Hypercompendia

Noticed the ivy on the back patio this morning and thought of how it mimicked hypertext threads of narrative. Clockwise, from top left, the vines run parallel to each other, all streaming towards a goal. In the top right, there is the obvious split-off of story trail by this group into three different directions. Bottom right is the recalcitrant loner who, perhaps allergic to stone, prefers to employ the woody stems of the evergreen where he, and he alone, climbs up to the top and surveys the arena as if, by magical realism, he is the most normal of ivy. In the bottom left, we have a group that’s energetic and on the prowl. A story that by choice may climb, crawl, split steps in its advance towards a conclusion.

Then of course it dawned on me; ivy is not following hypertextual narrative process, but rather, hypertext is an example of a process that is naturally occurring in nature.

Okay, so maybe this is merely one of those “susan” moments.

Likely I should have left well enough alone, but decided to update a hypertext story that were two separate story files to ready the whole project for submission to some new literary venues. But oh, what a tangled web of lexias and links and re-coding.

I’d tweeted this:

Completely bogged down with bits of code that I’ve got to keep in my head to change in so many places. Intense. 37 minutes ago

And a surprise–an image in one of the notes in the #Tinderbox file–how’d I do that? 36 minutes ago

Weird stuff happening because I haven’t dealt with it in a while: #Tinderbox exported even the images to a file and the html pages are right less than a minute ago

…but it didn’t include the page link to the next lexia. Sorting it out like a detective. It’s fun! less than a minute ago

What I’d done was make a new copy of each of the two story files (complete, inc. the Tbox file, the images, the html pages and css and template) and rename them. Then I went into each Tinderbox file and noticed that in the textboxes where images were the only thing, the images showed up in the Tinderbox map. I imagine it’s because I’m using an older version of Tbox and could do that by dragging. I’d forgotten this; in the past year I believe I’ve only added the images later, to the html pages.

So in the Tbox file, I made whatever changes I wanted, also renaming this copy of the Tbox file and changing the export info to reflect that. Then I made up another new file folder with only the css and the html template in it, (working now with one of the story files only) and exported the new Tbox file to that folder. I did all this because there were changes made to the original html pages (such as the title page, the links back to the site, and, so I thought, the images) and was shocked to discover that the images were exported along with and included within the right pages. (Though size was off, but that’s not a problem.)

This is mostly for my own information, so that I can go back and find out what I did if I want to do something again. Like maybe that’s what I should do, go through my postings and see about those images…

Meanwhile, here’s a shot of each of the two files:

I’m always thrilled when literary hypertext is published, particularly by a magazine that isn’t driven by new media. What I mean is that by including hypertext pieces among their static text offerings, the magazine not only displays an open-minded attitude towards alternative presentation, it widens the potential audience  by exposing literary enthusiasts of traditional story and poetry to a different form.

Dorothee Lang, writer, photographer, artist, and editor of the Blue Print Review, teamed with Karyn Eisler, another multi-talented artist in many mediums, and Karyn’s brother Lawrence Eisler, an illustrator and designer in new media, for  a hypertext poem that’s visually exciting  and well planned out.

Published in the current issue of Wheelhouse, (R)Evolution is a journey that allows the reader to choose the narrative path. As Dorothee explains it,in comparing it to a piece called Poptagon which was published at Locus Novus:

Poptagon had a linear structure: every page leads to a defined next page.
(R)Evolution, in contrast, has “crossing”-pages that come with a choice, with options for the way to take. the curious thing is that there in fact is only 1 main “crossing”, and 2 sub-“crossings” – it’s really a simple hypertext form. yet when working on it, it took a sketch to be able to keep track of the structure, even though the whole thing consists of “only” 7 pages, plus title and ending pages.

The piece begins in a garden which the speaker compares to a shopping mall, where the flowers are selected by occasion, where she stands at the ready with shears prepared to clip blooms. This notion of choice is mimicked by the concept of hypertext where a choice can be given, a decision can be made, but an interaction with the piece is required of the reader.

The question of choices brings questions, the gardening bringing to mind the relationships with others. The metaphors in the piece extending flowers into words, manipulated again in the same manner as this hypertext piece.

