The dot.story & the easy town story
What is the easy town story?
The easy town story by Charlie Alice Raya is the source of most easy town ideas, including the ideas for dot.
In the easy town story, the project teams develop, build and run a town experiment in order to rethink basically everything, including businesses and business practices.
You can find out more on the easy town books website.
10 November 2022
Timing the dot.story
When I began to write the dot.story, I only decided that the dot.story would start in October so that the protagonists would have just enough time to create something for the festival time in Edinburgh in August the following year.
But as the dot.story grew, I came to a point where I needed some proper timing. And a crucial question was whether I should keep the dot.story independent of the easy town story – or not. After all dot. was invented in the first weeks of the easy town story.
In the end I decided on a compromise. I wanted to keep the dot.story as independent as possible, but I timed it in a way that I can use characters and events mentioned in the dot.story for the easy town story.
This is why you won’t find a scene with the executive team or the heads of dot. in the dot.story because those might involve main characters of the easy town story.
And I made another crucial decision. The dot.story is set in the years 2021/22, a period which will be covered in the final book of the easy town story. This allowed me to present a dot. which has already seen some trouble and learned a thing or two in the previous years.
(Potential) overlaps
Karla, a member of the dot.team in Berlin, is the only character which presently appears in both stories, book 2, travelling, and in the dot.story.
The dot.story already hints that Lakeshia, the head of the dot.stations team, knows the main Easy Town project team, and she might get an appearance in book 3, shaping.
In one of the later books, some main characters of the easy town story visit Edinburgh and Glasgow. It would be fun to let them run into the dot.designer Calli and/or into a younger Leathan who would still be in school. Also, Calli is the kind of character who would come to Easy Town to see what it’s really all about.
Mick’s appointment as co-head of the Edinburgh dot.station could get a connection to the main characters of the main story.
And then there is Raiden, the head of simulations in the dot.story. He started with such short scene, but by now he has grown on me, and I am presently considering to let him be part of Andy’s team in book 3, shaping, before he decides to join the dot.team in Tunisia.
There are some more options, and I am exited about this additional pool of characters and stories which I might intertwine with the main easy town story.
She remembered a discussion with Karla, from the Berlin dot.station, who said: ‘Do you know why there aren’t any traditional costumes in Berlin? It’s because Berlin, the real Berlin, is always in motion, always curious, always venturing into new ideas.’
dot.story
