All my life I’ve been a fierce force of imagination, persistence, and hard work: like a dragon hunting for gold. But instead of treasure, I’ve been searching for stories to tell and ways to make an impact.

Born in Belarus, I studied journalism in Bulgaria and worked in marketing in Russia, but storytelling has always been my true passion. I create narratives that allow people to explore fresh perspectives in a safe, immersive way.

As a queer, neurodivergent woman from a patriarchal country, I’m passionate about shedding light on complex topics through my work. Over the years, I’ve designed more than 100 LARP games, written 10+ original tabletop campaigns, and worked as a script supervisor on the short film Mein Name Akim (2024), which tells the story of transgender refugees in Germany.

During my MA in Serial Storytelling at IFS Cologne, I honed my skills across genres, working on solo projects as well as collaborating in Writers' Rooms.

Currently, I’m co-developing a visual novel game with a co-author as a passion project.

Now that I've completed my degree, I’m eager to bring my creativity to TV and gaming, crafting stories in both English and German.

Dragons never stop breathing fire. And neither do I, with an endless flow of ideas and stories I can’t wait to share.

Alena Lysiakova

🎧 Too much sound can ruin your audio game.

Audio designers love layering: music, background ambience, footsteps, breathing, radio static, wind, distant sirens, and emotional underscore. 

And suddenly your “immersive experience” feels like standing inside a broken washing machine. 

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: most people don’t play audio games in perfect silence. They’re commuting. Cooking. Walking. Folding laundry. 

Audio storytelling competes with real life. If your game requires 100% concentration at all times just to understand what’s happening, you’re designing against the format.

Cognitive overload is real:
🐲 Constant SFX + dense dialogue = fatigue
🐲 Overlapping voices = confusion
🐲 Permanent music bed = emotional flattening
🐲 No breathing room = listener burnout

Immersion doesn’t come from “more sound.” It comes from intentional sound. Silence matters. Contrast matters. Clarity matters. Design audio like oxygen.

Good audio narrative design respects the listener’s brain, because the worst experience isn’t “hard,” it’s exhausting.

#NarrativeDesign #AudioGames

Alena Lysiakova 🐉

Narrative designer and screenwriter ▶️ Let's create stories that make an impact

Here’s something most audio writers don’t plan for 👉 players will mishear things. 


Names. Instructions. Locations. Important clues. And no, it’s not because they’re inattentive. It’s because audio competes with real life.

If your entire branching logic collapses because someone misheard “Mara” as “Nara,” that’s not player failure. 👉 That’s architectural fragility.

Designing for mishearing means:
👾 Avoid critical distinctions that rely on similar-sounding names
🐲 Reinforce important information through variation, not repetition
👾 Use context to clarify meaning instead of assuming perfect recall
🐲 Make systems resilient to imperfect listening

In audio, clarity isn’t about simplifying the story. It’s about building redundancy intelligently. The player shouldn’t need studio-level focus to follow your game.

If your structure only works in perfect silence with perfect attention, it’s not built for the real world.

#NarrativeDesign #AudioGames #InteractiveStorytelling

The uncomfortable truth about writing for audio: sometimes experience gets in the way. 🐲 


I coach a lot of writers transitioning into interactive audio, and I keep seeing the same pattern: the more experienced the writer, the harder it can be to adapt.

Not because they’re not talented, but because they’re used to controlling the frame.

In audio, you don’t have visuals to lean on. You don’t have text people can reread. You don’t have cinematic shortcuts.

You have a voice. Timing. Space. Silence. Choice phrasing. Cognitive load.

And if you try to force screenwriting logic or prose logic onto audio without adjusting, the story simply doesn’t breathe. 

💡 Audio is a different architecture. It demands different pacing, different exposition control and different emotional calibration.

That’s why transitioning with a coach helps. Not because you don’t know how to write, but because someone needs to point out the invisible friction early.

You can read all the documents you want. Clarity usually comes when someone listens and says, “This works. This doesn’t. And here’s why, specifically for audio.”

Different medium requires different muscles. And once they click, audio becomes addictive.

#NarrativeDesign #AudioGames #StoryCoaching

Dating used to be awkward dinners and nervous eye contact… now it’s co-op bosses and shared loot drops. 🎮💘

In my latest article, I dig into why playing together is becoming the new dating, and how games are quietly reshaping connection, chemistry, and even heartbreak.

👉 https://lnkd.in/eU6XgMn8

If you’re into storytelling, relationships, or just fascinated by how games intersect with real life feelings, this one might hit a nerve.

