Devoted to publishing, publishers and to those who craft the written word

I first met Josh Goldblum when he cited this website in an academic paper he wrote for the 2007 Museums and the Web conference, entitled "Considerations and Strategies for Creating Interactive Narratives."

After reading that mouthful of an essay, I realized Goldblum could teach you interactive storytelling a hundred times better than I ever could.

Goldblum runs Blue Cadet Interactive, a firm that specializes in building complex, interactive digital stories--he is setting the standard for how we use digital graphics, photographs, audio, and video to create more complex stories on the web.

This week, he's teaching us the fine art of interactive storytelling in my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. Click here to read the complete interview.

In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web publishing.

Jason Boog:
How can a fledgling journalist build something more interactive than a simple slideshow? How do we make better interactive narratives? One more time, what are your favorite on-line resources?

Josh Goldblum:
[Readers] know when a lot of work and craft went into a project. They can also generally see when something is based off a template. Continue reading...

With the Yearbook 2006 Project we wanted to create something that felt special and handmade. So many projects were coming out around Katrina. We also wanted to have a high level of control over the navigation and storytelling.

We wanted the site to be easy to move through and fluid. Even though the site is modular we wanted it to feel like something lovingly crafted. I believe that users respond to this.

Again, I think often they don’t care and its not worth the effort, but its nice to create something really custom, to be able to dream up the best possible solution, the best way to tell the story and make it happen.

I love these programs, to me they are just fantastic toys, so it’s great fun for me to pick up new skills.

Lynda.com and gotoandlearn.com have great tutorials [for Flash animation]. I keep HOW and Print magazine by my bedside, but try to not look at them when I am in the thick of designing a new project, lest I copy another designers work too blatantly.