Hypercompendia

You can read your own work a zillion times and yet when you’re looking for something in particular, breaking a story down into sequencing of plot points, you see it in an entirely different way.  In Paths, since I’m attempting to make a more interesting maze that remains logical and flowing from a beginning to an end, I’m looking for the areas in which I can allow wandering off into foreshadowing and backstory that will still come around to the main trail and go forward.

One of the best uses of Storyspace is in separating the plot points into the series of text boxes that build upon yet remain aloof from each other.  These mini stories will become loops that serve as the plot points.  In the end, these plot points not onlyy move the narrative forward, but enhance each other by alluding to a story that is never really put into words.

So yes, I’ve made yet a third version of Paths and am placing the blocks in different piles to build a new structure.

In building a new main pc, including a new widescreen monitor, I’m finding that the hardware can possibly influence the software, particularly Storyspace.

In looking at Paths in widescreen, wider and larger than the laptop allowed, I see that it is possible to rearrange things to follow a horizontal pattern rather than a vertical one.  Now this is in part determined by the hierarchy, but too, by the level at which the text boxes are arranged and linked in Map View, or setting it up in Chart View. 

The colors of Storyspace also look a bit different on the new screen.  Grey is taupe and the colored titles are more intense.  Okay, so maybe that means that I’ve got to adjust the graphic options on the monitor.

The best thing?  I don’t have to travel so far down the hall in the dark at 3:00 a.m. when an idea hits.

What Patterns has taught me, and I’m very glad now that I did read it, is that hypertext has options that straight linear narrative does not offer comfortably (I say this because there are ways of introducing backstory or sidetracks but it’s not as readily accomplished without risk of annoying the reader).  What this essay has done is recognized and acknowledged some of these techniques and named them.  This enables further study of these methods and the ability to look for them and discuss them when encountered in hypertext critique.

What it hasn’t done is show exactly how these feats were accomplished though it hints at the general reasons and purposes so that the loop or thread can be imagined according to the plots or sequences within the narrative.  This is good; I am left with the knowledge of purpose and can apply that to my own revamping of Paths without feeling like I am, well, following a specific Pattern.

Armed with this better understanding of hypertext opportunities, I can better imagine the paths and structure of this story and how it may be presented in its best form that not only contains the elements of story in conflict, arc, tension, etc., but that it contains the additional elements of foreshadowing, freedom, reinforcement, intrigue, etc. of hypertext.

This was interesting, and sobering in that even my personal approach to hypertext has already been termed:

Moulthrop terms hypertexts robotic when the logic of the hypertext, not reader choice, tends to dictate the course of a reading [58]. Robotic tangles like Mary-Kim Arnold’s "Lust" [4] combine complex dynamic structure, rich in broken cycles and other structural cues, with a dearth of interactive choice. This structure serves to entice the reader while frustrating the quest for release and resolution.  (Patterns, Bernstein)

Of course when you’re new to a medium that’s already a decade old, you’re not only going to find something’s been done before, you’re going to be grateful for it.  "Lust" is likely a planned use of maneuvers that works well.  My own sense of structure (as evidenced by my ‘proud’ display of Mapview and Treeview) reveals itself to be more of a dictatorship.

But I’m learning…

‘Sfunny how the pure intent of creativity often blinds us to the support we can so readily base a work upon that still may be completely fresh and new and of ourselves.

Not blinded, but purposefully blindfolded, I avoided influence from sources that have not only traveled the roads, but built them.  In rereading Mark Bernstein’s Patterns, this time without the stubborn resistance in place because well gee, I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what I needed to do to match what I wanted to do, I find that what has been done before is extremely useful.  Even in placing labels and names such as Contour, Counterpoint, Joyce’s Cycle, etc. on the maneuvering of the paths tells me not only what I’m doing, but that there are more ways to get there, based on the experience of anyone else who’s written in hypertext.  And, that there are more ways yet to be discovered.

