A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: How to Captivate and Engage Audiences across Multiple Platforms

16 Make Your Audience a Character, Too

Atransmedia project doesn’t just have to manage its story and assets; it also has to manage its audience. Sometimes this is figurative, as in setting up and then fulfilling audience expectations. At other times it’s more literal, as when you’ve created a forum and have to moderate the community.

The first step in any kind of audience management is getting to know who your audience is—if possible, figuring that out in the design phase and structuring your project to suit your target. This is an art all its own. You need to consider geography, culture, access to resources like smartphones, age, and literacy (both the old-fashioned kind involving reading, and digital literacy or other constellations of skills). ...