The Dr Egg Adventures: incorporating user-generated content and user-testing strategies in pre-production conceptualisation and development of a multi-platform storyworld

My ongoing research explores the conceptualisation, development and pre-production strategies in multi-platform storytelling. I ask the key question: How can the writing process adapt and engage with dynamic and diverse models of multi-platform storytelling, allowing effective user engagement with transmedia forms and narrative content, when the emerging technology is evolving, complex and unstable? I document and analyse several development strategies, as well as document creation, storyworld building and script mapping, in the pre-production stages of The Dr Egg Adventures first iteration, namely a mobile-platform game and serialised interactive storybook http://www.dreggadventures.com/ released in June 2018. This transmedia storybook and game for young audiences is based on a scientific storyworld for audiences ranging in age from 8 to 12. The case study will also critique the user-testing and fan-fiction strategies in transmedia and multi-platform screenwriting, as pre-production methods/models when adapting material to new digital platforms. I will document and analyse how two specific ‘user experience’ tests in the pre-production phase have influenced choices around specific platform usage and modes of storytelling.