Hypercompendia

Love and War

What I liked about Steve’s story today was the obvious man against self conflict; an internal struggle between two loyalties. It is likely the hardest fighting we ever do, when our beliefs and faith are challenged by contradictory forces.

I’ve tried to follow that pattern of conflict, but in hypertext, and with my own introduction of two characters, I may have overplayed the point. But also in hypertext, there is the option of following one thread that may show you only one side of the story, but should still give a story. I have taken advantage of switching points of view here, something that is more common in hypertext because of its nature, but also used the traditional method of changing typeface to italic for the third person pov besides the positioning of the spaces.

The mapping of this one, just as in the previous, allows switching paths up to a point when the fate of the characters have been decided by the reader. Though of course, there’s always another way of reading the story. ; )

The Nature of Nature

I just loved Steve’s story today. It was simple and exciting and real. With that inspiration, I set to work immediately and came up with something that became complex, low level and surreal. Which is probably what I should have expected since I did base it on a complete role reversal of who’s talking to whom here.

As far as the mapping, it’s another case of at some point, there is no turning back. There are two different complete stories here, and at a place where the reader makes his or her choice, the path is set, aside from a few side trails of secondary minor story.

It was a lot of fun to create and to follow along this story.

Day and Night

This one is actually a group of short shorts, more of a poetical nature tied together by theme and motifs into a whole.

While it may appear that you can get lost in it forever, there is actually a method to the mapping process and long-time hypertexters may discover the secret of getting through and both seeing all lexias while repeating very few.

It started from the word ‘morning’ and indeed, that was the first space written in. From there one element of nature, one element of man’s time led the threads. This piece called for a hop-skip-and jump pattern while maintaining a fairly rigid structure to be explored by the writer as well as the reader. Or something like that.

It’s day #35 and I’m up five days on css and html templates and even, yes the Tinderbox maps. Through a series of folders and organization I have these four files in  “x” files (neat, eh?) as preparation for stories: 100column.css; 100column.html; titlec.html; x.tbx — though of course named x through x8 (some aren’t colorized yet)

Tinderbox is a godsend in this project as the base camp for creating the hypertext story. While there is no rule as to what format I’m following or how many writing spaces I’ll be using, it is easy enough to change according to what I’m guessing the story will ask of me to lay it out. Some want circles. Some want squares. Some want organization and some want nothing to do with me.

The first illustration is of the basic map, guessing that I’ll average 16 spaces, maybe more, maybe less; that I’ve been using a different sized box as “policemen” or traffic controllers or asides; that there needs to be room to maneuver and clearly show links when I’m first starting out with the story (sometimes I link everything as I’m writing it, sometimes I link just the main thread and hook up the rest later, sometimes I just sit and stare); and that the empty boxes are a lure (or a kick in the pants) to move on.

All this just helps me keep focused, something to play with in between bolts of brilliance (I play a lot) so that I don’t wander off to the garden or into the clutches of Tai Pei. The second illustration has been rearranged a bit to suit what I think is a prose piece that wants some structure to its life.  We’ll see.

Twelve Noon

What I was looking for was a love story, a relationship that survived a society. I’m a much more traditional writer than Steve on any given day. When I’m not in a particularly happily creative frame of mind, it’s difficult for me to force a story to fit into a surrealistic setting.

So, it turned out to be a strange society that I dumped my pair of lovers into and let them fend for themselves. This is one story that certainly was given free rein in where it was going and what it wanted to be. The only control I had (or exercised, since I can manage to browbeat my characters into submission if I so choose) was the Tinderbox map which had been laid out in a semi-organized form of where I thought the story would be strong and what it was depending upon for enhancement and side stories.

So here it is; as with all others, haven’t done final editing (is that ever done?) and I almost feel like I didn’t have a damn thing to do with it.

Idle Conversation

This is a study in pace via conversation only, with minimal or no narrative. Hopefully I’ve maintained a story arc by building tension via some conflict between the two characters of the story.

