There’s a story behind NextSteps. Literally.

NextSteps is the first offering of Words + Strategy, which puts language to work through tech, talk and technique to get stuff done.

Transport yourself back in time to a Sunday morning, a surge of traffic—online, spotted from the couch. My interactive novel (This New World: A Digital Story of the American Midwest) was getting an unusual volume of visitors. The culprit: an international awards competition (Digital Book World) entered months before.

Splash went the coffee - quelle surprise! Especially for a full-time copywriter playing around with it all during her daily commute.

Twine brought it all together.

Not the “world’s largest ball of” ogled from a rural highway. An open-source tool for telling interactive, non-linear stories.

Twine occupies the unincorporated middle ground between static text and full-fledged video. Just click on a word or phrase to unleash a tangent, digression, fork in the road or branching narrative. Choose your own adventure for the digital age.

What else could this technology do?

During the 2020s, I wondered, watching as the world went remote and rogue. Surely there must be some practical use for this nifty tool—even in the world of TikTok, Reels, Snaps, and Vertical Shorts (which may be inspiration for W+S product #2).

Then the defining challenge of the decade emerged:

Sort through ALL THE STUFF to know what you need to know, and do what you need to do.

From there, NextSteps was born.

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