Hypercompendia

Truly becoming a hypertext experience different than what happened in Paths in that i’ve no idea where this is going even as I learn (yes, I know, I’m actually making it up) more about Scott and Bonnie and how this all came to be.  In Paths, I had a basic outline of one incident where the three major characters came together and how that affected them years later.  What I did with that basic skeleton in Storyspace was move things around timewise, interfering with any form of linearity that necessarily separated them into four stories instead of a single coexistence and cohesive form.  And expanded each idea into all areas without it becoming a full blown novel.

What’s happening here is similar in only that there is a core of ‘present’ that can only exist become of its byproducts of ‘past’. Once again, I’m not necessarily allowing for various endings or changes to the basic story, just the way the narrative structure allows the story to be told differently–in other words, leaving the reader with the ability of making up and changing his own mind based on what he will read and in what order it is read.

Obviously, I as writer haven’t tied those trails together yet, as you can see from the current Mapview of The Hanging and how it is developing all by itself into an octopus of story.

I do believe that Storyspace has brought me personally to a new realm of writing because of its capabilities that allow for not merely unlinearlike (!) storytelling, but breaking away from the necessity for linear thinking and planning.  I go here, I go there; in the middle of breakfast I realize things that have happened in the past of the characters that appear like memory jogs to me and I can easily drop them someplace on the SSP map and know that they’ve been saved.  And, know this: They will be relevant because they are a part of the character.  Maybe the specific episode needn’t be in the final story, but they are indeed a part of the makeup of the character.  Just like Sister Cyrene giving me a D in art in 1st grade has made a mark on me more permanent than my coloring outside of lines.

So this is how it works:  A bit of info comes to mind that I remember about Scott (I think that’s going to be his name) and this time, I found a place for it:

Growing tentacles, each one uncoiling out to reach its farthest point yet firmly anchored at a common point of brain and heart.  Tiny suction cups ground the threads and offer a cohesive and adhesive yet extremely flexible hold on story.

It is strange for me to see the sprawl of story–on my own work anyway.  It’s not that I have ever planned out narrative, traditional text or hypervised, but I do tend to keep things organized, in straight lines or balanced left side/right size in an unnatural sense of fairness.  Odd though that this new freedom excites me.

Don’t know if this is just a trait of certain writers or one of the ways Storyspace encourages outgrowth, but I find myself randomly following trails out that catch and hold my interest in the writing.  I want to find out what’s going on in this one particular area of Bonnie’s life on this one day that changed living to dead for her.  And it’s only one outshoot of a Writing Space that was focused on his (whose? I didn’t name the husband yet I don’t think) reflection of the moment when he found her dangling from the chandelier.

I like this way of writing. I’m hopscotching (Cortazar?) all over the place as I make wider concentric loops around the core.

Oooo-oooo–oooo! That what be a wild hypertext structure–concentric rings, like Saturn or a pond ripple, where each layer is one of time and there are hidden portals that break through the barriers.

Really gotta gear myself up for a sci fi or maybe as discussed in CW class, porn.  Porn pays.

Anyway, here’s where I’m heading at the moment:

…adventure or make an ending happy or sad depending upon reader clicking habits. Yes, hypertext can be this–to a certain degree only, since the choice is not based on a known, and not even a guess, but rather an inclination. The inclination is again up to many things, only one of which is the reader’s influence, i.e., tending to stick to the basic links or going off on the very first text link you may hit. But it has nothing really to do with the story and how the reader wants it to unfold, at least not the story–though perhaps the style.

The reader will also be influenced gradually by the author’s style; he will come to see a trend that is the writer’s own tendencies revealed in how he plans his links. Do the text links promise excitement? Does he tend to bring you around in a more exciting/interesting/mysterious/safe manner via text or basic link?

But it still comes down to this: a reader of hypertext does not choose to make a story go in a known direction. It is still up to the writer to allow the paths, cut the trails, design a maze, and then let the reader loose in it.