#GamingCulture #Storytelling

Open article: Why playing together is the new dating by meer.com

🎧 Your audio game must survive interruptions


People don’t play audio games the way they play visual ones.  They’re walking. Cooking. Commuting. Someone asks them a question. A notification pops up. The subway arrives.

And suddenly your carefully crafted scene is paused for five minutes.

🐲 When they come back, the player shouldn’t feel lost. That’s why good audio narrative design builds re-entry points into the architecture, those small structural cues that help the brain reconnect:

👾 A character briefly restating the immediate goal
👾A reaction that reminds the player what just happened
👾Environmental cues that re-establish the situation
👾A choice that naturally summarizes the stakes

These moments are navigation; because audio games exist in the middle of real life, not inside a perfectly controlled gaming session. 

💡 If your story only works when the listener gives it uninterrupted attention, you’re designing for an ideal player that doesn’t exist. Good audio architecture assumes interruptions and quietly guides the player back in.

#audiogames #narrativedesign #storyarchitecture

All screenplays benefit from being visual. 
💡 But for vertical storytelling, it’s not a nice bonus: it’s survival.


In a traditional film or TV script, you can sometimes get away with dialogue carrying the scene. Two characters talking in a room can still work if the emotional stakes are strong enough. In verticals, that scene is dead on arrival.

The viewer is watching on a phone, often half-distracted, scrolling with their thumb, ready to abandon you at any second. If nothing visually happens, the story simply disappears. 👉 Vertical scenes need immediate visual signals.

You don't need long exposition or dialogue. Just one visual action that tells the entire story beat.

🐲 That’s the real discipline vertical storytelling teaches you: if the audience can understand the moment without sound, you’re probably doing it right.
#Screenwriting #VerticalSeries #Storytelling

In visual games, players always know where they are. There’s a map, a UI, and a quest log. Basically, something grounding them.

In audio there is nothing like that. Which means if you don’t deliberately build structural anchors, your story starts to drift.

Structural anchors are recurring elements that help listeners orient themselves without realizing it.

It could be:
🐲 A specific location you return to
🐲 A character who always reappears between major beats
🐲 A ritual moment (a radio check-in, a diary entry, a nightly call)
🐲 A recurring sound cue that signals transition

These anchors are architecture. Without them, scenes blur. Branches feel random. The player doesn’t feel lost because the plot is confusing; they feel lost because there’s no spatial or emotional reference point. Audio needs repetition with intention.

When players hear that familiar voice, that recurring space, that structural checkpoint, their brain relaxes. Orientation returns. Engagement stabilizes.

#NarrativeDesign #AudioGames

Just added another tool to the storytelling toolbox. 🎮

I’ve completed the course “Unreal Engine 5: Blueprint Scripting 101.”

As someone who usually lives on the narrative side of games, it’s always interesting to peek under the hood and understand how the systems actually work. Turns out Blueprint logic is not nearly as scary as it looked at first glance.

More ways to connect story, mechanics, and player experience — always a good thing. 🐲 Now back to building worlds.

Open article: Udemy Course Completion Certificate by ude.my

I’ll be attending Series Mania Forum on March 24 to 26.


Do you want to talk series and verticals? 🎬  
🐲 Let's meet and talk over coffee in Lille. 

#SeriesMania #VerticalSeries #Networking

Daniel Corsen

Chief Reshaper @ Reshapers | Facilitator | Culture Change Advisor | People Development

Change fails when leaders treat people like obstacles rather than as answers.

I have watched executives spend millions on transformation programs while ignoring the conditions that make change impossible. Then blame the people. The pattern repeats everywhere: new strategy, same culture, failed results.

Here is what 15 years of leading change taught me: culture is not the soft stuff. It is the operating system. Change the conditions, and people come with you. Ignore them, and they wait you out.

I grew up in Curaçao, and when your island has been shaped by Dutch, Spanish, and African influence across 500 years, you stop believing that any environment is neutral.

As Chair of the World Scout Committee, I work with 57 million young people across 176 countries. I have seen teenage Scout leaders run complex projects across cultures. It changed how I think about what people are capable of when conditions support them.

As founder of Reshapers, I help executives stop managing change and start making it feel inevitable.

