I'm always looking for interesting new ways to tell a story. The digital book revolution is presenting authors with new tools for their story-crafting kits and readers with fun new ways to experience a story. 1. Remember those Choose Your Adventure books you read as a kid? Well they've grown up and ereaders now make it possible to choose with a click and leave off all that page turning. 
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The story content has grown up too, so if you're looking for something a little more adult try: The Classics Professor: Create Your Own Erotic Fantasy 2. ARGs (Alternate Reality Games) are my all time favorite way to get a story fix. These stories grab you up and hang onto you until they are done. Portions of the story take place across a variety of media online and sometimes offline in the real world. The Black Helix: An Unwritten Story included over a thousand players searching for clues. Four of those players were chosen to interact with characters in a real-time roleplay setting, the results of which will be included in an e-book to be published this summer. 3. Augmented Reality– I haven't seen any of these done as a story yet, but this newest game genre is begging to be part of a good mystery or ghost story. SpecTrek is a game that uses GPS tracking and imagery to project ghosts into your environment, which you then track down and catch. 4. Virtual Reality — This is collaborative storytelling that works. Each week players convene, decide on a plot of events and roleplay toward their goal. A great example is the Barbary Coast Project on Second Life. I haven't joined the fun their yet, but I find the synopsis of weekend adventures quite entertaining. 5. Cathy's Book was one of the first interactive novellas and it is still my favorite. This is interactive media done right. All the elements further the characterization and plot. You can read it for yourself at the website linked to the title. 6. Adventure Games — The storytelling aspect of games has come a long way and recently game developers are focusing on game stories that women and romance readers will enjoy. I was lucky enough to be a part of one of these pioneering projects, Spirit Walkers: Curse of the Cypress Witch. It will be released this month. 7. Video books or Vooks, include both text and video clips. Romance writer Jude Deveraux was one of the first authors to release a Vook title, Promises. 8. If you really want to get fancy with your storytelling you can tell a story inside a story. I wrote a small 500 word piece of flash fiction, Blue Harbor, that wound up becoming part of an ARG, that promoted the book, Personal Effects: Dark Art. 9. Another new tool in the storytelling chest is the iPad book. The platform itself is only a year old and we're just starting to see how it will change what we think of when we think of a novel. You can watch a demo of The Unwanted Guest on Youtube. It is just plain cool. 10. Serial Novels aren't a new story form, but the web adds new elements to the genre. As before, the story is delivered a scene at a time, usually in weekly updates. Serial novels on websites allow authors to include interesting multimedia and interactive additions to their work. A good resource for serialized fiction on the internet is the Web Fiction Guide. 11. I find I have less time these days to sit and read and this next form of the serialized novel,the podio book, is the perfect way to get a story fix on the go. Personal Effects: Sword of Blood is one of my favorites. 12. Enriched editions, or enhanced ebooks, include supplemental content that allow the reader to explore more about the making of the story, the story setting, or characters. A new and interesting twist on this is the Harlequin Romance that includes video clips of the cover shoot with sexy cowboys. The Creed Legacy: Enriched Edition 13. Cell phone novels do not involve loading a Kindle app on your cell phone and reading books there. You can read novels that way, but true cellphone novels are an art form unto themselves. Scenes should fill no more than two or three cell phone screens and are delivered in serial form either daily or weekly. Check out Textnovel.com for a nice selection of free cell novel reading. They usually have a contest with good prize money if you're tempted to write one. So that's my list of 13 ways to tell a story. If you know of a new storytelling form I missed, let me know in comments. ~Nara Malone Nara writes paranormal and erotic romance Her current Projects include: Snatch Me, an erotic Sex Bytes novella coming soon from Ellora's Cave and Spirit Walkers: Curse of the Cypress Witch coming soon from Orchid Games Find out more about Nara and her books at naramalone.com
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