Knowledge that adds = happy face Andy

Heinz have a little warning on some cans of soup, something like: ‘over-cooking may impair the flavour’.

That’s a neat summary of how too much information can accidentally destroyed the mystique of something. It happened to me recently with the song Solsbury Hill. I just wanted to fit the song into a narrative of ‘I live close to Bath and would like to go to Solsbury Hill’. A quick wikipedia visit gave me way too much backstory, and know I now what the song is about. Previously I made up my own interpretation. Frankly my interpretation was more fun 😛

It’s not all one way though. I like knowing the backstory to Iggy Pop’s The Passenger. Maybe it’s because I’ve ridden around Berlin on the S-Bahn at night. Connecting the narrative to my narrative maybe makes it more resonant – for me.

This post is about transmedia, but I don’t have a pithy planning insight to share 🙁 All I can tell you here is that extending a narrative has a really strong emotional impact. We live with these fictional narratives in our thoughts, in our hearts, flowing through the narratives of our own lives. It’s simple to extend this for the better. But how should we go about it? 😮