Current work:
→ Leading the World Scout Movement's 2024-2027 strategy
→ Advising organizations on change that does not lose people
→ Building Liderá, a self-authorship movement for Caribbean leaders

📩 daniel@reshapers.co
🎤 Speaking inquiries welcome

Chief Reshaper

Specialist in Reshaping Businesses
Culture Change Advisor
Human Capital Develpment Consultant
Communication and Branding Expert

Today, 60 million Scouts and Guides around the world are celebrating Founder's Day.

That number still stops me sometimes.

In a world that feels increasingly divided, where trust in institutions is low and uncertainty is high, 60 million people chose to show up for something bigger than their own lives. That is worth pausing for.

BP was not trying to build an organization. He was trying to change the pattern of how young people grew up. Olave carried that same belief into the lives of girls and young women across the world. More than a century later, that belief is still being tested every day. In troops in conflict zones. In units in communities rebuilding after a disaster, and in spaces where young people are making decisions they were never trusted with before.

The world needs that more now than it did last year.

The movement has its challenges. Real ones. But young people are still showing up, still wanting to do something meaningful with their energy. That tells us something.

Happy Founder's Day to every Scout, Guide, leader, and volunteer out there. You are what makes this movement matter. I have called it home for most of my life. Today I am reminded why.

Chair, World Scout Committee | Reshaping how leaders navigate change and culture | Founder, Reshapers

In most organizations here in Curaçao, and honestly everywhere, there is an unwritten rule. Emotions stay outside. You walk in, you switch on, you get to work. Feelings are personal. Not professional.

The Fun Miles leadership team decided to question that rule.
Last week, they became the first certified Emotional Leadership Practitioners in Curaçao. The second cohort in the Caribbean, after Sint Maarten. 

At the heart of the course was a question that most leaders never get asked: what do your people need to feel to do their best work? Not what they need to know. Not what they need to do. What they need to feel.

The Emotional Culture Deck gave them a language for what usually goes unsaid. A structure for conversations that feel too uncomfortable to start, but are exactly the ones that change how a team shows up together.

These leaders now carry both the mindset and the methods. Not to manage emotions away, but to create space for them.

The ripple effect is only beginning.

If you want to be part of it, explore our Emotional Culture Specialist Courses at https://lnkd.in/efidPdEn

Lead with emotions at the core. Research shows that emotional culture affects employee engagement, resilience, and team performance. As a leader, understanding and managing emotions can transform your leadership and create lasting impact. Learn more here: https://lnkd.in/evh7FpE3

I keep seeing the same pattern in organizations going through change.

Leaders who have the plan. The timeline. The business case. And who still watch their people check out somewhere along the way.

The piece that's missing is almost always emotional. Not because people are irrational. But because change asks you to let go of something before you can see what comes next. And most organizations have no idea how to work with that.

That's what drew me to Riders & Elephants. I got certified because it puts that conversation front and center. Not as the "soft" side. As the real side.

On March 5th, I facilitated the first cohort in Curaçao on Emotional Change Strategy. Eleven people. And what happened in that room surprised me.

One person said she felt liberated seeing that others shared the same experiences and emotions. Another said aspects that are often considered "soft" got translated into something tangible that can bridge existing gaps. Someone described how a simple methodology can evoke such candor and profound conversations in spaces where these are not the standard.

One thing a participant wrote is still sitting with me. She said the course edifies humanity in a world that is becoming harder, tougher and colder every day. I had to read that twice.

Every group teaches me something back. But I know this: the conversation about emotions at work is not a nice to have. It's the conversation most change programs skip. And it's the reason most of them stall.

The second course takes place this Thursday. Two spots opened up. If this speaks to you, send me a message. I'd rather talk than send a brochure.

What is the conversation about emotions that your organization keeps avoiding?

Last week was a lot.

Reshapers team meeting. Client Meetings. Townhall Meetings for clients. Trip to Bonaire for Koersdag 2026. Sunday briefing with the World Scout Committee.

I felt stretched. Overwhelmed. And at the same time, grateful. Conflicting emotions that don't cancel each other out. They just sit together.

My team noticed before I did. They told me I looked stressed. That I was stretched. And I had to listen. Not defend, not explain, not power through. Just listen.

So I did what I tell my clients to do but sometimes forget to do myself. I got back inside. Took time. Breathed.

I talk a lot about emotions driving behavior. About creating space for people to feel what they feel. But when it's your own stress, your own overwhelm, it's easier to skip that step. To just keep going because the calendar says so.

I am still figuring out how to practice what I preach when the pressure is on me.

What do you do when the people around you see something about you that you haven't seen yet?

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