Hypercompendia

I’m curious if there has been data accumulated that indicates which is the most likely reader response in clicking on hypertext link in a narrative.  Because of the way Paths was born, as quadruplets let’s say, there is some linearity to the stories, as well as wonderful parallels which is where the hypertext comes in.  However, in making the changes to allow for a less linear track I’ve made the Writing Space Click to bring the reader to a more wandering path, but left a Text Link Click to allow him to follow a particular story line through.  Now he doesn’t have to follow that all the way through, he can Writing Space Click somewhere further down and that’ll shove him over onto another thread, but he can never get back to cover ground that’s been missed in the process.

This is likely why Jackson’s Patchwork Girl is comprised of all text links only; if a writing space has only one way to go, the entire text of that space is a link. 

It looks to me like I’m screwing this story up royally.  Otherwise, I think the way to fix it is to disallow those four linear paths completely, but make other paths more interesting to follow.  It’s a holy mess, it is.  Maybe if I stop myself from seeing the linearity–after all, each story may conclude within an hour or a day, but there is considerable flashback and wondering within that time period that negates the necessity of linearity–maybe then I can myself hop around within each story to further destroy any notion of time.

Knowing what the majority of hypertext readers do as habit would help me in this one.  For the record, I’m a clicker of all text links before I move into the next Writing Space.  Unless it appears that I’m going too far astray, in which case I retrace my steps to where I hung a left.