Hypercompendia

I’m happier now with the way I have the structure of Paths set up, though it does appear to follow a more obvious one-track line that I’ve drawn through the stories to connect the various cars into a train.

There are spaces though that take the reader off into other directions for a while, though none that carry them away from the narrative.  I’m okay with this.  I’ve allowed the curious reader to explore all the cubbyholes of the characters’ lives.  The less assured reader may still enjoy a narrative simply following space to space; he will never, however, have the full depth of character and thus, story.

But I’m not finished yet.  There are many places where I want to loop around or add something that will enhance what has already been written down. 

Now I’m back to the fun part.

Had a moment of panic this morning. Opened up the Paths file I’ve been working with and clicked on a Writing Space…

No text!  There was nothing in any of the writing spaces!

Now this wouldn’t be a big problem except that yesterday was a busy day in the shop and I had gotten this big idea about changing some of the structure and had done some of it without saving it to the two other files since I wasn’t sure about it.  And, I’d made some other important changes.

Hard work counts.  Laziness or lackadaisical effort counts even more towards destruction.

I quickly checked the Preferences and Document boxes to see if I’d made any changes there such as "Don’t show the text–let me guess along with the reader" but I didn’t see any immediate change between this file and the others.  For all I know, I might have marked both background and text as "white". 

More important was to try and fix this copy without upsetting the others.  Here’s what I did:  Deleted the nupatest.sni file (knowing that that’s where the author peculiarities are filed {oh to be able to delete author peculiarities so easily!}) figuring that I could always retrieve it out of the recycle bin if the program didn’t work, or try to copy the ones from the other two files if necessary.  However, I started the program up without it and it works jes’ fine.  Likely has created a new .sni file.  Hmmm.  It’d be interesting to see if you can make changes to the document as far as selection of font, etc., delete the .sni, close the program, reopen it to all new text, etc.

But I’m not about to try it.

Figured it was time for a new mapview, though it’s hard to tell from this, reduced down to 25% and reduced again via the website limitations.  Not all Children (spaces) are visible since they’re not necessary to see when I’m working on the project.  Note too that I’ve decided not to rework the stories out of their ‘columns’ since there aren’t that many links between them and the majority of the links are offshoots (in language, maybe ‘offshouts’?) within the stories themselves.

Got a lot done on Paths today and finally reached the ending.  There’s still lots to do on it though.  First, to check all the links–sent it off and already found one that bypassed a small spot of a story.  There are also some hangers left from Child Spaces that still connect to the wrong Writing Spaces by going to the next one in the story line, or to another when that’s become a no-no.

Some happy surprises: in working in Map View and keeping in mind that the bits of each story should flow into another (or as I’ve since added, into a "core" narrative) it’s nice to come across spaces that are linked not only by the natural rhythm and topic, but to find a word that matches in each without having planned it.

But there’s plenty more to do and I’m hoping to wrap this project up over the holidays so that new ones can be started. 

I’ll also have to figure out what to do with the piece once it’s done.  If possible, I can maybe link to it from here and post it somehow online.

I’ve come to a point in Paths where I’m at what was the ending of each story.  This brings me to a dilemma–who gets the last word?

While there’s more to do on this whole piece if I want to take it further–plus there are some roundabout loops I’d like to make and I also have to check out the overall linkage if somebody takes a wrong path–this ending creates a whole new drift to the narrative.  Where shall I leave the reader?  Two of the tales seem irresolute and therefore they will be the first to ‘end.’  Oddly enough, the last two are what I’d call parallel in time but for a choice.  Each also has already two different endings–depending upon which time you go through (though I believe this will have to be changed and I’ll need to corral the reader into going back and double-dipping to catch both). 

Could be a fun problem to work out.

Just the idea of someone reading Paths got me going again in a new burst of energy and some semblance of reorganization to finish at least the stories as they stand, adding the core narrative and weaving all five together with knots.  Just about done.

Then I can move back into a more fun part for a while, testing, changing, adding wandering about into wherever it leads me.

Then it’ll be done.

I’m curious if there has been data accumulated that indicates which is the most likely reader response in clicking on hypertext link in a narrative.  Because of the way Paths was born, as quadruplets let’s say, there is some linearity to the stories, as well as wonderful parallels which is where the hypertext comes in.  However, in making the changes to allow for a less linear track I’ve made the Writing Space Click to bring the reader to a more wandering path, but left a Text Link Click to allow him to follow a particular story line through.  Now he doesn’t have to follow that all the way through, he can Writing Space Click somewhere further down and that’ll shove him over onto another thread, but he can never get back to cover ground that’s been missed in the process.

This is likely why Jackson’s Patchwork Girl is comprised of all text links only; if a writing space has only one way to go, the entire text of that space is a link. 

It looks to me like I’m screwing this story up royally.  Otherwise, I think the way to fix it is to disallow those four linear paths completely, but make other paths more interesting to follow.  It’s a holy mess, it is.  Maybe if I stop myself from seeing the linearity–after all, each story may conclude within an hour or a day, but there is considerable flashback and wondering within that time period that negates the necessity of linearity–maybe then I can myself hop around within each story to further destroy any notion of time.

Knowing what the majority of hypertext readers do as habit would help me in this one.  For the record, I’m a clicker of all text links before I move into the next Writing Space.  Unless it appears that I’m going too far astray, in which case I retrace my steps to where I hung a left.

Got the thought of checking out other hypertext fiction written in the Storyspace program and was surprised to find that Shelly Jackson’s Patchwork Girl is linked Text to Text, with little Writing Space to Writing Space connections.  Another unusual thing is that for each link, the guard field is filled in with "Textlink."  This is not mentioned in the manual, and I’m not sure what purpose is serves though I suspect that it may have been an option in an earlier version of Storyspace perhaps.

I’m going to see if I can get some information on Michael Joyce’s Afternoon, A Story as well as reread Mark Bernstein’s essay that I’ve previously mentioned here since it had many examples of the link and map styles used.

While no one is going to follow someone else’s strategy–nor could they–it’s helpful to realize the planning behind the narrative.

I believe it was Sally, one of the English professors and a friend from whom I first heard the term "weaving."  It meant tying together various strands of story into a braided whole. 

For the past month I’ve been reworking this story (Paths) to fit more into the hypertext environment by taking advantage of the potential it offers.  Every now and then an image would come to me of a macrame’d wall hanging, something I haven’t done in decades yet the idea of making patterns from separated strands of rope is exactly what I seem to be doing now in making this project work.  The Writing Spaces of Storyspace are like the knots where intersecting strands meet and change direction.

It’s been tedious reworking the narrative and every now and then I want to trash it and start something new.  I find myself reading the same thing over and over and over again as I look for a design in plot or even just in language.  The characters are all at a point where reflection brings wistful wondering.  All see the same things differently and made their choices based on that.  Mistakes are made, facts are mistaken.  Normal life cycles and normal concern as the wheel turns.  Like looking down from the highest point of the ferris wheel.

Did a lot of work on the Paths project last night (closed the shop early because of the snow storm–even though the shop is the other side of the driveway!).  Something still isn’t working right.

Snipping all the past connections among the stories helped me see the narrative as a whole, and since I’m familiar enough with the story by now (Cheesh–I should be!) I can see just from the title boxes and a bit of text (I have the entire story in Map View at 75%, with most children out of sight [as good children should be when adults are concentrating]) so there still are the visual connections that can rather easily be recognized as pattern. I’ve even renamed some of the new Writing Spaces from Narrative 1, 2, etc. to Taste, Touch, Scent. However…

Okay, so I screwed up somewhere and made a loop that can either a) drop a lot out of the story by its bypassing nature or b) act as a Mobius strip.

Personally, I kind of like the latter.