Hypercompendia

Sometimes I think that not only do I walk a different road than most of the world, but I’m walking it backwards as well.

In poking around Eastgate’s site (just like car shopping, you browse the lot on Sundays when there are no salesmen around) I found the excellent resource of Hypertext Now.  I’m familiar with the title, likely heard it a few years ago, probably visited the site back when I hated reading hypertext and just never wandered onto it again, despite many visits to the sites that point to it.  Well now that I’m a writer in hypertext form, I’m all agog about it and every other word out of my mouth is hyper-this or that.

So here’s the official journey:  I’m introduced to the hypertext format, learn what I must to understand what’s going on in the lit class and not jeopardize my grade, meander around to make sure I don’t like it, touch back now and then on the average of once every six months, read a new hypertext novel, get excited, buy Storyspace, write my own story, read the Storyspace manual, rediscover the Hypertext Now site, learn a lot more about hypertext.

This is why I want to believe in reincarnation. 

An interesting thought this morning brought about by once again working on Paths:  Two of the stories are in third person, two are in first (that’s it for now, though I’m considering adding a chorus).  The stories may seem to conflict with each other not only in perspective and recall, but in fact based on choice.

So who is the more credible, the third person narrator, or the first person characters as they tell the story themselves?  Is there, not a standard, but an edge that one has over the other?  Are there stats on readers’ opinion?  Is it pov that’s a viable source for belief or the characters as they establish themselves? 

On the one hand, we can say that the narrator is relating a story from a neutral stand.  But how much have the characters let him in on, how far into their minds have they granted him access?  His own take on things may be wrong, having based his narrative on how he’s reading the characters.  And, he may lie.

In the first person, again, there is clearly perspective that colors story.  That, and a tendency and ability on the speaker’s part to put himself in the best possible light, make himself the worst of the victims, the hardiest of heroes, the most noble of thieves.  And, he may lie.

Interesting point to consider when writing in multiple pov, particularly in hypertext. 

Yeah sure, you find some new trick and you just have to play with it. 

The code in Storyspace ?(n) signals the program to follow a path at random with other paths in a cycle of reading.  Which means, if you’ve only read through that area once, you haven’t seen the others and ya can’t get there from here–unless you go back to the writing space that forked out into these random trails.

So I’ve used this code two or three, maybe four times in Paths.  I like it.  But then again, I know all the other paths because I wrote ’em so I’m not missing anything.  How do I feel about the readers missing them then?  How did I feel after reading Michael Joyce’s Afternoon, A Story thinking that I lost out on a good portion of story because I’m directionally dysfunctional?  I know I didn’t miss a Writing Space of Steve Ersinghaus’ The Life of Geronimo Sandoval because I had a system established, a pattern of read to the end of the space, check out the links (if any) in order, follow to a point, retrace my steps, etc. 

I guess it need all be left in the hands of the reader, once it’s out of the hands of the writer, to walk the straight and narrow, wander off the trail, take the shortcuts, ignore the signs.  Hypertext story may be as much prone to driving habits as to those of reading.

Been thinking some more about the end result of working on a hypertext piece–aside from the satisfaction of finishing a project and the smile of a told tale

Maybe out for less than a decade (Joyce’s Afternoon, A Story came out in 1999), not a huge selection available, the hypertext format of story (including poetry) has likely only been exposed in college classrooms or in the trade among tech-minded and forward-thinking academics.  So that’s a small number of people who are aware of the format.  Do they seek out hypertext novels as their reading selections after their student days end?  Do they introduce others to the concept, look forward to new publications, discuss them at their reading groups, or in the office or over coffee with friends?

I’m not sure at this point if hypertext story is mentioned much less studied at below a college level, and there are tons of college graduates who either missed out on the phenomenon of hypertext fiction merely because they occupied the wrong space in time, or more current students who sidetracked the particular literature classes that presented Joyce or Jackson’s work.  Those of a certain age or education level will likely never realize what’s available then.

This is probably the best time for hypertext work, with the publishing business undergoing some major tremors and the advent of e-books, e-zines, and handheld readers.  Hypertext fiction (and non-fiction and poetry too) fits right into this era of changing direction.

So my question is this, in response to the "I hate reading a lot of text on a screen," and despite the efforts by Sony and others to enable a "book" to be held in hand, what is necessary to do to create the excitement for hypertext that it rightly deserves?

Just a note to myself here (and thank God I’m able to do that since the laptop refused to light up its screen for me today until I  said some secret words and made obscene promises):  Looking for the ability to go from one Writing Space to a series of four in another spot, but needing to return back to where I was after reading the series.

I think there’s a way to do it, and there’s no reason to bring a reader into this other area except for those four spaces.  Got to look this one up.

Well I should’ve called it a night and moved on to something new because sometimes you can overtweak.

Story #4 in MapView now looks like a broken string of tangled Christmas lights and I’ve got to check each link/bulb to see why the whole string won’t light.  That, as we all know, is one of the PITA jobs of the holiday.  Maybe I’ll just stuff it back in the box and play with something else.

I’m done.  No, I’m not.  I’m done.  No, I’m not.  I’ve never been so unsure. 

Going through the architecture of this piece, brick by brick, I find a question, a gap in the mortar so to speak:  Who is Andrew?  Why’d Anne marry him–if, in fact, she did? Why back to Boston?  Why not hang out with the seagulls and collect shells on the beach for a while?  Why not make peach wine?

So a thread and a loop.  And another piece of the story fits together.  Even as I study the map view of the narrative, I try to relate to the title boxes.  Here’s where I might have been more astute in matching the ideas of the stories through the title of each Writing Space.  Planning for the reader instead of suiting my own thoughts as a writer (I’ll kneel before Barthes tonight to make restitution).