Right now I think that what may get me where I’m going in Paths (and of course, the reader), is some use of Counterpoint and Mirror World.  I suspected for a while now that I need to abandon the strong separation of the stories into their separate pathways, allowing them to link briefly at certain points.  It’s easy enough to tell yourself that’s the way you want them to be read and the reader will be confused by the duplication of characters not only in time (that part’s easy–bellbottoms versus Dockers is obvious) but in choice (I won’t explain this one). 

But in forcing the reader to follow one story out to the next to the next, it’s not creating a woven whole.  In other words, I must establish a trail that brings them all together onto the narrative path.  And while this may seem to be a more restricted flow of information, I think I’ve figured a way to present the story with all characters speaking at once, and yet allowing the reader to choose who to listen to for a while if they desire to do so.

And, it opens the story up to so much more than it already is; I see a more dramatic and revealing narrative of the lives of these people from Point A to Point B…or C or D or E – None of the Above.

Last night I read through Mark Bernstein’s Patterns.  It’s almost like critical theory in that it recognizes certain elements of the writing (of hypertext) and acknowledges the reasoning and presentation of the narrative form.

But as I was afeared, it may have intimidated me in pursuing the best way to set up Paths.  It has certainly made me stop and think more seriously about what I’m doing here.  I understand the concepts of the various ways of laying the trails and the purpose in doing so.  What I may not be up for is what sounds like intricate planning to achieve the purpose without taking apart Paths Space by Space and renegotiating the stories to present them in bits and pieces rather than full trails in themselves.  I’m just not sure it’s possible at this point, on an after-the-fact basis.

So I’m sort of stalled until I either come up with a brilliant method of building this story, or move along to another if I lose confidence in the ability of this particular project to live up to the hypertext environment.

…hit the source. 

Getting the feeling that I really don’t have a proper plan in mind here, or don’t know how to accomplish what I thought would be so easily figured out.  So now I go back and read Mark Bernstein’s Hypertext Garden, The Limits of Structure.

The essay is a hypertext structure within itself and by offering purpose and reason for the concept of hypertext, it can and does offer some semblance of planning to keep in mind that will make it a more enjoyable journey for the reader. 

Still, I think I may read Patterns even as I struggle myself for a solution to the story in the way I’d like to relate it, and have others think about while reading it. 

In seeking the best options of maneuvering through a hypertext piece, and keeping with the original intent of this body of work (Paths) I’m learning to study the tools available in Storyspace to see not only what I can do, but if I can do what I want.  One thought process leads to another and another and gee, that’s just like hypertexting, isn’t it…

This thought came up: what if, seeing that there are four or five separate threads, that at a junction or crossover of two paths, the reader would be allowed to make an informed choice as to where he would like to wander?

In the hypertext scenario (from what I’ve experienced so far, and this idea may be implemented already in someone’s work of fiction; I know the concept is in action in non-fiction and websites), the reader usually only knows that clicking on a link will bring him some information relative to the text that offers the option.  What if the reader is given the additional information of where he is likely to go when he chooses to click on a link?  What harm in either numbering or color-coding a path and giving him the choice of following it further, knowing where he is and who he’s going to be exploring?  What is the proper motivation for reading further: merely a link to click on, or another self-contained view from which to discover the narrative?

This is just an idea, but I think that it may actually increase reader freedom even as a more structured form is built underneath by the writer.

Something to work on today.

Hallelujah!  We have Tree View!

I’ve been working a new version of Paths in Chart View and was disappointed to discover that it didn’t show me a side by side of the main paths but I’m trying to get used to working in something other than Map View and Chart or Outline seemed the best, particularly with the color coding on the (now 5) paths.  Out of curiousity I checked Tree View and was delighted to find something that may look silly here at this size, but may in fact be what I’m seeking in finding the most readable and enjoyable intersections of the stories.  May I present, Tree View:

In resorting Paths and in disconnecting the original links, another idea has surfaced and that is to create yet another path through the story, one that really does not follow itself out but rather acts as the core story from which the others emanate, based on character perception (and memory) and on possibility.

I may have either found a good solution to this project that will use the hypertext environment to its full advantage, or else I’m about to screw the project up royally.

Wish me luck.