STORYSPACE: Not necessarily choose your own…..
…adventure or make an ending happy or sad depending upon reader clicking habits. Yes, hypertext can be this–to a certain degree only, since the choice is not based on a known, and not even a guess, but rather an inclination. The inclination is again up to many things, only one of which is the reader’s influence, i.e., tending to stick to the basic links or going off on the very first text link you may hit. But it has nothing really to do with the story and how the reader wants it to unfold, at least not the story–though perhaps the style.
The reader will also be influenced gradually by the author’s style; he will come to see a trend that is the writer’s own tendencies revealed in how he plans his links. Do the text links promise excitement? Does he tend to bring you around in a more exciting/interesting/mysterious/safe manner via text or basic link?
But it still comes down to this: a reader of hypertext does not choose to make a story go in a known direction. It is still up to the writer to allow the paths, cut the trails, design a maze, and then let the reader loose in it.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology