I moved into a new apartment last week. For my live-tweet thread, I chose to document my cat exploring his new home. I was curious about what he thought of the whole moving process. What is it like for a cat to suddenly be in an entirely new place without understanding why or how he got there?
The 8-Point Story Arc
To tell River’s story, I roughly followed the 8-Point Story Arc. This outline for setting up a plot goes like this:
1. Stasis: sets the stage for the story, introduces the characters and setting, and shows what the protagonist’s every day life is like.
2. Trigger: the spark for the story, which is outside of the protagonist’s control, and leads to the evolution of the story.
3. Quest: the protagonist embarks on an adventure as a result of the trigger.
4. Surprise: during the quest, unexpected events take place and provide obstacles or assistance to the character.
5. Critical choice: the protagonist must make a decision on the quest, which reveals their true character.
6. Climax: as a result of the protagonist’s choice, the story reaches the climax, which is the highest point of tension.
7. Reversal: the characters undergo a major change as the result of the critical choice and the climax.
8. Resolution: the characters reach a new stasis and have evolved and learned new things from their journey.
River’s Journey
The live-tweet thread starts by introducing River, my high-energy poorly-behaved cat, and the main character of this story.
The trigger in this story is clear: he’s moved into a new place and must explore this environment and find new opportunities to get into trouble.
During his adventure, he encounters new surprises, strange smells, and unexpected furniture. Many of these surprises are good – some take him a little bit longer to get used to.
After he almost gets into trouble, he decides that he likes this new place, and is willing to give it a try and make his home here.
Due to this journey, he learns that as long as he has a warm place to sleep and good food, he can be happy anywhere. A real lesson for all of us to appreciate the important things in life.
Twitter storytelling
Keeping the principles of good storytelling in mind helps plan out how to write content for social media and engage readers, no matter what the format of your story is.
However, it definitely helps to choose a topic such as cute pets, which has proven to be one of the most popular and shareable content on the internet.
EXSM 3989 - Digital Storytelling Class Blog 