To summarize, a television/transmedia creator can create a transmedia story by following four steps:

1.) Construct a fully furnished world in order to support multiple story lines. The transmedia world should not only have a complex history, but also implied spatial dimensions in order to encourage exploration and discovery. Hard-core fans can seek out transmedia content to flesh out the world, while casual fans can imagine a vast expanse.

2.) Insert strategic narrative gaps that are reserved for development in transmedia extensions. A television producer should give fans the opportunity to ‘produce’ deeper meanings and improve their experience of the show. Though the exact story of a transmedia extension may not be easily planned at the outset, leaving narrative gaps open for transmedia storytelling is an important part of the transmedia design process. Television is unique in that viewers can attempt to fill in these gaps while the show’s narrative is still unfolding. Sometimes these gaps can be easily filled (by following the migratory cues of the hermeneutic codes), other times they help viewers interpret or predict how the gap might be filled, creating a game of formulating and testing theories.

3.) Develop satisfying experiences in each individual transmedia extension. A transmedia text should stand on its own, making the process of learning new narrative information fun in its own right. Transmedia extensions should be carefully designed to reflect the capabilities of a specific medium and type of transmedia extension. New episode extensions can capture the core qualities of a show in a different medium, diegetic artifacts can capture the core qualities of a show and bring them to everyday life, and alternate reality extensions can play with threshold crossing, puzzle solving, and community building.

4.) Reward consumers’ efforts to explore a transmedia story by making passing references that validate the information they learned elsewhere. That way, stories can flow not just from the television show out to transmedia extensions, but also from transmedia extensions into the television show. This creates a pleasure in seeing how a transmedia text operates as a whole and how it creates opportunities for consumers to engage with a story on multiple levels. When watching with casual fans, the validation effect empowers hard-core fans to become ‘gatekeepers’ of information, allowing them to demonstrate their expertise and even encourage others to pursue migratory cues towards transmedia extensions.

It is not coincidental that this proposed model reflects the logic of many video games. As I will discuss in Chapter 4, many hard-core fans already approach cult television shows as if they are games. They scrutinize individual shots, construct and test theories, collaborate to solve puzzles, and create encyclopedic “walkthroughs” for the show. My model, then, is an attempt to harness this gaming culture through transmedia storytelling. We can see similar strategies at work in Halo, for example. Halo’s designers created an immersive world (a war between Covenant aliens and humans), provided goals or missions within the world (rescue a soldier, investigate a mysterious bunker, etc.), made the process of accomplishing those goals enjoyable (killing aliens with a weapons arsenal), and then rewarded the player for accomplishing the goal (a new cut scene that moves the narrative forward). This formula, when applied to transmedia storytelling, allows hard-core fans to create a deeply engaging experience that goes beyond watching television. In my model, hard-core fans enter an immersive world, explore the world with a purpose (to fill in narrative gaps), enjoy the process of exploring (by creating worthwhile experiences), and feel rewarded by seeing a more unified transmedia text come to life (through the validation effect).

To be clear, I am not suggesting that television shows should be more like video games. Television will always be an attractive medium simply because viewers can relax and sink into a storyline. Most industry professionals know that viewers do not want to literally interact when immersed in a television show. But transmedia storytelling allows hard-core fans to shape their experience and engage with a television show on a much deeper level. The trick is to subvert these gaming elements within a television show’s narrative so as not to detract from the casual fan’s experience. For more specific techniques in accomplishing this, we must examine the lessons from a television show currently experimenting with transmedia storytelling.

After a transmedia producer builds a world, reserves narrative gaps for extensions, and develops worthwhile experiences, adding one more step can be quite gratifying for hard-core fans and at no expense to casual fans. It involves what I will call the “validation effect.” The validation effect rewards fans not just with additional knowledge, but also with a sense of recognition for their efforts to pursue narrative information across transmedia extensions. As one fan said of Doctor Who, “couldn’t there be something for the faithful viewer? Some reward for staying all 13 weeks?” [1] This reinforcement can come from seeing a character from the comic book or ARG appear on the television show. A validation can also come in the form of a hidden object in the mise-en-scene, a piece of clothing, or a bit of dialogue referring to the events of an extension that came before it. One might draw from Long’s six classes of hermeneutic codes to insert validations in the television show.  In any case, a transmedia/television producer should look for discreet ways to validate narrative extensions, creating a more unified, coherent world.

I often see the validation effect happening in televised sports events. For avid fans who know every player’s name, stat line, and background on their favorite team, seeing a little known bench player enter the game is an amazing opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge. When people ask, “Who is that guy?”  avid fans gladly rattle off the player’s information, validating their status as a hard-core aficionado.

