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

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

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

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

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

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

#SeriesMania #VerticalSeries #Networking

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

I help busy SaaS marketers reclaim their time through content writing that builds authority 🚀 B2B Copywriter & Content Writer 📖 SaaS & Hospitality Expert ♡

Most hospitality SaaS CMOs are making content decisions in the dark.

You don't know how AI systems describe your brand to buyers, and you're guessing at what content strategies work based on trends, not data from your competitive landscape.

I'm Ana, and I solve this through two strategic intelligence services:

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1️⃣ AI VISIBILITY ANALYSIS

How do major LLMs perceive and recommend your brand?

I map your presence across major LLMs, benchmark against competitors, analyze visibility signals, and provide recommendations to improve how AI systems understand you.

2️⃣ COMPETITOR CONTENT INTELLIGENCE  

What content are competitors publishing, and what's driving engagement?

I track and analyze competitor content—topics, formats, hooks, timing, performance patterns—then translate insights into actionable recommendations and content experiments.

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These services work together:
→ AI Visibility = how AI systems surface your brand
→ Content Intelligence = what content strategies work with audiences

Combined, you optimize for both AI-driven discovery and real-world performance.

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WHO I WORK WITH

Hospitality SaaS: PMS providers, revenue management platforms, channel managers, booking engines, guest experience platforms, operations software.

Why hospitality? I graduated from École Hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL), the world's #1 hospitality business school. I understand the industry operationally—night audit, OTA integrations, RevPAR—not just as a marketer.

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WHAT MAKES ME DIFFERENT

I build proprietary AI systems that automate intelligence your team can't replicate:

✓ AI visibility tracking across platforms
✓ Competitor content monitoring and pattern extraction  
✓ Performance analytics tied to business outcomes
✓ Hospitality SaaS-specific data insights

Every recommendation is backed by data from your market, not generic marketing advice.

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If you're making content decisions without knowing how AI perceives you or what content actually works in your space, let's talk.

📧 Currently accepting 2 new partnerships for Q1 2025. DM me.

Ana Palombini 🐝

YES, LinkedIn is being cited by LLMs (but not in the way you think)

A Semrush study of 230,000 prompts found Reddit and LinkedIn among the top most-cited domains across ChatGPT, Google's AI Mode, and Perplexity (Semrush, November 2025).

And a separate Spotlight study adds a crucial layer: out of 19,202 LinkedIn sources cited by these LLMs, 78%+ came from LinkedIn Pulse articles specifically (Spotlight, January 2026).

Here's what you need to know:

LLMs want verifiable content, and Linkedin Pulse articles tie content to real people with employment history, education, and professional accomplishments.

But I have my own observations that add yet 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 layer.

Scroll the carousel. 👉

Ana Palombini 

I help hospitality SaaS companies map their brand’s AI visibility and build the content ecosystem that feeds it.

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The Battle

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