WRITING: Hypertext Readers
I did get the impression today that the one drawback to writing in hypertext format is that your available readers are at a premium. Either that, or I need to find some younger, more with-it, open-minded friends.
Just discussing the project, talking about what I was doing and how exciting it is brought out the admission from two separate friends that they didn’t like the original narrative that was laid out in text form on real paper. They hated flipping back and forth between pages. Ah, so that’s why they never mentioned reading it. Even my explanation that it is totally a different animal now brought further excuses–it seems both much prefer reading a book in book form; not on a computer.
Now I’m not ready to have anything read, but I’m thinking that up ahead I may have to form another writers group, specifically for hypertext writing. I’m not as concerned with proofreading, that’s one thing I do almost as well as any writer can on his own work (except for tense and semicolons). Outside of a classroom where hypertext fiction is studied, I think a writer may find it hard to interest friends and family into service. It’s hard enough to force them to read straight stories sometimes, and two out of five of my hardiest readers, those that made it through a novel ten years ago, are dead.
Something to think about. Though Christmas is coming, and what better gift than a story…
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
November 16th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
Follows with the Christmas light theme of an earlier post.
November 17th, 2007 at 7:04 am
Ahah! I’ll have to link it!