ABSTRACT
How do the examples in this chapter help us understand the practice of storytelling in the mobile media age? Mobile locative narratives, as “transmedia” stories, blur the line between storyworld and physical world, requiring that authors tell stories across a variety of media, including architectural space and the physical environment. As an intensely open, interactive, transmedia form, mobile locative narratives take advantage of the perceived affordances and constraints of digital, interactive narratives and the spaces in which these stories are told. Stories told via mobile locative devices require “really nontrivial effort” on the part of audiences because they have to physically move through various spaces to access the story. The result is that mobile locative narratives must foster far greater motivation for the audience to take part in the story in order to overcome the value threshold of the story. This chapter outlines the design considerations that make mobile locative narratives successful, including ways of taking advantage of the medium, interactivity, spatial storytelling, wayfinding, and narrative bridges.
