Are you a lover of gaming and writing? Well then this weeks Storysmash Festival could be the place for you. Taking place at the Nottingham Conference Centre at NTU – opposite the Royal Concert Hall – this event celebrates both literature and games design in the form of interactive storytelling.
If, like me, you remember the adventure story books of your youth – you know the ones where a chapter ends with something like “to fight the dragon go to page 34, to run from it go to page 102” you will have an idea of what is meant by interactive storytelling. Of course in the modern, digital age there are are ever more ways to create these kind of stories.
At the Storymash festival this Friday you can find out more and gather ideas and inspiration for your stories with special guests, author masterclasses, workshops and the chance to to play Storymash games developed by local creators.
Appearing at the festival will be Jeff Noon, author of the novel ‘Vurt’, who will be exploring experimental fiction; Nottingham based award-winning author Kim Slater, who will help you structure a story, plan a narrative and create compelling characters; you can explore your creative side when you create a poem with performance poet Panya Banjoko; author of Foxy-T, Tony White, will be talking about his writing career and his collaboration with Blast Theory, which led to the creation of Zombies Ate My Library; Learn the art of creating a story with historical fantasy novel writer Stuart Hill, while also learning more about his road to publication; and join Dean Wilkinson for a fun character creation workshop.
Plus experts of the Nottingham Videogame Arcade will be on hand to help you create your own unique create-your-own adventure story using TWINE – an easy to use free software for creating creative nonlinear stories.
All in all there will be plenty to do throughout the day and, what is more, the event is totally free, and suitable for ages 11 and up – however you need to register you will need to book your place.
Want to find out more about the event then go to the Facebook event page, wish to book your tickets then click here.
Darren Patterson – @pogester
