Hypercompendia

In the process of preparing an event covering the changes required in thinking as a writer of hypertext, there’s a barrier that I somehow keep brushing up against: a lot of people hate hypertext.

You, faithful readers, gasp and clutch your chest as if I’ve uttered some impossible theory of evolution such as man’s descent from elephants instead of apes. (Though think about it; don’t you know someone who is hairier than you’d like to think about with canines reminiscent of Nosferatu?)

But there it is, the facts of life, the bias of the masses for traditional book-form narrative and against the somewhat mazelike hedge of story in a map. (Though think about this too; there are outlines made for traditional novel-writing too and I just saw one the other day at a speaker’s slideshow presentation at the Tunxis Writers Festival that made me bounce up and down to keep from shouting, "Have you never heard of Tinderbox?")

So concurrent with my study I’ll be working on this prejudice problem we "cool" folk like to forget (or maybe feel a touch of elitist pride in taking) is there against the format of our stories.  It’s all well and good to cluster in groups discussing the latest hypertext offering and yet, unless you don’t have friends within your circle who’ve never read Joyce’s Afternoon, it’s a hard sell even to your very closest literary comrades.  Even to those, I find, who may have been exposed to such in campuses across the nation but will never ever think of ordering the latest greatest output in hypertext again.

This may get mean and dirty, but I intend to dig.

Some of the Google searches to get to my place are just too funny; often pornographic and just plain dumb.  I check sometimes and something catches my eye that makes me go back to the Google page and see exactly what these searchers are seeking.  "Pineapple and Jello" is still one of my biggest draws (fresh pineapple contains an enzyme which inhibits the setting process) so loads of folks are curious about that little warning on the Jello box, but hey, I’m likely one of the very few rebellious gelatin makers who tried it and ended up drinking the stuff.

But there’s another use for weblogs and Google searches that allow the sharing of knowledge:  advertising.

This one is an example:

where can i find a box to write text in and it has a space for a title

Hypercompendia was among the list of possibilities, and I’ll betcha that from whatever post they landed on, they followed a link within it to Storyspace or maybe Hypertextopia or Steve Ersinghaus‘ weblog. What better way to answer the question than to put hypertext in action by the very process of the query?

I know, the title sounds like something really deep and interesting and the concept itself is going to be a letdown for most of you who read this, but I couldn’t think of a better way to say it.

The premise is much more simple:  As I sit here in the frameshop with the door open to the spring breath of sweetly greening buds and leaves I go to check the mail, hit "Mail" to get to the Mac Mail app, even as I hear the engine of the mailtruck stopping at the neighbor’s, revving up to stop and idle again at our own mailbox directly across the street, I hear the ‘ding’ that tells me I have email.  Simultaneously, the second clank of the mailbox that is mine that tells me I have physical mail there too.

Neat world we live in these days, no?

Because, I guess, I just don’t trust enough.  Because my time has built on losses and their learning…

I’m reconstructing A Bottle of Beer into Storyspace.  To CYA in case of internet obliteration.

The format can work, though not as well as in Hypertextopia for this particular purpose; needing to go back into the story from threads that were written to be that gradual insight appearing out of nowhere–called out by a click.  The technical affects the purpose of the style; much the same as using sentence structure, punctuation.

Squeezing an elephant into a Chinese take-out carton; dropping a ring into the ocean.

Just started a story with an idea, a man walking in the night through the woods.  Taking pause as that scene settles, I think about other things, yet never too far away that I cannot hear him if he calls. 

What I’m thinking about is this: What set the form of story?

Working and switching among straight text, hypertext in Storyspace and hypertext in Hypertextopia, it surprises me that I already know this story is meant for traditional linear telling.  It has no need for the roundabouts or playing with time of Storyspace mapping.  It does not call for the Shards of clarity from Hypertextopia.  At least not at this point. The man is alone, the night is rumbling. 