I’ve also, in focusing on simple dialogue, not gotten elaborate with the hypertext linkage, and it really is fairly linear, even if you take the “thought  process” links (not particularly clever here, it’s been done a zillion times). In fact, these side links shouldn’t even be necessary if I’ve properly, by dialogue alone without even adverbs, done my job.  (And I do apologize for the dialogue bubbles on the map–couldn’t resist!)

The Metamorphosis of Marley – (Marley 3)

It’s tough going back to a character, an environment that you’ve left behind unfinished. That’s why I have a file of “opening lines” and why they’ve accumulated over the years (though I am grateful for that now as it’s helped me in the last story).

Once again, I followed the theme of serialization and went back to two previous (#4 and #5) hypertext stories to pick up where we left off with Marley and a mysterious woman. For some reason, I didn’t seem to want to help Marley sort out his life; my mind just had a hard time dealing with him. This story lends more air time to the antagonist of Stephanie then.

The other thing I’ve played with here is the hypertext form as a serious choice of paths. Just as in #30 Dark Moves where the reader follows a trail of his own choice that ends up in one of five different places, this story allows movement between possibilities up to a point, then the pattern has been decided. Of course, there’s always re-reads which presents a whole different perspective.

In working on hypertext story #32, it struck me that I have an advantage over the other storywriters in that hypertext can be updated continually to reflect changes such as serialization (which in this case, I followed Steve’s lead in pulling that out as one of the elements of the story). All it takes is to code in the link on the previous story to lead right into the new one, and so on.

Since I have different titles for the story that do not reflect the connection (bad move on my part, I need to fix that) depending upon color theme instead, I had a bit more trouble in locating the previous two (#4 Commitment and #5 Shadows) to reacquaint myself with the characters and plot. What I’ll likely do is add a sub-title to the others, include it in #32, and add those links from one to the next as an option. The other thing to think of some day is to interlink the stories internally; which would be a nightmare for me to attempt right now.

And while the other participants who choose to serialize some of the stories can easily do so by reference links too, I still must point out that it’s linkage and hypertext they’d be using, since the medium we’re all using is the same: the internet.

Eugene the Flying Machine

Had to dig into my file of opening lines for this one. I was looking for a theme of parent-child relationships and a sense of growth in character. All I had on this story was a 75-word opening paragraph with no idea of where it was going. I changed it around a lot, cut out a lot and voila! Had a story opening for hypertext but still without any idea of where it was going.

There’s magical realism–couldn’t quite do the fairy tale feel, maybe because of the grey rainy day–but it started taking a serious turn. Maybe also because of the rain.

There’s satisfaction in knowing that Eugene and his story has finally been told. There’s even more satisfaction in knowing there’s a whole file of opening lines and ideas if I ever get stumped for story again.

Dark Moves

I knew what this was going to be the minute I finished reading Steve’s story. It just lent itself naturally to the interactive fiction game environment. The problem I had in maintaining that element in a hypertext environment was the brevity of the pieces and the limited amount of time to establish anything more than a fairly simple story.

As you can see in the map, there’s another strange long rectangular note and that’s something I’ve been making use of as a quick place to scribble notes. In this case, I had the plan for the layout, the rooms and the paths, the choices, the endings, and a few coding imperatives once the templates were established. I seem to have gotten into a rhythm with these pieces by first establishing a rough map outline once the concept is in mind. On this piece, it was the first time I wrote the story out in a basic thread that would lead through all the rooms and paths, while keeping in mind the potential links and outcomes.

This one offered many opportunities to play with the hypertext medium for effects and time was the only restriction. One of the thoughts I had but didn’t incorporate was to leave solid color spaces with the same color text as hidden links that would produce a random effect based upon where the reader clicked on the area (hitting a text link without being aware of it). Something to play with when I have more time.

It’s a fun one and there’s one thing I can guarantee: there is a way out. There are five ways out.