"... process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience ..."
HenryJenkins.org
There are two sides to developing a story through transmedia: a marketing strategy and crowdsourcing its fans.
Apps, books, social media, music, downloads, merchandising, memes, spinoffs, fan Vines or YouTube videos -- all of these combine to point to the core of the story: the main platform to which the story has been presented. Look at any popular television show (The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Mad Men) or movie (Star Wars, Batman, Marvel Avengers) as an example.
The planning to use transmedia should include: what to narrate, how to narrate, genres -- what and how to narrate to different audiences, the story's characters, creating a fictional or real world experience, and structure, to name a few.
Let's take the poem In Flanders Field by John McCrae as an example. It's a story that is in the public domain.
McCrae was a Canadian surgeon in World War I, who died at the end of the war of pneumonia. Here is the poem:
By only looking at the first stanza, we can expand the story, using YouTube, Vimeo, radio/podcasts, blogs, Pinterest, Instagram, and so much more. The topics that add meat to this story are:
- International politics
- Battlefields, plus surrounding towns
- Death
- History, including honor, sacrifice
- War poems
- Poppies
- Graveyards, gravediggers, the people left behind
- Larks
- Guns and gunnery
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