiction. https://twinery.org/ can be used to create your own branching paths for a choose your own adventure story. Netflix released Bandersnatch in 2018, which involved choosing what the main character should do on screen using your T.V. remote. Doing this unlocked all sorts of outcomes to explore!

Similarly, there are significant digital storytelling elements in video games. In The Last of Us (2013), a PS3 game, you play as the main protagonist, Joel, as he traverses the country with a young girl who is curiously immune to a rampant zombie outbreak. You are able to interact with elements that advance you through a narrative story. Playing through a story game effectively attaches you to the characters and its world.

Just like I’m doing right now, blogging can count as a form of digital storytelling. People use things like Twitter threads or Facebook posts to tell stories and events all time, you just don’t notice it’s a form of storytelling. People can use blogs to post their writing, or talk about their personal experiences.

Webcomics are simply digital comics! I made one above. Webcomics are easily accessible on the Internet and are a form of visual storytelling using art. Emily Carroll makes a series of horror comics and has also done artwork for a narrative video game.