Hypercompendia

Here’s the latest version of Literary Endeavors, with the Poems set up and the Print Journals transferred from a Container to an Adornment. Couple things learned the hard way: If you overlap an Adornment onto another, you’ve got a holy mess on your hands because they become attached and move together, leaving the notes behind. Worked my way out of it, but not a happy sight as you move things around and the situation gets worse. But that’s what the “Save” feature is for.

Obviously, planning ahead for size when you want something that needs to all be displayed at once (another reason for keeping them out of Containers and using Adornments) is an important point. Particularly when you know you will be adding lots of notes on an adornment. I should have minimized the view right away and spread the Adornments to fit at that point, geared towards a horizontal screen.

As far as links, all I have so far is the (blush!) published ones in so far but I’m planning for the submitted and accepted/rejected return links as soon as I resize my layout.

That’s one of the problems with self-teaching: you learn something the wrong way and once you stumble across the right way, you have a lot of changes to make. On the other hand, a lesson learned from trial and error is one that sticks with you–especially if you have quite a bit of work done to date.

Once I realized that the thing I wanted was an Adornment and not another Container Note, I had to transfer a whole lot of notes into different areas. Thankfully, I didn’t have all the stories, hypertext or regular, and only two of the poems so far entered into the program. I do have about 80 of the print journal notes made, but few of the online journals and just a couple of the new media. It was a case of trying to fill in spaces from memory in some cases, just to have a few samples to work with.  At any rate, here’s the first step towards redesigning the Literary Endeavors Tinderbox file.

It was demoralizing. It was one of those questions that your knowledge and experience with the program should have taken you beyond. It was something I felt too embarrassed about not knowing to bring me to ask. Why was everybody else’s map so different from mine? Why wouldn’t my notes show up with titles? Why wouldn’t my links transcend their corrals?

The Answer: I was using Containers, while they were using Adornments. A tweet from Mark Bernstein along with the alert that though it was in German, it was a great visual, led me to this site by Felix Dencker, where I not only noticed that the Germans also knew something I didn’t, I picked up the word “Adornment,” within the article and voila’!

Stacey Mason at Eastgate (Tinderbox and Storyspace) has an interesting concept up over at HLit: what about reading hypertext aloud.

Inspired perhaps by Finnegan Flawnt’s extraordinary reading voice rather than my own little ditty he’s reading, she weighs the possibilities and decides “The thought of a work and a user interacting back and forth through sound to create a narrative is worth exploring.”

I like her inquisitive nature and the willingness to project ideas way beyond their intent. And, this is a damn good idea too. What came instantly to my mind is the robot helpers you get on the phone that can understand your responses to direct you step by step to a resolution (or a real person who can intercept and help). I could well envision a voice-activated reading of a hypertext, whether the reader says a linking word aloud and thus moves the narrative forward, or how’s this, totally phone conversationally driven where an obvious link (perhaps obvious by tone or inflection) is offered to the listener who then repeats a word or phrase to direct the story to their own choice.

This sounds like an interesting project, audio controlled hypertext. I’m sure touch-text is already in the making with the touch-screens, and visual images will play a big part in that endeavor. But Stacey’s come up with a pattern of thought here that I hope she pursues.

Thought I’d point to an interview I recently did over at Fictionaut about hypertext and new media in general. I had formed a Hypertext Group within this online writers colony and am thrilled to encourage interest and find a receptive and curious audience there.

At Facebook there is some commentary between myself and Finnegan Flawnt, who just recently started playing with the Tinderbox program, that entertains the question of new media being metafictional by nature. It is worth thinking about, if perhaps even the simplest hypertext is in fact calling attention to the act of writing by its visual invitation to interact with the text.

We’ve gotten used to seeing text as thoughts and read them not as signs and symbolic marks upon a background (think of looking at a page of Chinese writing when you can’t read the language), but see the idea presented in the pattern formed by the letters. Possibly seeing beyond the words and sentences to the images they represent. Hypertext includes links within text of a different and obvious color that is saying something about the text itself and the process of reading it, rather than merely being a part of the story. It’s talking directly to the reader. It’s an interesting way of looking at new media, particularly when it includes audio and visual effects that further call attention to the experience. Is it screaming, louder than the story it presents, “Look at me, I’m a story!”?

An image of the updated file “Literary Endeavors” (previous post image):

With the generous assistance of Steve Ersinghaus, I finally was able to figure out exactly how to make use of the Tinderbox features of using prototypes and particularly, the agents. This was vital to this project as the different types of works wanted to also be separated for easy identification of word count and eventually, published, in submission process, etc.

Once I learned what to put in the query strings and where to put them into the agent note, I can take it further on my own into the specific areas for whatever purpose I need. I also learned that the prototypes must be specific and no note can serve two masters/prototypes so that if I want a group to follow a chocolate/blue dress (example only) standard, I need to make that a single prototype rather than two; likewise, chocolate/pink dress would be a different prototype entirely.

I’ve made a lot of progress on this particular project, and also can apply that knowledge learned last night into the 100 Hypertext project that I’d started late last year.

Now, I’m having fun.

I’d posted this at fictionaut, but wanted to repost it here as Hypercompendia’s been sort of a journal of a learning process.

