March is turning out to be a very busy month for us at UNITY Central. The launch of a new Graphic Novel, and expansion of our community touchpoints coupled with in-store promotional activities. We are extremely grateful for the continued support and story contributions from you as our Story Canvas continues to grow.
We have now reached the end of Chapter Two in our “Marooned” Saga (known as “First Contact”) as we begin to relook at what we have achieved thus far and plan going forward.
We have been asked many times as to why the stories presented do not follow a conventional numbering system in terms of story flow. As an example, in our Recommended Story Reading Order we suggested that :
“ROGER” which is a Short Story #5 is to be read before the “Marooned” Graphic Novel #1-#3
The question asked is, “why is this so?, why not make ROGER #1 and the MAROONED #2-#4? Wouldn’t it be easier?”
The simple answer to that is;
We receive many different formats of Story-telling from our community, and we agreed that after ‘curation’ into the UNITY Story Canvas, we would immediately publish the said contributions in order to allow our contributor to begin reaping their royalty revenue upon sales. That would mean we applied the “First-come-first-serve” basis on our story telling roll-out. Thus, the mushrooming of multiple stories intertwined into the main MAROONED story arc.
During the creation of Chapter One, the numbers were comfortable enough to ‘stitch’ the stories together effortlessly. However, towards the end of Chapter One, when there was a flurry of new stories that were received and curated, we decided to issue a “Recommended Reading Order” to enable our readers to fully immerse themselves into the UNITY Canvas. This helped to manage the expansion.
This eventually consolidated as more Short Stories were available:
The increase in number of Short Stories provided the canvas with more depth to the stories, as they were being created.
There were standalones with little links to the main story which were present with the hope that it could spin-off into a new storyline away from the current “MAROONED” arc, but still within the UNITY Canvas. There were several already out by this time.
This soon grew to encompass the additional Stories coming out in Chapter Two:
As we moved into Chapter Two, we had the unfortunate issue of the Pandemic and the eventual introduction of the MCO, which affected our Community Engagement activities severely. Our presence at Amcorp Mall and our Pop-ups at our Food truck partner locations were curtailed. The only option we had was to go virtual. We began to go online, unfortunately as with most communities like UNITY, the most effective method of engagement had to be personal. The MCO had a curious effect in that we began converting some of our Community members that had thus far been more comfortable to engage us personally but were unable to do so. This prompted us to pursue the subscription model more vigorously.
Chapter One – A Quicktake
Chapter One was generally to introduce the characters of UNITY. They would form the basis of the UNITY Canvas. Collaborative Story canvasses tend to include new characters as story contributions come in, UNITY is no exception. The original characters introduced through the MAROONED Graphic novel were joined by other characters to build depth and create a strong backstory or parallel story lines from the main MAROONED story arc.
These stories developed from the Micro starters would grow into multiple Micros as the demand is monitored. Those that cross the threshold would see their Micros elevate to the Shorts with further development of the characters.
UNITY places heavy emphasis on Character development as we strongly believe that they drive the movement of the Stories rather than a pre-conceived story plotline.
Chapter Two – A Quicktake
Chapter Two delves into the Storylines as more plots and linkages from the different story lines are discovered and expanded. These expansion will grow until they are further tightening towards the main story arc. Stories that were originally thought to be away from the main arc are seemingly intertwined.
Characters are further developed in Chapter Two and will see further influence they have on the main arc.