Writing for Multimedia: Entertainment, Education, Training, Advertising and The..., with CD-ROM

Writing for Multimedia by Timothy Garrand Focal Press To a certain extent, you bought this magazine because of its attractive cover picture, right? But you probably won't hesitate to trash it if its content lacked substance. Likewise, an attractive Web site is merely ornamental if it is aesthetically pleasing but its information is in shambles. Mastery of information presentation is a key factor as the Internet gives people access to more information. Although the Internet has been making vast improvements visually, the big glaring gap is still content. Many sites are just electronic novels with either boring or ill-presented plots. Multimedia demands Sight, sound and action - all of which we are familiar with, but the combination of which forms the environment that the multimedia writer must structure his or her writing to. Multimedia writing walks a fine line between entertainment and information. Garrand sees it as a continuum with information and entertainment at extremes, and a multimedia writer's most important task is deciding where to sit. Failing which, the work would end up as either an over-simplistic piece or, on the other extreme, a terribly boring article. Who should read this? I remember a comic play I watched entitled Sheer Madness in which the audience, by way of questions, determined the outcome of the 'who-dun-it' murder-mystery. You can bet that the playwright anticipated every question an audience member might ask and wrote a script for that outcome (a total of eight branch plots). Writing for Multimedia by Timothy Garrand explores the demands that multimedia writers are under to fuse information with entertainment. Whether you are a web page designer, a writer/designer, or an educator keen to incorporate multimedia into your lessons, you have to cultivate a new approach to writing for a very demanding medium. The multimedia writer needs to be a scriptwriter, a radio broadcaster, and a print journalist all in one. Using a very effective show-and-tell format that highlights examples of interactive medium at its best, Writing for Multimedia taps the brains of top scriptwriters, web page designers and advertising executives for insights into creating compelling text that inform and entertain the viewer. Complementing the text information is the CD-ROM included with the book that contains movie clips, script samples, and demos for software and multimedia programs. And, more than just a theoretical approach to multimedia writing, Writing for Multimedia delves into specific case studies of uncovering the 'secret sauce' or 'X-factor' of certain multimedia CD ROMs and web sites that have made them a success. Although Garrand has a tendency to get over-technical, he balances his information well with good examples from the CD-ROM and a simple writing style. Writing for Multimedia is a great how-to guide for anyone interested in spicing up their web site or adding life to a presentation.