“In just recently having had two hypertext works accepted for publication, I find there is a bit more to the submission process of hyperfiction just as there is to the writing of it.

Word length is an important consideration in all story submissions, and in hypertext, the length of the story read may not necessarily include all the separate sections involved. For example, in one of my pieces, the story can be complete in as little as five pages, or as many as twelve. The word count can be figured out, and the longest form can be the goal to remain within restrictions.

Another factor is styling; some publications that take only new media may require the addition of colored background pages as well as images, film clips, or sound. Others may be set up for, or merely prefer, a simpler more basic text format.

All this, of course, is a simple matter of changing the css and html template so that a story can be tailored to an online magazine’s specific needs.”

I’d add a few additional thoughts here. One, in sending a file to a literary e-zine, while I can get away much easier (and it’s easier reading for them as well) to direct them to my site as a submission link, once something in hypertext has been accepted, it needs to be recoded so that the links all point to the publication’s server. Tinderbox makes this extraordinarily easy by simply coding the html template in Tinderbox for the document and exporting to a file on my own drive from there. And then, I can easily send the whole file out to the wonderful editor who accepted the piece for publication. This takes a lot of the reluctance out of the editorial process and I make sure to include the offer upfront “should a piece be accepted.”

Finally got around to some attempt at organizing my literary endeavors into some semblance of order with Tinderbox.

What I’ve come up with so far is a file called “Literary Endeavors” with containers labeled “Print Journals”, “Online Journals”, “New Media Journals”, and three more labeled “Print Stories”, “Hypertext”, and “Poetry”.

In the “Print Stories” container I’ve got notes for each of the stories I’ve written and within each will be the word count, genre, and maybe a separate note within each for where they’ve been submitted. Maybe all will be separate, so that they can easily be brought up according to genre, or word count or whatever since that will align with many publishing restrictions. The same format will be done with Poetry and Hypertext.

In the three main categories of journals, I’ll likely put in a note for which stories have been submitted and the dates of acceptance (Yay!) or rejection (Boo.).

This looks like a fun project to do between writing bouts and will prove invaluable  now that I is a published writer.

While I’ve sort of been accused of using an old fashioned form of hypertext narrative–and this may be true since I’m a bit behind the times learning on my own–I’m still very much aware of the fact that folks need to be eased into the concept of hypertext story.

In the 100 pieces I’ve done for the 100 Days Project, I can see my work becoming gradually more complex not just in the number of lexias but in the linking of those pieces. There are just so many ways of using hypertext that I’ve not learned all the methods and reasons yet behind it. For another, finding that most folks didn’t bother reading it (the usual reasons, ad nauseum) influenced a rather simplistic approach, trying to cover all the different purposes by focusing in on one at a time.

As way of explanation, one of the purposes/reasons for hypertext could be the deliverance of background information that can certainly enhance but is not vital to the flow of story. Another is to change the meaning of the story entirely by allowing a switching of paths or focus, perhaps to even come up with a different ending to a story. Another may be to emphasize one character over another in point of view. Maude Nichols is one of the few hypertexts I’ve written that really gives a reader a choice–at least a choice that is based on some form of informed possibilities because it includes a multiple choice at the end of each writing space as to proposed direction of story. This seems to be a good way of allaying the fears of the uninitiated hypertext reader about losing control of the story.

One of the things I need to do with my own hypertext work is to increase the level of visual impact, and that’s going to be a case of learning more about css and html and the various methods of display. I’d also like to get into the audio as well as video clips involved in most of the newer presentations while still keeping in mind that there’s an audience of the unaware and just plain resistant to welcome into the discovery.

I’ve been thoroughly enjoying watching Peter Jerz, 11 year-old son of Professor Dennis Jerz (Seton Hill) play this text adventure game via three videocasts of his experience.

Dennis is teaching this course at his college and it is a rare treat to sit back and enjoy the gameplay of someone else going through the interaction of the game. We did this in one of my literature courses at Tunxis prior to the inclusion of a New Media course later established and I remember sitting at the helm of the keyboard in the computer lab while the other students gathered around giving suggestions and directions as to how to maneuver through the game. It was most helpful to have someone provide clues that I’d missed since we all had played the game, Photopia,  individually at home and some of us got a lot further along in it than others. At one point, I remember trying all the standard directional functions of n (north), s, e, and w, and even up and down. I tried several other verbs but just couldn’t get out of a particular room without banging against the walls. After I typed in “cry” in frustration (hey, for a girl it sometimes works with a cop in a speedtrap) I was told to type “fly” and voila!

What Dennis has done here is made the reader/user’s first interactive experience a bit less intimidating by showing the thought process that develops in the game as one learns the lingo of text adventure. Besides the directions and most standard verbs acknowledged by the games, there are the shortcuts such as “x” for examine (a room, an item, etc.) and “i” to refresh one’s memory about what “inventory” has been taken, there are words such as “speak” or “talk” depending on the author’s choice in allowing the reader/user to interact with characters within the story.

This just may have me buckling back down to play with a few more games that I haven’t looked at in a few years and more, to maybe try my hand at creating a game myself. One that breaks down and helps you when you “cry.”