Hypercompendia

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.”