Is the situation what settles the form?  What calls out the innuendos and acuteness of side trails?  It certainly can’t be the loneness of the character, as in A Bottle of Beer, Yolanda sits alone on her porch awaiting a man running down the road towards her throughout the story.  Ah, but she is surrounded by ghosts; from her past, from human nature, and from instinct. There is a natural pattern that develops that is asking these ghosts to drift through the story.  The intricacy of Storyspace’s trails would be overkill; we don’t want the reader to wander away from the immediacy of Yolanda’s last hour–which is the whole of the story.  Hypertextopia is then perfect for that particular piece.  Paths was begging for parallel paths (uh, hence, it’s title) and needed the coexistence of threads that separated yet tied lives together.  Neither story could likely have been told in a different form with any degree of accuracy–of sense of exactly how it happened.

So it is not the singleness of character, the singleness of purpose–and perhaps if the focus of this man’s story was different it would indeed call out for an exploration via links.  What then?

I don’t truly know.

There are many ways to look at hypertext story and usually the more complex the better the hypertexters like it.  I, unfortunately, like things simple and honest; don’t like (feeling as if I’m) being cheated out of story because I’m notoriously on the wrong path.

An image popped into my mind this morning of a raspberry bush, perhaps this came out of my jaunt around the backyard yesterday noting sadly that we should have pruned the peach trees (and the lilacs, the grapes, the everything) in what was considered ‘late winter.’  Then I rambled over to the neighbor’s raspberries which we haven’t really done much with since Andy died.  Just as expected, they’d grown wild and freely rooted wherever a cane touched soil.  This is natural tip-layering.

From a main cane several branches form to bear fruit.  If these branches are not trimmed back at the end of the producing season, they will eventually bow down to touch soil.  There they may, with proper conditions, root off the branch and sprout up as new canes.

I’m not sure it’s as complex a system as many hypertexts I’ve read, but I do see the loops that return to the soil or base (of story).  Meanwhile, they branch out to form new stories of their own.

Now raspberry bushes can become quite inextricable and unnavigable in time.  You can get hung up in their prickers and need to cut your way out.  Or you can follow from one branch to another, go underground where the roots are branching out as well.

Or, you can plant and be happy with the simple carrot.

I keep checking into the Hypertextopia Grand Library and have noticed several things going on.  One isn’t good news for hypertext: many have tried it out and left their work hanging there without completion.  Another is great news: many have used the format as a teaching tool.

In the first scenario, folks seem to have either become frustrated with the method of writing–whether it be a creative effort or a means of outlining an idea.  Does the thought of entering a new writing space without the prior work being visible sever the thought process in some way?  Does a blank space promote blankness of what comes next?  Do we need some tie-in to the previous thought to produce the flow that’s based on a visual confirmation of its existence? 

There’s also the possibility that the technical manipulation of working within a hypertext program is interfering with the idea being produced.  Many simply will not wish to be bothered by pulling out threads and new text boxes to continue onward.  Many may become frustrated with the necessary requirements of attending to the program in the implementation of story–and I use ‘story’ here in both fiction and non fiction terms.

But isn’t this just a case of a learning curve?  That once the program is mastered through knowledge and skill it is no more an impediment to the thinking-to-writing it down process than turning a page in a notebook?  Even there, in the most traditional way of writing, there’s a momentary break in procedure that might inhibit a train of thought, I suppose.  But are we really so easily put off track?  It’s hard for me to fathom that in this day of multitasking and working with computer screens holding several pages open (Storyspace allows this concept, as does Mac’s Spaces that shows up to four working screens in full view) that writers are so reluctant to assimilate the data via a natural memory chain–the human brain. 

I’d be interested in learning if what turns these writers off to hypertext writing is the same bugaboos that appear to turn off so many readers; one idea is the fear or sense of losing placement–fear of getting lost.

