When creating a work of ‘scripted’ fiction, no matter the medium, the writer is the starting point of everything. Their ideas, and the ways in which they are communicated through their writing, are central to their craft. The story comes first, and then it is translated, adapted, reconfigured to suit one or more media forms.

There are three main types of media that we’re used to by now - text, audio and (moving) images. These, then, roughly translate to the media of print, radio (arguably nowadays, podcasts too) and television/film/online video respectively. The audience for the writer’s work is implicitly aware that they are experiencing the story through the filter that the specific medium overlays on the narrative. In the min of the audience, then, they must ‘decode’ through the filter in order to get to the real prize - the narrative, the context, the ideas being communicated.

This isn’t to say that the filtering effect of the medium is necessarily a negative influence. Careers, and whole industries, have been built on the ability of people who understand (discover and invent!) the specialised unique tricks, the mechanics, the techniques of the medium, and are able to utilise them to create an effective and compelling representation of the story being communicated. Equally, these tricks and techniques can be recognised, understood and enjoyed by audiences who find comfort and satisfaction in such things - the ‘operational aesthetic’ as Jason Mittell puts it in his book ‘Complex Television’.

Indeed, understanding the techniques and mechanics of each medium, I believe, is a crucial tool in not only enjoying media, but in recognising when these tools are being deployed to achieve specific effects in an audience. This has long been a fascination of mine, and we’ll explore some of these in more detail another time. But for now, let’s focus back on the medium itself, and where narrative lies within that.

When constructing a narrative, the creator is likely to be aware of the conventions, limitations and advantages of the medium that has been chosen. This may shape the narrative itself, of course, but it remains true that you should be able to strip away the media’s influence, in order to access the underlying narrative at the heart of the work. This narrative can then be communicated through a different medium - some of its’ original beauty may be lost, but a new perspective via adaptation may reveal new aspects and highlights in the new medium.

Ultimately, when you use a medium to construct a representation of a narrative, the medium plays an active role in the communication of that narrative to the audience. Or, at least, it should do, if the medium in question is used to its’ full potential. And one of the driving forces behind my career has been the conviction that for all the talk of ‘new digital media’, the potential of data and the Web as media in-and-of themselves, is still yet to be fulfilled.

For instance, we're all aware that print, radio and television (alongside film) have their own techniques, advantages, quirks. Writers, producers, technicians, artists, all use these quirks to make representations of a narrative in a way which is best suited to their chosen medium. That is to say, you have the book of Swallows and Amazons, the TV adaption, the radio version, even the film. Note also the language being used - adaption, "...brought vividly to life..." - each acknowledging the fact of the different media being used to tell the story.

However, then we come to the digital realm, and what do we find? Structured data, that is to say, data which isn’t just qualitative, but holds more semantic meaning (some would call it ‘metadata’) is barely harnessed when it comes to narrative. Metadata is seen purely as a method of describing media forms itself, as bibliographic and cataloguing data, or as ways of recording analytical information about things.

Equally, from current use, we cannot call the Web a medium. Instead, it is merely a distribution channel for the ‘traditional’ media, akin to a TV set, a radio, or a bookshop or printing press. But what makes the Web unique - what lies at the heart of it - are URIs and hyperlinks. It is an explorable, hyperlinked space within which many journeys are possible.

The book, the TV, the radio, the film - these are all isolated, one-shot representations of a creation. They are produced, packaged, sold, distributed, consumed - in isolation. In order to remix, re-adapt, and so on, we either have to go directly back to the source, to the creator, and ask them to rework their creation, or we have to cut and paste, knowing that in doing so we are left with the pieces of the story still in situ of the media from which we took them - they cannot truly be extracted.

However, with structured data and the Web, we still have the potential to explicitly explore something entirely different. Media that is networked, connected, self-describing, programmatically interactive - thereby very different from traditional media.

If we treat structured data as a medium of its own - a way of representing information, to facilitate communication and to enable us to ‘point at’ and use that information, what might that bring? What if every story was its’ own API? How would we engage with it over time? What techniques and mechanics, native to the medium, could authors use?

Similarly, rather than sound effects, paragraph breaks or camera tricks, the Web has its own natural tricks and advantages - the network, the connections. These, of course, are the same connections that we all make when consuming narrative from the other three media - but rather than being isolated within us, the Web allows us to expose these connections, explore them, analyse and create new links, enabling us to enjoy narratives and stories in a way which is both natural to the Web, and, more importantly, natural to our minds.

Just as we take a story and adapt it for a book, for TV etc, so we should adapt stories for the Web. We should forget about scenes and chapters, and concentrate instead on the story itself - the events that take place. In this way, we can begin to construct entirely new adaptions and representations of stories. Only then can we say that we are using the Internet to its full potential, and only then will we have added a fourth medium to our repertoire of cultural and creative expression.

What would it mean for a story’s website to literally be a network, a web that represented the narrative itself? How might authors guide audiences through that network? What could people do if every character, every event, had a URI that could be used as a hook upon which to point at, to refer to, to interact with? How might we use hyperlinks to represent meaning? To show cause and effect? To share different interpretations of events?

It’s these questions, and more, that I’ve explored with others throughout my career, and will be writing more about as we go.

Thanks for reading.

This essay is a reworked and expanded version of a piece I originally wrote in November 2009 - The Fourth Medium.

I use ‘scripted’ as opposed to ‘non-scripted’, i.e. where stories are built after the fact (or during live unfolding of events), e.g. with reality shows or sports. There’s a wealth of equally interesting narrative devices, techniques and structures that these kinds of stories utilise, which we’ll return to in a future edition.

** Still images can equally tell stories - either as individual stills or in forms such as comics - again, we may return to these in a future edition.