Six Authors. Six Stories. Six Weeks. A groundbreaking experiment in digital storytelling, designed by Six to Start for Penguin Books. Read We Tell Stories now.

In We Tell Stories, we worked with Penguin’s top authors, from Booker-shortlisted Mohsin Hamid, popular teen fiction author Kevin Brooks, prize-winning Naomi Alderman and bestselling thriller authors Nicci French, to create six stories that could told only on the Internet.

With zero above-the-line advertising or marketing, We Tell Stories spread purely through word of mouth. Thanks to the compelling and viral nature of the content, over 200,000 people read the stories, generating massive amounts of press and almost 1800 blog posts.

About the Stories

Each of the six stories took advantage of the power of the internet in a unique way:

• The 21 Steps, a thriller by Charles Cumming, uses Google Maps to show readers the movements of a desperate man caught up in a mysterious conspiracy.
• Slice, a horror story by Toby Litt, took place over two blogs and Twitter feeds and allowed readers to become part of a family’s slow descent into madness.
• Fairytale, by Kevin Brooks, gives young readers the chance to tell their own fairytale story and share it with their friends – and if they don’t like the ending, they can write their own!
• Your Place and Mine, by husband and wife duo Nicci French, was written and told live. For an hour a day, for five days, readers could watch the story appear in front of their eyes and chat about it with friends.
• Hard Times, an ‘infographic story’ by author Matt Mason and designer Nicholas Felton, examines the effects of the internet on the world, through beautifully sharp infographics.
• The (Former) General in his Labyrinth, a rich and complex story by Mohsin Hamid, uses an entirely new form of branching storytelling to allow readers to explore the memories of an ageing, and not quite fictional, general.

Alice in Storyland was a seventh, hidden story written by Naomi Alderman. Taking place over websites, emails, text messages, live events, Alice in Storyland brought readers directly into the story where they could help the characters and even influence the plot.

What People Said

• Newsweek: “The experience [of The 21 Steps] is still much like reading a short story, but the impact of seeing real-world places in their context, and catching the sly changes in pace and scale as the protagonist passes through them, makes it unlike any book you’ve ever picked up … each week is a different exercise in imagining the future of storytelling … We Tell Stories is the most ambitious project yet.” (2 April 2008)
• LA Times: “We Tell Stories is a new environment where literature, gaming and the internet intersect.” (20 March 2008)
• BBC News: “Story-telling is one of the oldest professions in the world, but Penguin has brought it bang up to date with this interactive website.” (2 May 2008)
• Edublogs: “The most exciting development in 21st Century Literacy this year? Probably.” (20 March 2008)

We Tell Stories has been shortlisted as an SXSW Interactive Web Awards Finalist in the Experimental category, and has also been featured on CNET, BoingBoing, Wired, the Daily Telegraph, Creativity Online, GameSpot, and nearly 1800 other weblogs.

Learn More

Google TechTalk about We Tell Stories (14 July 2008):

• Q&A with Gamasutra about the design and development of We Tell Stories
• We Design Stories: The Digital Fiction of Six to Start Holly Willis, AIGA Journal of Design
• Stories, Games, and The 21 Steps (blog post by lead designer, Adrian Hon)
• Creating ‘The (Former) General’ (as above)