The validation effect has its origins, of course, from the Star Wars franchise. In the animated Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978, a character named Boba Fett appeared. Damon Lindelof, executive producer of Lost, describes the experience:

The special was, like, the worst thing ever…but there was this Boba Fett cartoon. He wasn’t a character in Star Wars. He was just an action figure, and it was like, ‘Send in a proof-of-purchase, and you get this Boba Fett.’ And we were like, ‘Who the fuck is Boba Fett?[2]

Boba Fett became highly popular and fans could soon re-enact their own stories using the action figure. Two years later, when Boba Fett appeared in The Empire Strikes Back, the Boba Fett fans got the ultimate pay-off. [3]

Television’s “nowness” has great potential to provide immediate reward for hard-core fans. For example in ReGenesis, players of the “extended reality game” worked together to create a report on a suspect. In the following episode, the character on the show received a report via fax and mentioned something to the effect of “our field agents have given me this information.”[4] To casual fans, this line means nothing. But to hard-core fans, their work has been validated—they can feel a part of the show. Jeff Gomez sees the validation effect happening in Heroes:

Also powerful on the home front, as families gather to watch Heroes, a teen fan of the show might recognize a peripheral character making her first appearance on a given night’s episode as one he originally read about in the online comic. So our fan takes on the role of gatekeeper for the show, filling in family and friends on the back-story of the character, and giving them a greater appreciation of the show with his “exclusive” knowledge, and making the whole experience more entertaining.[5]

Gomez is referring to Hana Gitelman, also known as  “Wireless” due to her ability to communicate with wireless and digital devices. Hana’s back-story began in the graphic novels, which explained her past in the Israeli Army and how she first developed her ability to mentally generate text messages. Then, in the episode, “Unexpected,” Hana made her television debut. Hana’s appearance on the show  rewarded fans who were familiar with her back-story, but her role was minimal enough so that casual fans did not need to understand her character.  The introduction of Wireless was simultaneously a validation and a migratory cue, as many curious fans went on discussion boards to ask, “Who was that girl?” and were directed to read the graphic novels to find out.

In effect, then, validations can also function as migratory cues for casual fans because they can motivate television viewers to find out the identity of a seemingly random character. But for hard-core fans familiar with every text in a transmedia system, the validation effect happens when the primary narrative references a secondary text previously released. Ideally, both the primary and secondary texts should cross-reference each other, forming a more cohesive unit.

Thus, the validation effect is more than “additive comprehension;” [6] it is an explicit acknowledgment that a viewer-player’s transmedia traversals actually matter in some way. Though validations are rarely used today, they can provide a powerful tool for transmedia producers to celebrate hard-core fans without confusing or upsetting casual fans. In Chapter 4, I will explore some examples in Lost.

[1] Russell T. Davies as cited in Perryman Neil. “Doctor Who and the Convergence of Media: A Case Study in Transmedia Storytelling.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies. 20.1 (2008):  21-39.
[2] Kushner, David. “Rebel Alliance.” FastCompany.com. 11 April 2008.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Interview with Christy Dena. April 10th, 2009.
[5] Quoted in Jenkins, Henry. “Talking Transmedia: An Interview With Starlight Runner’s Jeff Gomez (part one).” Henryjenkins.org
[6] Jenkins defines additive comprehension as “a piece of information that makes you look at the whole differently. For example, in the director’s cut of Blade Runner, an origami unicorn caused people to surmise that Deckard might be a replicant. In Convergence Culture, 122.

So far, a transmedia producer should develop the spatial dimensions of a world and leave narrative gaps to facilitate exploration and discovery. But how should the ‘secondary texts’ be crafted? By definition, transmedia extensions should add some insight into the overarching narrative. And they should be integrated through various forms of migratory cues. But in this section, I argue that transmedia extensions should be understood as individual experiences, not just sources for more narrative information. A transmedia/television producer should make the process of discovering narrative information a fun and worthwhile experience in its own right. Obviously, different types of extensions have different potential for creating enjoyable experiences. As such, I examine transmedia extensions in the form of a ‘new episode,’ diegetic artifact, or alternate reality.

1.)  “New Episode” Extensions
As the name suggests, “new episode” extensions are essentially a new episode(s) of the TV series, only in a different form of media.[1] These may exist as graphic novels (Heroes), videogames (Alias: Underground), webisodes (24: Conspiracy), or mobisodes (Battlestar Galactica: The Resistance), and exist as spin-offs, sequels, prequels, or fillers, but in all cases, new episode extensions must satisfy two requirements. They must be tonally and thematically consistent with the television show and they must be a transparent mode of storytelling. That is, unlike diegetic artifact and alternate reality extensions, new episode extensions maintain the boundary between the fictional world and everyday life.[2] Audiences take pleasure in experiencing the television narrative through the lens of a different medium and can do so from the comfort of the outside world looking in.

In one example of a new episode extension, Joss Whedon continued the storyline of Buffy The Vampire Slayer into a comic series known as “Season 8.” The comic book reads like an episode from the show, with the same characters, mythology, and fantastical creatures. Except, Whedon understands that a comic should not be exactly like a television episode:

The show was very mundane, deliberately mundane…A comic has got to work on a grander, epic scale. We can really take the characters wherever we want…That’s where the fun is, in revisiting these characters. It’s like being with my old friends, but in actuality, not being with my old friends, because the actors aren’t there to play them. It’s a little different. It’s a symphony based on the little tune we played.[3]

Whedon knows that extending a storyline into a new medium means that the story must be altered to fit the capabilities of the medium, while also maintaining the integrity of the show.  So while Whedon can afford to be more fantastical and “grand” in his presentation of a comic book narrative (due to lack of financial and personnel limitations), the characters’ actions must still be consistent with the beloved characters from the show. Each medium has different storytelling possibilities: books can add psychological depth to characters, video games can put spatial dimensions into a story, and films can provide visually stunning sequences. Thus, new episode extensions can offer fresh experiences based on how well they capture the same appealing qualities of a television show, while also taking advantage of the medium’s unique storytelling potential.

