A requiem for aural fiction: on capitalizing the sound medium’s potential for (transmedia) storytelling

Abstract

The sound medium may be – and has been – used to tell fictional stories, through several platforms, like the radio, disc, and digital recordings. However, in comparison to other media, solely aural fictional narratives have, for long, been rare. On the other hand, there is evidence that storytelling on this medium is being revived in this digital era. In this paper, we aim to track down and describe some of the available practices concerning this type of fictional narrative, in Portugal and in other countries where they are more common. This medium – so our argument goes – is not being sufficiently harnessed by storytellers and media producers, but it has very interesting features for storytelling, namely for transmedia storytelling, which may be highly enriched by the use of more diverse media forms. Moreover, the digital environment of the Internet, that has become a basis for the distribution of media content, may also provide the means to surpass some limitations of the aural medium.