For the Love of LIWs

In 2012, “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries”, a modern, transmedia-focused retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, debuted on YouTube. Lizzie, or Elizabeth Bennet, as most people know her, immediately captured the love and attention of her many viewers. How? She spoke directly to us. It was like a beloved character was sitting directly across from us, chatting about her life. She was witty, blunt, biased - everything she was supposed to be. And we loved her. In all honesty, I still love her.

The episodes were released in real time, complemented perfectly by posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Pinterest that followed the lives of the characters outside the parameters of the videos. The characters interacted with each other and with us, the viewers, creating a space where they seemed to exist simultaneously in the digital and real-world space.

Despite the fact that LBD was based on a well-known story, it managed to surprise us at every turn. The modernizations required some changes to be made to the plot, and we were hooked. My friends and I would run back to our dorms after lunch on the day new episodes aired so we could all sit huddled around my tiny laptop to watch it together. We spent hours theorizing how they were going to translate plot point or that character to the digital age; when dowries and quick engagements to people you barely know are things of the past, at least in American culture, how do you reconcile them to someone in the modern world?

Not only did my friends and I build relationships with the characters, but we built stronger relationships with each other. As someone who struggles with forming meaningful friendships to this day and who was achingly lonely the first few weeks of college, I can’t express how important those relationships were, and still are, to me.

Fortunately, the story does not end with LBD. The genre extends far beyond Jane Austen: Bronte, Shakespeare, Barry, Montgomery, Alcott - all of these authors and more have been reimagined into literary inspired webseries, each one accompanied by transmedia, scattered across a variety of social media platforms and accounts.

The aspect I find most interesting is that the majority of these stories were being told by college students, with little to no budget. In their limited spare time, groups of bibliophiles and aspiring actors would get together to write, edit, and film simply for the love of the project. No one got paid, especially not for an introductory project. If you created a relatively successful first webseries and your audience trusted you, crowdfunding was occasionally used to buy supplies and snacks for filming a second season or a new story altogether, but it was a rare project that had any sort of professional backing or sponsor.

Taryn, Rachel, and I like theater and writing and books. We could do this, right? We had no money, but neither did anyone else, so...why not?

Enter: Severe Chills Studios.

Some things you need to know about my group of friends before we continue: 1) We’re all massive nerds who get way too invested in the things we love. 2) We’re creators at heart, building and remaking and inventing whenever we can. 3) We read aloud plays for fun. 4) We’re all a little overachieving.

We decided to create our own LIW rather late into the summer between our junior and senior years of college. We knew that Taryn and I were going to be student teaching in the spring, which meant we absolutely had to be finished with writing, filming, and editing by winter break. We knew that we had no budget and would have to beg favors for any and all equipment, food, decorations, costumes, and more that we might need. We knew we would have to use our own dorms as the sets, so no closed doors allowed and we could only film during certain hours of the day. (Grove City College is an interesting place, but that's a blog post for another time.)

Despite all the limitations and hurdles, we did it anyway. We created “In Earnest”, a modern retelling of the play “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde.

Side note: If you haven’t read any of Oscar Wilde’s work, particularly “The Importance of Being Earnest”, do yourself a favor and go read it. Just, trust me. It’s short and clever, and I know you’ll like it.

Our biggest challenge was making people worth caring about out of the intentionally vapid and one-dimensional characters that Wilde created. Well, that and making sure no one ended up in a relationship with someone they’re related to. (It’s an interesting play, friends, I promise.) We managed to do both these things, keeping the script as true to the source material as possible because we knew nothing we created would be more clever than the original dialogue.

People liked it much more than we ever realistically anticipated. At this moment, there are over 19,000 views on our first video alone. I can’t begin to explain to you the satisfaction and awe we felt about the reaction to our show. As Transmedia Director, I engaged directly with our audience - the wonderful, thoughtful people that they are - and built relationships with them. Some of those relationships even extended beyond the characters and into my real life. I gained real friends simply by voicing Cecily Cardew (and others).

People created stories and art around something we made. They made videos of themselves watching episodes or discussing theories, which we gleefully watched and shared with each other. In short, they cared.

They cared so much, believed in our storytelling so much, that they helped us fund the creation of a second LIW centered around Arthurian Legend: “REX”. I’m not sure how to fully articulate how I felt when I saw the donations pouring in, but the two biggest emotions were, by far, gratitude and responsibility. Then, it started all over again, with the added complication that we had graduated and were now real adults, with real jobs, all living in different states.

I don’t regret a single moment I spent working on either of our shows. There is so much love that goes into the creation of these webseries, and I cannot recommend them enough - for education or for pleasure. The episodes are short, and they're perfect for bingeing. Give 'em a go.

If you’re interested and don’t know where to start, here is a playlist of 83 options for you to choose from! My personal recommendations, based on what I have watched and loved, include:

• The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice)

• In Earnest (an adaptation of “The Importance of Being Earnest”)

• Also, REX (an adaptation of Arthurian Legend)

• Green Gables Fables (an adaptation of Anne of Green Gables)

• The Writing Majors (an adaptation of the lives of famous authors as college students)

• Nothing Much to Do (an adaptation of “Much Ado About Nothing”)

• The Autobiography of Jane Eyre (an adaptation of Jane Eyre)

There are so many more, and I could not be more proud to be a member of such a supportive, creative community. Internet friends, you are the best-est.