Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Connecting place to stories with Google Maps

“The 21 Steps” by Charles Cumming is a wonderful example of a multi-part, text-based digital story related as a Google Maps mashup. More background information about this story is available on Charles’ blog. Unfortunately the story does not appear to be embeddable, so you’ll have to click the story link itself to view it.

This story is part of the “We Tell Stories” site, which according to the project’s about page is the:

most ambitious digital writing project to date [of Penguin UK involving] top authors to create new forms of story – designed specially for the internet.

One of my first thoughts about this form of geographically linked storytelling is how a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style story could also be written in this format.

This also reminds me of the Murmur
place-based digital storytelling project in Canada, which I heard Joe Lambert discuss in his SITE keynote about digital storytelling back in March of 2007.

I love geography and digital storytelling, so it should come as no surprise I LOVE projects like this which combine both of these passions!

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One response to “Connecting place to stories with Google Maps”

  1. Gerald Aungst Avatar

    Though it’s not quite as “Web 2.0” and distinctly more retro, your post also makes me think of a hobby of mine: Interactive Fiction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_Fiction). It’s a rather unique blend of computer programming and non-linear writing. Several people in the small but thriving IF community are exploring its uses in education. Emily Short has compiled a list of places you can find more information about it: http://emshort.wordpress.com/teaching-if/.