Hypercompendia

There’s a story developing here, and though it’s not the sci fi (that’s another project, Timesavers) and what I’m hoping for is to blend storytelling with deep character and relationship revelations and some Marquez thrown in for fun.  What I’d really love to produce is a Marquez/McCarthy/Faulkner styled hypertext and this story may have the potential to at least reach for these areas of the masters.

First there is the disbelief.  Like stepping through the beaded curtain into a room lit by a single candle into a dark burgundy red.  A gypsy smiles up toothlessly.  Claws made more grotesque by too many gold rings caress a crystal globe where your great grandfather grins wide in fisheye style, his nose a third of his face, his eyes one on each side of his head.  He fingers the inside of the glass as if seeking a crack.  You wonder what he wants.

Life is seen with shreds of real still hanging off and stitched with thread that threatens to break with a single breath to turn bizarre and tattered.

Why didn’t Bonnie answer him?  Oh yeah, and why was she floating in the middle of the room?  The first thing he could think to do that made sense was to right the chair that lay on its side beneath her feet.

Meanwhile, the story appears to be following a main path with the side trails of what I would have called backstory, except that in the Storyspace environment, it is at the same time foreshadowing.  Not only depending upon when it is read, but also on the random layout encouraged by hypertext in thinking about the story.  It’s a layering that builds a story, yet it’s the story that promotes recall and this is where layers come into being.  Here’s a map view, early stages, but I’m sort of hesitating to get too far into this since I may be switching Storyspace formats.

This seems very simple a framework, but I can visualize how it will expand and in what areas there will be alternative trails and how the story can return to itself in different spaces of time.

I really could use that cabin in the woods for this one though.