Long-form Story Analysis

The long form story that I have chosen is “The Old And Restless’’ which was published on January 2018 in the Atavist Magazine. Chris Walker made readers see that the story is about mysterious crime involved an old group of people by using few words such as “old”, “a crime of passion” and “legends of murder”. This story is a mixture of betrayals, women same sex affair, mysterious character and her murders which took place among the old group of people.

This long form story is divided into four acts. Chris Walker used cinematic elements such as audiobook, illustration and highlighted a few points from the story. Besides, he also adds a link to show the list of main characters in this story.

The audiobook version of this story which is one hour eight minutes and twenty-three seconds was provided below the 4th paragraph. The story has been narrated well by Eric Martin. Most audiences prefer to shorten their time in reading such a long story even though the story is interesting. Therefore, an audio form of the story will be user-friendly for audiences so that they can listen to the story while engaging themselves in other work.

The illustrations attached in this story able to reflect that the story is about murders involving aged group of couples. It is also shown that the characters in this story are engaged in revelry and the incident spread to people by gossiping.

The author highlighted a few points from the story by adding a text box containing those points from paragraphs. These text boxes are to highlight the main point that delivered in a particular paragraph.

The cast list linked at the right corner of the page includes a list of main characters. Since it is a long-form story, there are many characters involved. This cast list will help the audience to refresh on the characters come across in this story based on order of appearance.

In short, the usage of cinematic elements are not really helpful to reach the audience effectively. Although the author used audiobook, illustration, highlighting a few points and linked cast list, audience are unable to interact much with the story. Some of the audience might get bored because of keep on reading long paragraphs and lack of their participation.

Therefore, the story could narrate in a better way to be more immersive user experience. I would suggest to add a short animated trailer of the story. The trailer could narrate the mysterious crime in the story. The animation should contain the introduction scenes of characters, night party, Big Mama’s bar, scene of McCready working as nurse for Steve and Pat, McCready’s love affair scenes with different women, close up shot to hand cheers drinks, bloodstained knife and ended up with the author’s grandmother saying “I’ve only met one person in my lifetime that I thought was truly evil.” Since it is a trailer, the audience can get to know the central theme of the story in a short period of time. This will create curiosity in the audience to go through the story more detail.

In order to make this long-form story as user-friendly author can breakdown the four acts of the story into PDF form and audios. Each act will consist of the summary of the story in PDF and audio form. Instead of listening to the whole story in one play, the author can make it in PDF and audiobook according to the acts that starting from Act 1 until Act 4. This makes way for the audience to make their choice to listen and read. The audience must able to download audiobook and PDF file to consume in offline.

In addition, the author can use hyperlinks to pop up information on the other page where the readers can return to the original page as well. This hyperlinks can be used to show information on places and show the dialogue form of a conversation between the characters of the story. For example, rather than explaining about Ajijic in words, can add a hyperlink to the word to show more information about that place. The conversation between Donna McCready and Pat can be added in a hyperlink. Hyperlinks help to cut down unnecessary words and will shorten the length of the paragraphs. On the other hand, it will provide a clear picture of the story through popped up information on the other page. This will be user’s choice to make a decision on receiving more information.

Besides, I recommend the text boxes contains points from a particular paragraph and the illustrations attached in this story to remain. This is because I felt that these two elements are useful for readers. Audience are able to have a better understanding of the story.

In a nutshell, two arrows button can save up a lot of time that readers spent in scrolling down or up to read the story. An arrow can be placed at the right side and another arrow at the left side of subheading of each act stated. Only the first act will have an arrow pointing right side of the subheading. The right side pointing arrow means to continue to the next act whereas the left side pointing arrow is to go back to the previous act. This will be a different kind of layout to present a long-form story rather than a usual way of scrolling down.

Therefore, I believe that my suggestion will be helpful to present the story interactively and reach a large group of audience.

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