This is my (Very belated) final project proposal. The basic concept is quite simple: I’m going to tell a story, but a dispersed, distributed story.

Conceptually, I’m going to tell this story using multiple platforms – blogs, image and media hosting sites, probably social networking sites – and using multiple forms of media, from text to images to audio. (Maybe even video, if I can think up a way to do that, and can get my hands on a digital camcorder) The basic idea is to try and combine most or all of the stuff we’re working with this semester into some sort of semi-coherent narrative. (Emphasis on the “semi) As I was thinking about this, two big worries came to my mind; I wouldn’t be surprised if other people share them.

First, this sounds really, really overambitious. And it probably is, to some degree. I have an on campus job, an internship, four other classes besides this one, and a slight smattering of a social life that I occasionally involve myself in. I honestly don’t know how much I’m going to be able to accomplish, and whether the end result will at all resemble what I have in mind now. I doubt that it will, but hey – that’s what the process of creation is all about, to some degree. You don’t need to create exactly what you initially wanted in order for it to be cool. I’m willing to give this a shot, even though it is, on its face, sort of crazy.

Second, I am a little worried that this could become slightly formulaic. (“Hmm…now I need to incorporate some sort of audio file, to balance out that poorly animated movie poster I just made….”) I really don’t want that to happen; by framing my project this way, I am pushing the form over the content to an unusual degree, but I don’t want the content to be completely lost. That’s why I won’t be setting any hard goals or writing any sort of checklist about exactly what I need to include – I really want this to be an experiment in a different sort of form married with actually somewhat interesting content, rather than a simple “Look, I can do the class assignment’s with a common theme” sort of affair.

And of course, there’s the little issue of me not being entirely sure what I want to write about. I do have some vague ideas – which I’m unwilling to write about until they stew around a bit more, but rest assured, they’ll likely be highly cliched and overly morose – but nothing completely definite. But I am nevertheless rather attached to this idea. I’ve wanted to tell a story spread around the internet ever since we looked at several examples in my Electronic Lit class last fall, with Dr. Whalen. (Dionaea House is a fantastic example of this genre) So that’s the rough plan. I haven’t started writing yet – I’m still working on the audio project, and in the midst of making the rough sketches of the story before I begin working – but I’ll keep you all updated as I do.