The titles I’d placed were to jog my mind as to where they played in whose story.  They were my own little made-up ‘spark’ words to be easily recognizable…by me.  In the frameshop, I do this regularly.  Forget what Matisse or Dali named his piece, they’re something else entirely to me.  And God help me if ever the proud grandmother reads upside-down on my workbook "ugly child with monkey or younger brother."

But it’s really too late (no it isn’t, I’m just lazy) to change titles now because while the main links are automatically corrected, I don’t think the text links and the guard fields are and that’d be a holy mess to unravel.  In Map View anyway; it’d likely be an easier task in Outline or Chart.  Gotta decide if the whole piece is worth it or if it’s time to move on soon.

Wanted to give this a separate post because I think it’s one of the important things I’ve learned in working on the project.  In the post below, I stated, "In this, my first experience with Storyspace, I had an advantage of a narrative that was purposely set up in anticipation of a hypertext format."

Well hah! to that. While I’ve left many of the original links between the stories in the hypertext version, I can sense that while I’ve taken many of them out, many more need to go.  Basically, in writing Paths for preparation of real (versus pseudo) hypertext, I fell into the simplistic pattern of word sparking.  That’s my own term for a case of linking morning in Story #1 to morning in Story #4 and Story #3, and back again, and toes to toes, etc. 

Well I knew that Anne’s cigarette toes had no relationship to Joyce’s toes. But what I did, and I think it was partly due to a necessity of bringing some recognizable ‘word link’ into a world of paper pages that included a sea of words around toes, was latch onto that idea as a tie-in.  The stories all do relate; the characters all recalling a certain time common to all of them, and yet I had to depend on words like hair and shower and plate and corn to tie them together for the reader.  Frankly, I now look at the four stories and without the vast changes I’ve done to them via hypertext, I think they’d be better off being read #1, #2, #3, #4, bam-bam-bam, just like that, without going from toe to toe.

What this tells me in Storyspace, is that I really need to look at every one of the original links between the stories to prove them.  To make sure they create the flow of thought that hypertext allows.  To ensure they aren’t even more obviously shown up in the hypertext format as counterfeit.

I’ll end this with another example of prep work in anticipation of the real thing.  Dancing With the Stars–I love dancing, I love watching them, I don’t care what you think–Sabrina was a hip-hop dancer and it was argued that she had an unfair advantage over the other contestants who really had no dance experience.  Sabrina did extremely well.  What helped her was her dancer’s mindset and discipline.  What hurt her?  She ended up with a bit of hip-hop in her waltz. 

Unlearning is sometimes harder than learning anew. But it was a poor man’s start toward the hypertext fiction format, and if nothing else, were the first steps towards an exciting endeavor in writing.

Once again I think I’m almost done with Paths.  Of course I can take it further, but I believe that everything that needs to be there, is there. 

In this, my first experience with Storyspace, I had an advantage of a narrative that was purposely set up in anticipation of a hypertext format.  The disadvantage is that I’d never realized the options that the format gives the writer to expand and branch into other areas that proved the original 5000 words to be a seminal work and in no way measuring up to its potential.

Aside from change of writing style (it has been a couple of years since the stories were formulated) and voice that constantly grows with the writer, there is a depth that the story didn’t even stick a toe into until I started working with the tool that provided a more realistic image of the hypertext view.  I’ve been working exclusively with the Map View (problems with conversion into Chart or Outline because of the particular setup of this project were covered in earlier posts) and personally, I love the big picture it gives me of the story development.  Several things become clear.

The way I have it set up, I can immediately see the original story line (of each individual story) and recognize all the loop-de-loops as the new writing.  The new writing produced over the last three weeks is twice the amount of the original form (This has to say something for the Muse-abilities of Storyspace).  What worries me a bit is that even with rewriting some of that original text, the voice difference between Susan of Two Years Ago and Susan at Sixty is a bigger problem of discombobulation than I myself will be able to pick up on.   Storyspace does assist tremendously in that I can see at a glance exactly where the old line runs.  What the old has effectively served as is an outline (something I never ever did in writing, prepare an outline). 

The stories have grown so far beyond the boundaries of their birth as text form, restricted to the cradle of the numbered page, that I’m amazed at how much I now feel I didn’t know was happening.  Now I’ve gone back and rewritten short stories and "padded" them–with good information that progressed the story, but not in the same way that the hypertext format allows.  Heck, you can be a kid and question every Writing Space and then as the adult, have to supply an answer, therefore doubling your exposition of story.  This isn’t the way to do it though, at least as intent. Rather it’s a case of adding only something that you find interesting to add.

Still, I believe I’m almost done.

So it’s the writers’ dilemma:  Are five too many?  Are three enough?  (a ’70s Sunsweet Prunes commercial) When do the boxes stop stacking up, tumbling over and breaking open to reveal more?

It should stop when the story has been told, but with a format such as this with Storyspace, there’s really a lot more opportunity to wander, add, tweak, offer examples, reveal by episode.  But there must be more (cripes, I just looked up to watch a few seconds of TV and went looking for "Save" — a Storyspace habit that’s spilling over to other areas of my life evidently) As I said, there must be more of an indication when enough is enough. 

I think my characters have purpose, made decisions, have rounded themselves out to be believable, likeable in their vulnerabilities, deserving of a reader’s interest.  There are trickier things to learn in Storyspace, but I don’t necessarily feel that I need take advantage of every program option unless it makes the story sing more sweetly.

Maybe I just need a day away from it.  I’m near to 225 Writing Spaces now, but I really need to know that the  only way Storyspace is driving the story is by offering opportunities, not by simply providing a zillion boxes to fill and stack up.  Yes, it’s that much fun.