2.) Diegetic Artifact Extensions
Askwith uses the term “diegetic extensions” to describe transmedia extensions that originate in the fictional universe, but are available to explore in the actual world. [4] Janet Murray calls these “hyperserials” or virtual artifacts from the fictional space of the TV series.[5] These may come in the form of diaries, legal certificates, telephone messages, instant messages, and e-mail messages. John Caldwell presents three types of digital artifacts: characterized proliferations, narrativized elaborations, and back-story textuality.[6] Characterized proliferations enable users to explore items from a character’s life.[7] For example, on DawsonsCreek.com, users could explore Dawson’s emails, IM chats, journals, and trashed items. Narrativized elaborations “allow the narrative arc to continue outside the show.”[8]  And back-story textuality increases “intimacy” with a character by providing more in depth character development, like a college essay or blog post. However, as Askwith argues, these categories often blend together, making it difficult to differentiate between the three.[9] Thus, I find it useful to break down hyperserials into two broad categories: character artifacts and institutional artifacts.

Character Artifacts

Dawson’s Desktop is an excellent example of a character artifact. The site filled in gaps between aired episodes (narrative elaborations) but also gave users the opportunity to dig around Dawson’s trash bin (characterized proliferations).[10] Fans could even send their own e-mails to Dawson as if they were fellow students.[11] Character artifacts are usually based off characters appearing in the show. Examples include The Office’s Shrute Space (the blog of Dwight Shrute) or 24’s ‘Palmer Campaign,’ which allowed users to gain insight on Senator Palmer’s political platform and his stance on issues like wildlife protection and clean energy. [12]

One interesting character artifact comes from the second episode of Heroes. Hiro, a computer programmer who can bend time and space, discovers a comic book called 9th Wonders!. The comic book is the creation of another main character named Isaac Mendez, an artist who can draw the future. Hiro frequently consults the comic to see what will happen next. And when the 9th Wonders! went online, viewers could follow the painter’s prophecies along with Hiro.

Institutional Artifacts
As Derek Johnson has argued, many cult television shows depend on the presence of institutions to expand a hyperdiegesis.[13] Institutional artifacts usually come in the form of novels or websites. The House Special Subcommittee’s Findings at CTU was a novel framed as a piece of investigative journalism from within 24’s story world. Published to expose declassified documents and transcripts from The C.I.A’s Counter Terrorism Unit, the author claims that “24” was the code-name given by the news media to refer to the scandal in the agency. [14] The book jacket reads: “This report names names, wags fingers in some surprising new directions, and may even serve to clear some well-positioned scapegoats of culpability…It’s the kind of drama you only expect to see on TV.” By positioning the book within 24’s hyperdiegetic space, readers play the role of a citizen in the show’s universe. While no one would mistake The House Special Subcommittee’s Findings at CTU for non-fiction, there is a certain pleasure in imagining Jack Bauer as a real person.

In both character and institutional artifacts, television moves even closer from our living rooms into our everyday lives.  Their effectiveness seems to be judged based on well they bring elements of the fictional world into the actual world, while also improving our understanding of the television show. Yet as mentioned in 3.1, institutional artifacts are generally better for worldbuilding than character artifacts. Institutional artifacts encourage characters to play a role, but it is a role that exists comfortably in the off-screen space of a show’s hyperdiegesis. In contrast, character artifacts may allow more direct interaction with a character, but such interactivity risks bringing fans ‘too close’ to the action of the show.  In her study on the relationship between the television show Spooks and its ancillary games, Elizabeth Jane Evans argues that fans want to maintain a distinction between themselves and the television characters in the show. [15] They want to “imagine what another person must feel like in their situation without for a moment confusing ourselves with that other person.”[16] When we interact with institutional artifacts, we do not play our actual selves as much as we play a character in the same world as the characters on the show.  This role is intensified through alternate reality extensions.

3.) Alternate Reality Extensions
Alternate reality extensions allow people to play a role as a member of the narrative world and challenge the boundaries between the reality of the show and everyday life. Generally, only the most devoted fans participate in alternate reality extensions. However, these extensions offer the most interactive and immersive experience within the diegetic world of the television show. Sometimes an ARG[17] can run concurrently with the television show, such as Alias, ReGenesis, and Push, Nevada. In the Alias ARG, participants paid close attention to the show in order to follow the clues of the ARG. For instance, after seeing two characters memorize a binary code in the show, viewer-players entered the same binary code into an online chatbot, receiving a URL where they could access a secret message from a major character on the show.[18]

Alternate reality games do not just exist on the computer; they can also incorporate SMS messaging, voicemail, newspapers, billboards, flyers, and live events. Steven Jones argues that many fans enjoy the simple act of crossing the fictional world and the actual world:

Part of the fun of such intermediation is the viewers’ or players’ pleasure in following the official “hacks” or media re-purposing, crossing the threshold between text and outside world, seeing different media crossed and re-crossed in order to use the media network as the ‘platform’ for a larger, unstable structure, even if we know that structure is…a marketing device for an entertainment product.”[19]

Jones argues that this “threshold crossing,” a characteristic of alternate reality games, is similar to early role-playing games, where people acted out imaginary characters and fantasy worlds. However, unlike many fantasy-role playing games, which transport the player into a fictional world, alternate reality games bring the fictional world into everyday life. This can cause some jarring disconnects with television, as I will discuss in Chapter 4.

