Archive for December, 2007

I’m very impressed by THE SPIDER-WICK CHRONICLES. A series of YOUNG ADULT novels by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black. The writing and art are terrific. But what really gets me is the way the IP has been designed to inspire fan generated content.

Of course there are the usual COMPENDIUMS of strange creatures. And the insistence that the books are based on a true story — the journal of Arthur Spiderwick, and the adventures of his descendants. With an almost ARG worthy dogma the authors keep to their story in all the interviews I’ve come across. It’s pretty awesome.

But what I really love is THE SPIDERWICK NOTEBOOK FOR FANTASTICAL OBSERVATIONS. It’s filled with blank pages to be filled in by the books’ owner. My son is walking around our garden right now — talking to faeries and drawing pictures of all the creatures he’s seeing.

HE: “Dad — the pixies are smearing goblin blood on my pages.”
ME: “Tell them to pick on somebody their own size!”

The Notebook offers sample images of creatures, guiding questions, and suggestions for how to observe the creatures. So that nobody is left staring at a blank page and wondering what they are supposed to do.

The Notebook is an ingenious iteration on the NARRATIVE GAPS concept. For a while I’ve wanted to design gaps in my own TELEVISION narrative. Spaces designed to be filled by fan generated content, in a way that the content can be incorporated into the show’s narrative as canon.

I was having trouble wrapping my head around exaclty how to do this — in a way that was both contained, and manageable. I didn’t want any of the content generators to feel I was locking their creativity in a box.

The Spider-Wick Notebook does it right. It’s a playroom. A sandbox full of toys. And anyone is invited to come over and play. I can’t wait to see how people start building this concept into their transmedia properties.

Check out the NOTEBOOK FOR FANTASTICAL OBSERVATIONS.