Week Two: Transmedia Storytelling and World Building

Map of Oz and Nearby Magical Lands

This week we are looking at the frameworks of established transmedia narratives and the dynamics of reading them and adding to them.

Reading Assignment: I am asking you to read one of thirteen other Oz books that followed Baum's Wonderful Wizard of Oz and that make up his account of Oz delivered from his perch as its Royal Historian. I am suggesting you read The Road to Oz which is pretty useful for our project since it gives you lots of characters to meet. Whatever you read, try to get an a version with the original illustrations. This should give you enough to ground you a little grounding in the Ozverse. 

After you read a Baum book (which won't take long) please browse around some other Oz materials like Oz comics, books that take place in Oz written by someone other than Baum, short stories that use Oz as a sort a mythic framework, stories that remix Baum in unexpected ways. In these works sometimes Oz overflows into a construction of ordinary reality, in others we are once again invited back to visit Oz itself. Try to read enough of several works to get an idea of how approaches vary and what others have done with Oz as a narrative landscape.

Here is a link to page of quotes from Baum. 

Writing Assignment: After you have read some of Oz, I would like you to create your own addition to this world. I would like you to write what we might think of as a tourist's account of a visit to a specific place in Oz. Begin by locating this place in Oz geography. The two maps of Oz reproduced here should help you situate your own account of Oz. 

We are mostly interested in a tour of the landscape and a sense of the characters who you meet there. Please try to include a character or two from Baum's book to help root us in Oz and then please create several characters of your own for us to meet. Think about the way they talk and what they say. Make their speech as unique to them as possible. Give them some actions that demonstrate their character traits. Oz has many characters that show strong contradictory traits, for example the lion is cowardly, the hard metal man has a tender and sensitive heart, the man with a head of straw (later bran) is really clever... Try to create a character or two that have this strong contradictory quality.

You don't have to worry about creating a story or plot, concentrate on just creating a vivid impression of the landscape and the characters that inhabit it. Post your account on your blog before coming to class on Wednesday.