Thus, a transmedia extension should not just be something more for the hard-core fans to do, but actually an individually satisfying experience all its own. Though it is impossible to evaluate what makes an extension “fun,” a television/transmedia producer should pay special attention to what kind of story they want to tell and pick the appropriate transmedia extension. New episode extensions blend the appeal of a television show with the capabilities of a new medium. Diegetic artifact extensions let users be a part of the fictional world and alternate reality extensions enable a higher degree of interaction and participation within that world.

[1] Jason Mittell first used the term  “new episode” as a category to describe some video games’ relationship to serial narratives. In “Serial Narratives and Tie-In Games: Problems, Possibilities and Pleasures.”  Unpublished paper presented at Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference, Vancouver, Canada, March 2006.
[2] These are a similar category to what Ivan Akswith calls “narrative extensions” in TV 2.0: Reconceptualizing Television, which are also unique for acknowledging themselves as a mode of storytelling. However, unlike my use of ‘new episode,’ Askwith does not include role-playing games in his category of narrative extensions. (whereas I have included video games)
[3] Vineyward, Jennifer. “Re-Buffed: New Comic Book Series Resurrects Vampire Slayer.” MTV.com. 1 February 2007.
[4] Askwith develops the category “diegetic extensions” in TV 2.0: Reconceptualizing Television. However, Askwith distinguishes between diegetic artifacts (“objects that have explicit significance in the core television narrative”) and diegetic extensions (“objects that do not appear in the core narrative, but are presented as if they exist within the diegetic space of the program”). For purposes of simplicity, I will conflate these categories into one.
[5] Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. New York: The Free Press, 1997.
[6] “Convergence Television: Aggregating Form and Repurposing Content in the Culture of Conglomeration.” Television After TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition.
[7] Ibid., 51.
[8] Ibid., 51.
[9] TV 2.0: Reconceptualizing Television.
[10] Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture, 115.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Johnson, Derek . “Inviting Audiences In: The spatial reorganization of production and consumption in ‘TVIII’.” New Review of Film and Television Studies. 5, 1 (2007): 61-80.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Cerasini, Marc and Alfonsi, Alice. The House Special Subcommittee’s Findings at CTU. New York: Harper Collins, 2003.
[15] Evans, Elizabeth Jane. “Character, Audience Agency and Transmedia Drama.” Media Culture Society. 30, 2 (2008): 197-213.
[16] Ibid., 205
[17] Alternate Reality Game.
[18] Ornebring, Henrik. “Alternate Reality Gaming and Convergence Culture.”
[19] “Dickens on Lost: Text, Paratext, Fan Based Media.” 22 May 2007. Loyola University, Chicago.

Once the foundation for a world is set, a transmedia creator must then motivate audiences to explore its various extensions across media. The television show should invite hard-core fans to track down ancillary content and improve their overall experience. At the same time, these invitations must not make casual fans feel obligated to participate in transmedia consumption. In order to understand how this might work, we must first consider the unique capabilities of television.

In his book Television Culture, John Fiske draws on Roland Barthes to distinguish between two types of texts: ‘readerly’ texts and ‘writerly’ texts.[1] Readerly texts are most popular because they invite a narrow interpretation – the audience can easily uncover the text’s pre-determined meaning.  For example, when viewing Die Hard, audiences expend very little effort to make sense out of the film; rather, they can enjoy its thin plot and action sequences as pure entertainment. Writerly texts, on the other hand, resist closure and coherence, requiring much more interpretive effort. They involve an unfamiliar discourse that is difficult to decipher. Avant-garde films are writerly because they rely on the audience to find some semblance of meaning and as a result, do not attract a wide audience.

Yet some texts are both readerly and writerly. Fiske expands on Barthes’s categories to offer a third: producerly texts. Like readerly texts, producerly texts are popular and easy to read, but they also have the openness of writerly texts. Producerly texts incorporate many “loose ends” and “gaps” but audiences can draw on their own feelings and experiences to fill them in and produce their own meanings. Producerly texts may be open, but different readers can easily read them in different ways. Fiske argues that television, as a medium, operates in this way:

Television is a producerly medium: the work of the institutional producers of its programs requires the producerly work of the viewers and has only limited control over that work…The pleasure and power of making meanings, of participating in the mode of representation, of playing in the semiotic process – these are some of the most significant and empowering pleasures that television has to offer.[2]

Television is producerly because no single author can impose a single meaning on the audience. Rather, television viewers participate in a “semiotic democracy,” where they bring their own experiences and beliefs to engage with a text and thereby produce meanings that give them pleasure.[3]  For example, Fiske notes that live sports games invite disagreement and interpretation from the audience. The commentators may offer their opinion on a particular play or call, but the viewer can look at the footage and disagree based on their own experiences of playing the sport. Similarly, Fiske argues, viewers form strong emotional connections to characters on television because they can understand and relate to how the characters act out problems. Fiske says that because television characters enter a viewer’s home at a set time each week, there is a sense of “nowness” and “liveness.” Characters become familiar faces as they continue to return week after week, seemingly existing even when the television is turned off. Television’s characters thus invite the viewer to draw on their own experiences and relate to the characters as if they were real people. This producerliness is attributed to why “cult” fans become such loyal and devoted followers of a television show – they assign deeper, more personal meanings to the characters of the show than non-fans.[4]