On the good side, I see an author, Paul Allison, who appears to be using Hypertextopia’s facilities as a teaching tool on weblogging, and on  hypertext poetry.  On  the latter,  Paul gives us an explanation:

"Here are the steps I asked 6th, 7th, and 8th graders to follow in creating their first hypertext poem in Hypertextopia"

And here’s the opening text space:

Make a chain of 15 or 20 memories
1.Join or Log in here at Hypertextopia.
2. Add a new story. Title: Memory Chain (You will change this later.)
3. Double-click
on "The Beginning" and replace the title with an object in the room.
4. Save with the green arrow.
5. What story from your life does this object remind you of? (This is not the same as word association.)
6. Move
the cursor across the bottom of the box that you just created, and find
the straight-up-and-down, vertical arrow. Drag this arrow out and let
go to create another box.
7. In the title box, type the memory/story that the object reminds you of, and save it with the Green arrow.
8. Move
the cursor across the bottom of the new box and find the vertical
arrow. Create another box, and write another memory in the title of
that box.
9. Continue making a "memory chain" of boxes until you get to 15 or 20 boxes.

I love it.  Both Paul’s dedication to the hypertext theory of writing and his use of it to promote acceptance of the form at an early stage in the academic journey.  Maybe this is what we need to do; catch them into the net before they hit the college campus. 

We all have our own comfort zones and we all have some preset formulas that encourage or discourage further venture beyond our borders.  Just as many in the plus-fifty age group are reluctant to try out computer technology, those who have been brought up in its environment are disdainful of organizing their work and their lives with paper and pencil. 

Seems to me we’re always at a crossroads.

While Steve Ersinghaus may not agree with me after his 900+ writing spaces in his Storyspace novel The Life of Geronimo Sandoval, I’ve discovered through my own Hypertextopia piece A Bottle of Beer that my editing methods have changed, become more thorough, even without a ruler poised over my knuckles.  It’s a very important difference.

Text boxes focus the writer–as well as the reader–on a small portion of text at a time.  No seven paragraphs on a page that invites skimming to the unrestrained writer.  One thought at a time, one absolutely vital piece of text that has to justify its taking up space in this cramped enclosure. 

It’s likely one of the most important things I’ll ever learn about the editing process–not that I hadn’t been taught to centralize editing in this way; just that it’s not only natural for a writer to miss his own errors and to feel heartache at every phrase deleted from his eloquent recital of passage, we tend to get lazy.  Or bored with our own stuff after a hundred readings. 

With hypertext, we may have read it a zillion times, but we’re concerned with taking out unnecessary words among maybe a hundred or two, and you’re not going to get the feeling that you did the job right if you’ve only taken out a couple.  You know there’s more excess in there; you read the same paragraph again and find more.  And more and more.  Then you feel you can move on to the next.  This doesn’t happen as readily or naturally in traditional format writing.

The bonus?  The eventual reader gets to focus on your clearly defined point.

Noting this on two out of three weblogs this a.m.:  The Tunxis Writers Festival this year lacks the grace and fun of any presentation on a new media level such as IF or hypertext.  Music, another form of story is present, why not film  and Storyspace? 

With any influence from this end at all, and if next year finds me still on campus, this shall be rectified.

No doubt about it, some of these things like Storyspace and Hypertextopia are just so user friendly that there is no interference with the forces that lead a writer into and through the telling of his story.  While I see the maneuvering within a software program as creative, it’s not something you want to be switching on and off as you follow a thread of idea. 

With the wrapping up of A Bottle of Beer, I sort of feel a cutting of the cord since it is on Jeremy’s website that he’s established and graciously offered to writers for their use.  I do know one thing, that since the site was so simple to get in and walk around in and do some heavy editing, I was there or logged in almost constantly the last month.  I’m sure his stats will drop just from my final severing of the editorial ties. 

Not sure what’s going to grab all my attention now that that piece is done (or fairly so), so what I’m going to do is try to work on one in the Storyspace environment, edit Paths–my first piece in Storyspace, and get some work done in a few other areas before I fall into my focus mode and lose myself again in story.