Creative Digital Storytelling: What Role Does it Play for Us Today?

The significance of digital creative writing

The recent rise of digital creative writing marks a turning point for creativity and, in some senses, a return to the roots of storytelling.

In oral tradition, stories were interactive, fast-paced, and personal. Everyone could be involved and had some agency over the stories being told in the moment they were happening. The stories were a collaboration of many people working together to create something that no one of them could have done individually.

With the invention of writing, and even more so with the printing press, the motion of storytelling shifted from a dynamic group effort to a primarily one-way communication – a person thinks of a story, writes it down, and it ends there. The general public can only consume. There are benefits to this kind of storytelling, to be sure. Words became preserved history, voices were spread throughout the world for the first time, and culture was more visible than ever before.

But with the advent of the internet and its exponential growth nearly every year since its creation, the means of storytelling have shifted, in many ways, back towards their collaborative roots. People now have agency and collaboration. The platform has been leveled so that anyone has a voice. And – even though the lack of human connection still leaves something to be wanted from our ancestors’ methods – there are, in some ways, more opportunities for humanity, if we steward the technology responsibly.

In the following sections, I will explore some of the ways that we can harness technology for good in order to make our stories accessible, engaging, collaborative, and unique.

Homestyle Carbonara Recipe

This pasta recipe seems standard enough (and quite delicious, too). But scroll to the bottom and an engaging and unique example of digital storytelling hides in the comment section. What may have started with one genuine comment deemed ‘high-maintenance’ turned into an impromptu community humor story critiquing people’s extreme need for alteration of recipes and unrelated commentary in recipe comment sections.

Some of the comment highlights include “Thanks for posting this recipe but where’s the garlic, you coward?,” “Do you got a recipe for gum?,” and one of my personal favorites:

“Made this for dinner last night and the hubby loved it!!! / It’s me again — Trish. I have to confess I did not make this recipe — SORRY! But if I don’t jump into the comments section of a recipe website and mention my “hubby” at least once a day I fear something horrible might happen to all of us. /One more confession: I do not have a hubby. However, I would very much like one and if I had one I’m positive he’d love this recipe, with the addition of garlic.”

Comments like these work specifically in this digital context because they humorously subvert expectations and build a story that feels like the reader is in on the joke. It also democratizes the telling because anyone can add their comment, which is incredibly unique to this platform.

The use of a New York Times recipe’s comment section is an interesting choice for a story to be told. It makes the story feel more real and the reader feel like a sleuth for uncovering it (or a comedian for adding their own comments).

Seven short stories about drones

In this Twitter story, Seven short stories about drones, author Teju Cole sent each individual fictional story to a different user to tweet, and then retweeted all of them as his own twitter thread.

By choosing to display the story this way, Cole allows his work to affect readers in a new light that could not be accomplished via print media. Since he discloses later the way in which the story is created, he temporarily tricks his readers into thinking it is real, which likely gives them a much stronger reaction than if the first impression had been that of a short story.

The format of the story is interesting because, even though it has only one author, the myriad of perspectives and the somewhat disjointed structure of the final result makes it feel haunting and surreal. It seems to show snippets of different people’s lives, though it is all fictional, in a way that could not be accomplished by print media, again making the reader feel as if they ‘discovered’ this story themselves.

AI SIRI — A coping mechanism

This spoken word poetry piece is about a person disconnected from everybody, using his siri phone assistant to cope. He has experienced the recent loss of many family members, and even though he needs help and community, he’s struggling to reach out to people or to believe that they love him.

This piece is a perfect example of the ways that digital storytelling can take us back to the roots of oral tradition. The magic of the piece lies in the way it is presented. Tones of voice and his dead-eyed expression communicate more and resonate on a deeper, more human level than a transcript of the work could ever do. The haunting and emptying affect of a live person’s voice juxtaposing itself with the mechanical siri, all coming from the same mouth, adds a unique element of surreal-ness to the story.

The work uses these means to explore grief and depression and what that looks like in a person. It could help people experiencing this and the loved ones of those people to feel seen and to inspire them to reach out to each other. In a strange way, this piece of digital media may be the thing that sparks more real human connection.

What can we do with our digital stories?

As seen in these examples, digital media can, if used correctly, expand the means of storytelling to make it more emotional, more empathetic, more democratic, and more engaging. With comments, social media, websites, videos, realistic photos, and accessibility to all of it for nearly anyone around the world, the digital space has given us new ways to learn about people we may never meet, and to know not only what they have to say, but the means with which they choose to say it.

We must steward this new responsibility well, creating platforms, entertaining well, and stepping up to learn the possibilities of the new kinds of stories we can create.