A producerly text is one that can be enjoyed and accessed on multiple levels. Its openness can be read on the surface level, or it can promote more active interpretation.  As an example, consider Twin Peaks. At first glance, the show appears to be writerly due to its avant-garde and surreal tendencies. It also appears to be writerly because it encourages the use of VCRs to figure out the meanings of many hidden clues—subscribers to alt.tv.twinpeaks exchanged videotapes, deciphered cryptic dialogue, and analyzed sequences of events.[5] This would suggest that Twin Peaks is writerly because of the tremendous effort expended to make sense out of the show. Yet Twin Peaks was also a popular culture icon, garnering huge ratings for ABC in its first season[6] – how do we account for such mass appeal? If we understand Twin Peaks as a producerly text, the answer becomes clear. As Jenkins puts it:

‘People who didn’t get it’ might have related it to another level, either as part of the plot, or as invoking a different set of references that meshed with their own personal experiences…Here the viewer is central and meaning derives from what people make of the program, through their interactions with what they see and chains of association it forms with them. TP was very open this way. There was something for everyone and that added to the pleasure.[7]

Twin Peaks was not so writerly that it was absolutely incomprehensible; rather, people could relate to it on different levels. The show’s narrative was complete with cryptic messages, riddles, conundrums, dreams, clues, secret passages, idiosyncratic characters, ominous figures, and a soap opera narrative structure.[8] Viewers were satisfied in making meaning from any combination of these elements.

Producerly texts are incredibly important in balancing hard-core and casual fans. In the case of Twin Peaks, casual fans could assign their own meaning to the show while hard-core fans had the opportunity to work harder and find deeper meanings. Producerly texts, then, carve out room for transmedia storytelling, inviting hard-core fans to increase their expertise and create deeper meanings by seeking out further narrative information.

For example, fans looking to solve the mystery, ‘Who killed Laura Palmer?’ had the option of buying The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, a hidden diary with missing pages. The book provided a candid look into Laura Palmer’s life as she balances prostitution and cocaine with her status as a homecoming queen and high school student. But the novel also added insights into Laura’s relationship with BOB, a mysterious being who sexually abuses and terrorizes her, and suggested that perhaps he may be her father.[9] The knowledge allowed hard-core fans to interpret references in the show at a different level than the mainstream, casual fans. Transmedia storytelling, then, legitimates “cult” fans by giving them the resources with which to experience a producerly text in a more meaningful way.

To give fans more ‘interpretative tools’, a television/transmedia producer should incorporate strategic gaps into a core narrative and reserve these gaps to be filled in or better understood through narrative extensions. A strategic gap may be the cornerstone of a show or a minute detail. But in both cases there must sufficient room for a narrative extension to add distinct and valuable information. Narrative extensions can offer clues to solving important mysteries and/or provide explicit answers to nonessential questions.

First, narrative extensions can contribute to a kind of game, where viewer-players try to figure out the core mysteries of a show. Matt Hills describes these “endlessly deferred narratives” as promoting infinite interpretation and speculation regarding a particular question.[10] This “undecidability” of cult television is exemplified by questions like, What is Rambaldi’s endgame? Who is Doctor Who? What is the mysterious island? These central mysteries are often repeated and alluded to, but never fully resolved (until the end of the series). Endlessly deferred narratives postpone solutions to encourage investigation, providing a goal and a quest for hard-core fans to hunt down transmedia content and scrutinize episodes for clues towards their next theory.

Fans of Twin Peaks centered their discussion around Palmer’s murder, examining even the smallest gesture from one character to another.[11] The Internet intensifies this process of hunting and gathering information, comparing notes with one another, and collaborating to develop theories.  Transmedia extensions such as The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer can be another tool for fans to produce their own meanings and theories as they make sense out of endlessly deferred narratives.[12]

As Jenkins notes however, fans assumed that David Lynch, the creator of Twin Peaks, had reasons for his madness: “the complexity of Lynch’s text justified the viewers’ assumption that no matter how closely they looked, whatever they found there was not only intentional but part of the narrative master plan, pertinent to understanding textual secrets.”[13] Invariably, the very fact that a specific question had been built up to become an obsession increased the likelihood that the answer would be disappointing. David Lynch reflects on the anticlimactic nature of ending an endlessly deferred narrative:

It’s human nature…to have tremendous let down once you receive the answer to a question, especially one that you’ve been searching for and waiting for. It’s a momentous thrill, but it’s followed by a kind of depression. And so I don’t know what will happen. But the murder of Laura Palmer is…it’s a complicated story.[14]

Indeed, after the revelation of Laura Palmer’s murder, the show lacked narrative focus and ratings plummeted.[15] This suggests that perhaps the fun and playfulness of traversing media in an attempt to solve an endlessly deferred mystery can actually be more rewarding than the narrative pay-off itself.[16] Fans take pleasure in hypothesizing about many aspects of the story, demonstrating their expertise in the process.[17] As one fan put it, “I don’t care who killed Laura Palmer. I just love the puzzle.”[18] For many fans of Twin Peaks, using their collective intelligence to match wits with David Lynch, the “trickster author,” was the main appeal in watching the show. [19] Unfortunately, Twin Peaks’ jarring resolution and ratings downfall illustrates the problem of centering a show on a single endlessly deferred mystery. So while transmedia extensions that offer clues to a central enigma can promote a ‘playfulness’, they can also promote frustration by ‘hyping up’ the resolution and setting up fans for disappointment. As a result, television shows can invite transmedia exploration in more subtle ways.

