Pause & Effect – The Art of Interactive Narrative
Author: Mark Stephen Meadows
Review by Michael Sacci
The first thing that I learned after opening this book was to make sure you read the book’s description carefully before placing an order. I overlooked a key word in the title “interactive” and in the description “new media”. Thinking this was a book on general storytelling, when in fact it mostly deals with telling of stories via web and CD-ROMs, which is really not an interest of mine.
Notwithstanding the initial disappointment, I tried to soldier on but it was a long hard road. The layout is very artistic but in a way I found to be displeasing. The text has a lot of history and philosophy throughout its chapters, so it is by no means an easy read.
As you can tell this is not going to end up on my favorite book list but if you are interested in a book that has a ton of theory philosophy and history of visual storytelling in an interactive medium this may be a great book; it just was not my cup of tea.

Mike Sacci is a moderator on the Creative Cow DVD Studio Pro forum,
a certified DVD Studio Pro Trainer and a DVD producer
with Jupiter Project in Nashville, TN.