The generation of media consumers coming of age today are not content to read or watch or listen to stories; they want to be a part of those stories. They want to change the course of a plot; they want to care more deeply about its characters; they want a sensory intimacy with the settings of a story, and with the characters themselves. These desires fundamentally alter the act of writing in the transmedia age. The writer must honor that participatory impulse, says transmedia creator Andrea Phillips, and must satisfy that craving for more layered contexts while also anticipating a whole new range of emotional responses. "You can paint with a different palette of emotions than if you were just working in flat media," says Phillips. When the reader or watcher becomes the participant in an alternate-reality game or transmedia narrative, new feelings, like guilt and pride, arise alongside conventional passive-media sentiments like empathy and catharsis. This film reveals Phillips's own journey of discovery in becoming a transmedia creator, and offers a key to unlocking the vast narrative potential of telling stories across multiple kinds of media.