Geoffrey Long argues that transmedia stories should create “passing references to external people, places, or events” which act as “potential migratory cues” or signals towards future narratives.[20] These passing references can be developed or “actualized” in other media, adding insight into the story world without becoming a requirement for comprehension. For example, in season one of Heroes, the character Hiro goes back in time and falls in love with a waitress named Charlie. While viewers only see glimpses of that affair on television, Heroes released an entire novel called Saving Charlie revolving around their relationship. In this case, the potential migratory cue of Charlie and Hiro’s relationship was actualized in the novel.

Long also draws on Roland Barthes’ hermeneutic codes to provide five categories for potential migratory cues: cultural (anything hinting at a larger culture), character (characters that do not appear on screen), chronological (referenced events in the past, present, or future), geographic (places that appear only briefly on screen), environmental (flora and fauna), and ontological (the existential nature of the story).[21] Casual fans have the capacity to fill in these gaps with their own imagination in the core narrative, but crucially, these gaps have the potential to be actualized or explained in secondary texts.

We may look at NBC’s Heroes as an example. Heroes tells the story of ordinary individuals who develop superhuman powers. The show excels at actualizing character hermeneutic codes and developing back-stories. One of the main characters, a genetics professor from India, discovers important research from his father, who died early in season 1. A Heroes graphic novel fleshes out the relationship between Mohinder and his father, revealing that Mohinder came to trust his father’s scientific beliefs at an early age. In another example, the graphic novel “The Crane” reveals that Hiro’s grandfather had survived Hiroshima, providing another reason why Hiro was so motivated to save the world from a large explosion. These back-stories are based off questions that a casual fan would not think to ask during the television broadcast, but they provide greater depth into the world of Heroes for hard-core fans.

Heroes also makes use of cultural migratory cues. In season 1, Hiro believes that a Japanese Kensei Sword holds the power to focusing his ability. While the television show never fully explains the history of the sword or why it is important, a five-part documentary about its founder Takezo Kensei provides an in-depth look at sword’s legend, complete with epic battles, dragons, and princesses. Again, this back-story allowed hard-core fans to increase their mastery and knowledge of the show without confusing traditional television viewers.

In both Hills’ endlessly deferred narratives and Long’s hermeneutic codes, narrative gaps exist for transmedia extensions to emerge.  Transmedia extensions can help fans hypothesize about an endlessly deferred narrative, allowing them to produce more informed meanings and interpretations, or, as with Long’s hermeneutic codes, transmedia extensions can explicitly answer questions that were not essential to a core narrative. Either way, the process of filling in narrative gaps has unique potential in television. Consider John Fiske’s assessment of television’s “nowness:”

The future of television serial appears to be unwritten, like the real future, but unlike that in a book or film, whose readers know that the end has already been written and will eventually be revealed to them. The suspense in television, its resolution of uncertainty, engages the viewer more intensely because its enigmas appear to be unresolved and the viewer is invited to experience their resolution, not merely learn of it.[22]

Television’s “nowness” and immediacy allows hard-core fans to pursue migratory cues and attempt to fill in gaps all while the primary text’s narrative is still unfolding. This creates a  ludic quality to the meaning-making process. Viewer-players scavenge for narrative information across media texts and can receive seemingly instantaneous reward for their efforts, as I will discuss in 3.4. In the case of endlessly deferred narratives, viewer-players can use ancillary texts to improve their hypotheses on central enigmas and then tune in each week to see if the next episode confirms their theories. Likewise, by pursuing Long’s migratory cues, viewer-players can increase their expertise and develop their ability to find deeper meaning in future episodes.

[1] Television Culture. New York: Routledge, 1987.
[2] Ibid., 235.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Porter, Patrick. “Buffy vs. Dracula. Intertextuality, Carnival, and Cult.” Refractory Journal of Entertainment Media. 9 (2006).
[5] Jenkins, Henry. “‘Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?’: alt.tv.twinpeaks, the Trickster Author, and Viewer Mastery.” Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks. Ed. David Lavery. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995. 51-70.
[6] Carter, Bill. “The Media Business: ‘Twin Peaks’ May Provide A Ratings Edge for ABC.” The New York Times. 16 April 1990.
[7] Quoted in Reeves et al. “Postmodernism and Television: Speaking of Twin Peaks.” Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks.
[8] Jenkins, Henry. “Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?” Full of Secrets.
[9] Desmet, Christy. “The Canonization of Laura Palmer.” Full of Secrets.
[10] Fan Cultures, 101.
[11] Jenkins, Henry. “Do you Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?” Full of Secrets.
[12] The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer became a New York Times Bestseller. In Askwith, Ivan. TV 2.0: Reconceptualizing Television as an Engagement Medium.
[13] Jenkins, Henry. “‘Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?’” Full of Secrets.
[14] Hayward, Jennifer.  Consuming pleasures: active audiences and serial fictions from Dickens to soap opera. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997.
[15] Abbot, Stacey. “How Lost found its audience: The Making of a Cult Blockbuster.” Reading Lost.
[16] This theory is further supported in my Chapter 4 discussion of Lost.
[17] Jenkins, Henry. “Getting Lost.” Henryjenkins.org. 25 August 2006.
[18] Jenkins, Henry. “Do You Enjoy Making the Rest of Us Feel Stupid?’ Full of Secrets.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Transmedia Storytelling: Business, Aesthetics, and Production at the Jim Henson Company.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Television Culture, 97.

