HYPERTEXT – A YEAR LATER
Boy, it’s not easy getting back into hypertext narrative. Whoever says it’s the same as traditional text is wrong.
After almost two years of focusing on flash fiction–which is a style that requires a quick body punch–it almost seems like hypertext story is the opposite; expansion on concept and questions and answers instead.
While the text boxes of Tinderbox, the software I use to write hyperfiction, are exquisitely perfect for sticking with a concise, free of overwriting style, the knowledge that more data, more information, more detail, can be added in bits and pieces by simply creating another “Note” leaves a writer more open to creative flare. No one expects you to read every bit of that data so there’s really no overload. While a story may contain fifty Notes, you can get from beginning to end in forty, thirty, twenty perhaps.
I’ve just had the enticement to get back physically and mentally into hypertext narrative, something I’ve been saving to do next year, after I finish out this year’s daily flash fiction writing. But it’s not easy going from one to another form. Just as with the novel, the short story, or poetry, the mindset is completely different and I as a writer must admit I am struggling as if for the very first time.
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