Developed a few new trails before class last night and checked them out this morning to see if they were going anywhere.  Since they inspired a few new ‘boxes’ I assume that they were indeed part of the story I hadn’t recognized before.

Mostly what’s happening with this story is the developing background of what led to the opening scene of Bonnie’s wake.  I’ve done this once before with story, where my main character was introduced in the second paragraph as he was floating face down and headed out to sea.

I suppose that’s another way of a story happening by asking the vital question of Why? Then, Oh my God, what happened? An online writing group once critiqued this and a vast majority said that it didn’t work–you’re not supposed to have the climax at the beginning. Well they certainly took their classes and how-to books seriously.

I’ve always secretly tried to live my life doing things you’re “not supposed to .”  Now I do so quite boldly and with flippant confidence.

Anyway, here’s the map, updated for the first time in almost a week:

Sometimes all it takes is a change of surroundings, a different environment, one that is in keeping with the mood of writing.

A stranger in a strange place, I sat in the new-to-me campus of a very different Tunxis Community College, awaiting the beginning of another Creative Writing class.  Upstairs–unique because there never was an upstairs here, aside from the business office and the Fisher Building where we held our writers’ meetings and events–downstairs.   But the Fisher Building has neither now, flattened and removed to make room for the new. 

Went early to check out the parking situation–always a problem there and a bigger one now–and to return some hypertext CDs to the new library.  Wandered around trying to find a way into the new building, caught like a wild animal in a net fencing that surrounded the courtyard with no way to get through, the library door locking behind me when I’d left it.  Found my way in, requested a map and followed it upstairs and to what was numbered as the classroom.  A cop sat inside; I saw him through the slit of window in the door.  I didn’t go in but sat in one of the cushioned lounge chairs that seem to be everywhere, and pulled out the Mac.

Damn, no wi fi, no connection, though I sat just above the Cyber Cafe.  So I struck into Storyspace, brought up The Hanging, and wrote a few blocks, a couple new threads, a plan.

Felt damn good.

Pursuant to my prior post on ‘diagramming a story’, I did indeed put Jumper Down by Don Shea (Flash Fiction Forward) into the Storyspace workspace.  It of course, came out as a straight line of linked boxes.  One thing I was able to accomplish was to describe and label the critical parts of exposition, setting, foreshadowing, conflict, climax and afterglow or resolution. 

What I had thought I might have been able to accomplish was to take out the backstory by linking it out as ‘not vital’ to the action of the story, or its linearity.  I’m not so sure I can do this. 

It may be that the story is so brief–and yet, that shouldn’t have anything to do with it.  While I can do the breakdown of parts or plot points, there may be no real way of making a traditional linear narrative fit comfortably into a hypertext world.

More work to be done on this before I come to a conclusion.

Maybe the fact of taking a writing class this semester has me thinking along these lines…

What about using the structural mapping capabilities of Storyspace to show plot, backstory, conflict, dramatic arc of story, etc. in learning fiction writing?  Mayn’t it be a nice graphic image of the elements and plot to enhance the dry rhetoric of lecture?

I’m thinking along the lines of diagramming, much as you would a sentence in grammar. 

May just try this on one of the Flash Fiction stories since they’re usually short enough to maybe include the whole thing into a Storyspace file.

I’ve been so taken up with maneuvering in Mac that I’ve done little on the creative side lately.  That’s about to change now that I have the Adobe CS3 installed and I can draw from the Dell’s Photoshop image file and from whatever I’d played with in Macromedia Flash in the Windows format.

Have already grabbed the four black and white images for Paths that didn’t make the transfer to the Mac version of Storyspace, though that’s no big deal to replace.  Everything else transferred so beautifully that replacing a few pictures or maybe even creating some new ones shouldn’t take much.  I’m more excited about the ability of adding audio and now graphics, maybe even video, to some of the new pieces I’m working on in Storyspace.

There’s the fun part, learning what can be done in the storyworld as I’m creating the story itself.