In a conversation with Henry Jenkins, a Hollywood screenwriter explained how the nature of “the pitch” has changed:

When I first started, you would a pitch a story because without a good story you didn’t really have a film. Later, once sequels started to take off, you pitched a character because a good character could support multiple stories. And now, you pitch a world because a world can support multiple characters and multiple stories across multiple media.[1]

Part of the shift towards world building, as discussed in Chapter 1, comes from economic incentives. In a well-developed world, every interesting detail can potentially launch a new toy, novel, or game. The Star Wars franchise has accumulated an estimated 9 billion dollars of revenue from its toys and merchandise.[2] Like Star Wars, the worlds of cult television support an array of merchandizing, inviting fans to collect and find tokens of their beloved world. Lost, for example, offers jump suits, t-shirts, and mugs from the Dharma Initiative, a fictional institution of the show. In doing so, fans can demonstrate their fandom while feeling more a part of the Lost universe.

However, Geoffrey Long observes that the shift in emphasis from plot to character to world is not just an opportunity for more branding and merchandise; it is an important strategy for fostering transmedia narratives.[3] Indeed, many cult television shows like Star Trek, Babylon 5, Farscape, The X-Files, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer present fantastic worlds not just as a backdrop for a narrative timeline, but also as a diverse and vivid geographical domain, ripe for new adventures and discoveries. In these worlds, ordinary people suddenly develop superhuman powers (Heroes), female slayers protect humans from vampires, demons, and werewolves (Buffy), and a space crew goes where no one has gone before (Star Trek). For many fans of these shows, the question is not ‘what will happen to Hiro, Buffy, or Captain Kirk?’ but ‘what will happen in a world full of superheroes, vampires, and aliens?’

As Long points out, transmedia narratives are often the story of a world. Star Wars, for example, cannot be easily summarized in terms of a specific character (is it about Luke or Anakin?) or in terms of a specific plot line (is it about learning to become a Jedi or defeating the evil empire?). The Star Wars narrative branches off into so many different video games, comics, novels, and movies that it has become the story of a world, or more precisely, of “a galaxy far, far away.” [4] Long concludes:

When developing a narrative that’s meant to extend across multiple media forms, the world must be considered a primary character of its own, because many transmedia narratives aren’t the story of one character at all, but the story of a world.  Special attention must be paid to developing a stage upon which multiple storylines (often in different media types) can unfurl, and every story must maintain the consistency of that world.[5] (original emphasis)

Emphasizing the “stage” or “backdrop” to a television show does not reduce the importance of characters. Engaging characters are essential for identification and emotional connection. In fact, some transmedia narratives do just fine around a primary character like James Bond. But while characters can grow old, plot lines overused and tired, worlds always have the potential to remain fresh. This leads me to my first suggestion: a transmedia/television producer should construct a story that involves not just a timeline to be followed, but also a world to be discovered. In order to offer some techniques in the world building process, I look towards the medium that excels in this area – video games.[6]

Historically, game designers have always been more interested in level design and realistic graphics than character and plot development. This does not mean, however, that narrative disappears in video games. Rather, in “Game Design as Narrative Architecture,” Jenkins introduces the term “environmental storytelling” to describe how game designers incorporate narrative into spatial structures.[7] According to Jenkins, environmental storytelling is accomplished by creating a space that evokes a pre-existing narrative, providing a stage to enact a narrative, presenting narrative information within the mise-en-scene, or encouraging new narratives to be built by the player. I would argue that transmedia storytelling involves the opposite process – incorporating spatial structures into narratives to develop a storytelling environment. In other words, by evoking the presence of a larger spatial structure in the narrative, a transmedia story can support a near infinite amount of plots and characters.

Matt Hills calls this concept the hyperdiegesis,  “the creation of a vast and detailed narrative space, only a fraction of which is ever directly seen or encountered within the text, but which nonetheless appears to operate according to principles of internal logic and extension.”[8] To use a cliché, a hyperdiegesis is like revealing only the tip of the iceberg. By presenting a well-defined, intricate, and coherent space, audiences are left to imagine a larger world and deeper mythology. For example, Derek Johnson observes that the fictional institutions of Star Trek (The Federation), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Watcher’s Council), 24 (CTU), and Lost (Dharma Initiative) suggest an extensive expanse that can be filled in either through fan fiction or transmedia storytelling.  [9]

Part of the importance of a hyperdiegesis is purely practical. Because television shows are usually soft transmedia narratives, there needs to be enough ‘untouched’ space to expand the world without contradictions. In addition, creating the impression of a vast fictional space and history ignites audience’s imaginations, resulting in a more immersive experience. As Sara Gwenllian-Jones notes in her essay, “Virtual Reality and Cult Television:”

The cosmologies of fantasy genre cult television series…present exotic and ethereal fictional worlds to which the alchemy of textual data and imagination transports the reader, facilitating a pleasurable psychic sense of “being there” as the action unfolds. Successful fictional worlds are a matter not only of textual surface but also environmental texture; they create an impression of spatial presence and of solid geography, of gravity, height, distance, terrain, climate, and so on.[10]

All of these textual details, Gwenllian-Jones argues, invite a viewer to “actively create belief” [11] and form a sophisticated virtual world that appears to be inhabitable. Fans invest tremendous effort in developing a fictional encyclopedia for such a world, logging every narrative detail in order to flesh out the world and make it more real. A fully furnished environment helps build a hyperdiegesis, a vast expanse that is only partially seen. For example, Star Trek’s frequent references to the Klingon culture allow a viewer to imagine a larger cosmology, well beyond the scope of the Enterprise’s travels.

