Thank you,
Emily Sharp
Multimodal
Narrative Engagement
In
a world of technology, social media, and short attention spans people are
playing around with different ways to get information across. Transferring a
story to be multimodal by putting it online can make the story more appealing
to younger audiences, but it can’t just be put on a webpage in normal text and
left. People online don’t view information the same way that people who will
pick up the story and read it do. They want to be able to interact with the
information and experience it in many different ways because that is what they
are used to doing online. Although reading a book itself requires a
conversation between the author and reader, information gathered online is
expected to be presented different ways so it’s easier to understand more
fully. By switching platforms the reader becomes a user. In making the details
and words from the story something users can interact with there has to be
thought put into what type of narrative device works what way and if it will
translate across platforms, because not everything will work for each way it
can be done and still retain the need for the reader to imagine the story and
how it would look for themselves that comes with reading a book.First, third, and second person narrative styles along with exposition, description, argument, and narrative can mix and match and be presented so many ways that can make a story unique. Changing the narrative of a story can completely change the story and affect how the reader feels and what they get from a story. Each person has different views and feelings on life, and so does a character in a story, and if the narrative view changes, so does the reader’s view. When transferring a story to a webpage there are many choices that can be made. The story can be presented by voice recording, video, lists of facts, and can present viewpoints of opposing characters as a form of analysis. This means that when a character is saying something, such as the judge in “The Conscience of the Court,” you see that through Laura Lee’s point of view. However, if you present the situation from the judge’s point of view you make the reader think about why the judge would be saying what he is and making them think about the situation as though they aren’t the narrator, but themselves in that situation.
Separation between what is straight from the author and any creative analysis needs to be distinguished so the user knows what is the base and what they should ultimately form their opinions on and what is analysis that they can take into consideration. To do this similar problems arise that bloggers, newspapers, and other types of people have between native advertising and their original content.
Native advertising is when the writer is paid by a company to either write an advertisement about their product or publish an ad the company has made. In both cases the ad looks like something the writer or company in control of the blog, magazine, or newspaper would write and publish normally. The person in charge of content uses these ads because it is one of the ways to make money to sustain their writing, but some people are morally against this because they feel that it tricks readers into thinking it is their thoughts on a product. To combat this people have started clearly marking it or having some sort of distinct feature to let their readers know that it is a sponsored post. Usually this is with a short line in italics at the end or a certain format. Many times bloggers will also only put native advertising on their website for a product that they like anyway.
This situation is similar to what would occur by making a website for a short story. There would need to be a clear distinction between facts and pieces that come straight from the story and what the online writer interpreted and wrote about based upon the short story. A simple way to solve this problem is to create a separate page on the website to distinguish between them and labeling one “Just the Story” and the other “Analysis.” This way the user knows the differences, can easily navigate between the pages, and find whatever they are looking for and need at the time.
On the “Just the Story” page for a short story such as “The Conscience of the Court” by Zora Hurston a good web page would present a clean layout to the readers with readable font. This means using sans serif font. This differs from reading, where serif font is easier because on the web page the extra lines on the end of the letters, or the serifs, help guide the reader whereas online it is easier on the reader to keep the letters as clean as possible on a webpage (Web Designer Depot). It also means making it attractive to viewers, casting a high emphasis on the design of the webpage. It can’t be cluttered and needs to be easily navigable. An extendable post should be featured prominently that can be clicked open to display the full text of the story for people who wish to simply read the story in a form that’s easier and more portable than a book. It could be accessed on their phone or computer, which most people would have with them any time. This also bring up the point that any website created would need to be tested on a mobile device to make sure that it maintains its clarity and user friendliness across all the platforms it can be accessed on.
After the text availability of the story, straight with no embellishments, readers will be looking for a different way to obtain the same experience. They want a different view on it, a way to see it a different way while they process it in their mind. Their eyes should be directed and drawn to audio clips from the story spread out in a sidebar. The placement of the sidebar, according to eye tracking research, is where most people would look next allowing the web designer to strategically control how they delve into the story after their read through. Having the audio clips would be almost putting them in the story without changing anything about it except the mode they are receiving it in.
In “The Conscience of the Court” they would hear audio clips from the judge, from the plaintiff, and the defendant. This gives them a feel of what Laure Lee would feel when she heard what the judge was saying and allow them to hear what she heard and how she felt when the Clement Beasley came to her when the incident happened. It would also give readers a view of what the court and judge heard when Laure Lee told her story. The clips would need to be short; users won’t listen to the whole thing, especially not if they’ve spent time reading through the story. If they haven’t read through the story the audio clips will highlight the important parts of the story and for people who have read it will put emphasis and add a layer of reality to the story. There would need to make sure that the audio clips chosen weren’t leading to any sort of analysis.
After the audio clips a clear layout of the event according to Laura Lee and Clement Beasley would be laid out in a list side by side so readers can see the discrepancies between the stories. A history of Laure Lee would need to be given also. Laura Lee’s background was an important part of the story and people who won’t read the story need to know it. A brief biography section would highlight her story in fewer words than Laura Lee told it in and would also give the readers a rounded understanding of the story. What wouldn’t work would be simply posting what Laura Lee said in a separate section because it doesn’t make the information any easier or more digestible for the user, and that is the purpose of making it multimodal.
High on the page should be a simple statement of the ruling found in the case. It would wrap up the story and give the important information first, which is what people who go to a website want to be most viewable. If this were a real court case that is what they would be looking for and for something with “The Conscience of the Court” they will want to know that.
After this, most information will be analysis or something that can’t be taken from the story without interpretation. History of the time period that the story takes place in would need to be evident and the ways the author creates tone and why she uses the title she does, along with all other information people would find useful in determining how the story works could be displayed briefly here. This would give the readers a greater understanding of the story without mixing it up with the story itself for them.
On the “Analysis” web page there could be an alternative view of the story through Clement Beasley’s or the judges’ eyes. This gives the readers a different perspective on the story and can open their mind to different ways of interpreting the story.
Throughout the web page many different narrative strategies could work, but they would need to be presented in the appropriate way so that readers can know what to understand as fact and as supplement. Changing the story too much, such as viewing it through a different character’s eyes can be confusing and may give a totally different opinion of the story than what they had. Most of these issues about what works solidly in getting the story across in different ways and simply adding opinion are solved by the separate webpages on the site. A multimodal form ultimately gives readers many different ways and levels to explore a story on, as long as opinion and pure story are separated, in ways that they can’t sense the story through simply reading the text.
Works Cited
Kole, Stacy. "Serif vs.
Sans: The Final Battle." Webdesigner Depot RSS. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.
<http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2013/03/serif-vs-sans-the-final-battle/>.