" (Strate, 2000, p268).
The impacts on storytelling and narrative form are multiple within hypertext and hypermedia and can be seen in the different aspects of digital storytelling. Digital storytelling can be described as telling a story using a multiple of different digital mediums, text, audio, video etc. In effect to make short multimedia works. "Digital Storytellers are artists and writers that are passionate about combining the ancient arts of storytelling with the new and powerful tools of multimedia technology." (Harden, 1999).
Leading figures in digital storytelling such as Joseph Lambert co-founder and director of the Centre for Digital Storytelling at the University of California at Berkeley, sees digital storytelling as "a balance between an historically grounded, human-centred appreciation of good storytelling skills and a sophisticated grasp of the creative potential of a new set of digital tools (Mullen, 1999)." .
This is an important aspect for not only people involved in digital storytelling but in general multimedia and gaming environments. While the medium may alter the way in which a story may be told the story itself still must be able to hold the readers attention. The writers of such texts must be able to write in traditional forms. .
" The interactive writer has to be a master of most linear scriptwriting skills, as well as understanding the communication potential of interactivity and the demands of writing for many media."(Garrand, 1996, p 313).
Similarly the directors at Centre for Digital Storytelling, concentrates its efforts on storytelling skills first, and the digital part second in order to guarantee that the importance of storytelling possibilities is not overlooked in "the glare of Internet hype (Tosi, 1999)." So what are the new dimensions which digital storytelling promises. .
Perhaps the primary aspect of this type of storytelling and multimedia writing in general, is that it offers tremendous flexibility between different textual strategies and narrative structures.