Gwenllian-Jones offers four broad narrative formats for cult television that facilitate the worldbuilding process: the travelogue, nodal, combination, and portal. The travelogue follows the nomadic lifestyle of a protagonist(s) across multiple locations, such as Xena, who travels across realms inhabited by supernatural and fantastical creatures. The nodal format consists of a single stable location such as Deep Space Nine where most of the action is on the space station. In combination formats, the characters inhabit a localized space in addition to traveling across exotic worlds (i.e. Star Trek).  Finally, portal formats, like Buffy, take a presumably naturalistic world and add fantasy and science fiction elements to it. All of these categories afford entry into the fictional world because they present hyperdiegetic depth, even in a contained setting. Deep Space Nine and Buffy, for example, feature a diverse range of character species, costumes, and customs, hinting at a much larger universe. Thus, Gwenllian-Jones’ categories, though not exclusive, provide a useful framework for creating a fictional world that has “inexhaustible possibility.”[12]

In contrast, Twin Peaks struggled to expand its world beyond the location of the town; the series revolved around a single mystery, ‘Who Killed Laura Palmer?’ This type of narrative hook, once resolved, left no room for further expansion and development. By the time the show tried to open the world up by leaning heavily on sci-fi elements, the plot became so obscure and drawn out that it caused many people to abandon it.[13] Whereas Twin Peaks was centered on one ‘closed’ narrative question, a show with an effective hyperdiegesis can support many questions and narratives across multiple media.

Perhaps a useful litmus test for a proposed transmedia world might be the question, ‘Would a gamer want to navigate this universe?’ Jon Stovey and Helen Kennedy describe the structure of the computer games Myst and Doom:

Both are spatial journeys…Doom and Myst present the user with a space to be traversed, to be mapped out by moving through it. Both begin by dropping the player somewhere in this space. Before reaching the end of the game narrative, the player must visit most of it, uncovering its geometry and topology, learning it logic and its secrets…In contrast to modern literature, theater, and cinema which are built around the psychological tensions between the characters and the movement in psychological space, these computer games return us to the ancient forms of narrative where the plot is driven by the spatial movement of the main hero, traveling through distant lands to save the princess, to find the treasure, to defeat the Dragon, and so on. [14]

Transmedia storytelling, like Doom and Myst, present a world to be traversed and explored. The consumer might watch the television show to follow the journey of saving the princess, play the alternate reality game to find the treasure, then defeat the Dragon through the videogame. As a whole, these experiences position the hard-core fan as “the main hero” who drives the plot forward through their own spatial movements. Just as a character in a videogame discovers a new part of a world by entering a new level or area, a hard-core fan discovers a new part of a transmedia world by purchasing a new novel, movie, or comic book. As hard-core fans navigate the nuances of a world, casual fans can imagine a vast expanse (hyperdiegesis) without having to explore it further. It is the same logic as many role-playing games: hard-core fans can get the full experience by following every side mission, while casual fans can focus on the main quest and see how the primary story unfolds. In any case, a transmedia creator should evoke the spatial dimensions of a world in order to encourage hard-core fans to “play” within it.

[1] Convergence Culture, 114.
[2] Ahrens, Frank. “Final ‘Star Wars’ Caps Moneymaking Empire.” The Washington Post. 14 May 2005.
[3] Transmedia Storytelling: Business, Aesthetics, and Production at the Jim Henson Company.
[4] The Star Wars universe serves as a useful model for world building because it has influenced many writers and producers of cult television today. As Jesse Alexander, a writer on Heroes, proclaimed, “everything I know about transmedia, I learned from Star Wars.” In Taylor, Alice. “Hollywood & Games: An Interview with Jesse Alexander.” Wonderland Blog.
[5] Ibid., 48.
[6] The video game industry (which includes computer games) also constantly struggles to appeal to both hard-core gamers and casual gamers (however you define them). In Morris, Chris. “Requiem For The Hardcore.” Forbes.com. 9 September 2008.
[7] Jenkins, Henry. “Game Design as Narrative Architecture.” First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game. Eds. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004. 118-120.
[8] Hills, Matt. Fan Cultures, 137.
[9] “The Fictional Institutions of Lost.” Reading Lost.
[10] Cult TV, 84.
[11] Janet Murray uses the phrase “create belief” instead of the more passive “suspend disblief.” In Cult TV.
[12] Ibid., 91.
[13] Abbot, Stacey. “How Lost found its audience: The Making of a Cult Blockbuster.” Reading Lost
[14] Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media. New York: Open University Press, 2006.