The different pages of the poem are painted in visuals that are bold and contemporary. Here the text is designed into the image, enhancing and reinforcing the movement of the piece. Circular, forcing the reader to adopt an entirely new pattern of reading than the norm, sideways, mimicking stems or offshouts of the main stem–another shout-out to hypertext form. This piece takes readers out of the comfort zone into a more interesting and easy enough to negotiate concept.

A really beautiful collaborative effort by these talented folk that I thoroughly enjoyed reading, and I’m so pleased to spread the word.

I recently started editing some of the hypertext stories I’d written last summer as part of the 100 Days Project. One of the things that I’ve done is add in an image of the mapping of the story to help guide those who are new to hypertext reading and may become frustrated. It’s also sort of a learning tool, I suppose. And yes, I’m also driven by that evil gene within some writers and artists that wants the reader to read all of the words so lovingly placed there; wants him to appreciate the perfect symmetry of the design. So what?

Well in doing so, it occurred to me that it would be nice to allow the reader to select the point at which he wishes to return to the story, to see the path not taken and plunk himself down on it. With the old Storyspace reader, one may do so, follow the trail and go back–though I don’t believe the map image is shown. But we’re talking html on a website here. I have placed the map at the end of the stories (those I’ve gotten to so far), and while I’ve used a couple different ways of presenting it, the options at that point are usually to a) go back to the beginning of the piece, b) go back to the last page, or c) exit the piece. Wouldn’t it be great to offer d) a specific point within the plot?

Which brings me to, how would one do it?

Yes, I can link from an image to another lexia, but from points within the image? It seems that it should be easy enough with a map that shows boxes and words–just make a text link. (Though I work in Tinderbox now, rather than Storyspace, and so far, images aren’t a part of the plan.) But it doesn’t work that way; that’s not what shows up in html. It’s been done on the web of course, but I believe that’s done in Flash or some other manner. I’ve been told that much can be achieved by jQuery, HTML5, and CSS3. Guess it’s time to start checking that out, perhaps find a class somewhere so it doesn’t take me quite so long to learn it all.

Like everything else in my personal experience, the answer is out there and sought, once the question comes to mind.

This is really the first time I’ve used Tinderbox as an organizational tool, although I have created projects after-the-fact, such as putting the 100 Hypertexts from last year’s project into a file and used Tinderbox to write the hypertext stories themselves. The map:

I’ve posted previously on this project but at this point, it has all the stories completed–126 of them (additional stories for another summer challenge above the 100 Days). The major visual sorting of the stories was for theme of Self, Society, Relationships, and Universe; Universe covering not only apocalyptic and such, but anything that didn’t clearly go under one of the other three main lines. For this I used Adornments so that I have an instant visual of the various stories.

Another important sort was for story length, or word count and for this I used Agents. While they are all under 1000 words and would be considered flash fiction (with the exception of a couple poems), for submission purposes, I decided to separate them down a bit more into three categories of word count that I recognize as popular cut-offs with the publications. Therefore, I have Under 300, 300 to 500, and 500 and Over.  I can, of course get more detailed simply by creating another agent, but the breakdowns as they are have already cut back on the number of stories I’d have to go through by two-thirds. Note that while I have the word count (as determined by Pages) in the text box, the Agents are solely responsible for counting it up themselves. Of course, additional data as described below is included in the count but I’m aware of that so can adjust.

The third major category was genre. While I don’t really write genre fiction, there are some breakdowns here that will help: Narrative Poetry, Mainstream, Women’s Fiction, Speculative, Magical Realism, Social Statement, and Humor. More may come up–I haven’t quite finished labeling all the stories yet–and some fit into more than one genre category. The way I’ve used the Agents for this is to have them collect by the word/s “Mainstream” for example, but I’ve typed this information into the writing space of the story:

While this method of using agents may not work for all projects, it was fine for this one, where the additional data included in the box did not interfere with the information. I’ll need to go though at some point and learn the strings to put into the agent or probably more likely, how to code the individual space itself to be picked up by the Agent.

In the above image, you can see another of the selections I’ve made. I’ve marked the stories “Favorites” (if I liked ’em) to ensure that those will be the first to be submitted. There’s also a Submitted Agent, and a Published Agent to keep track of the comings and goings of the story submission process. This is where I’ll be focusing through the next couple of months.

The final Agent is one that I used as an example of drilling down for theme. In this case, I had the Agent search for stories that held the word “rain” because I knew there were a few and it was just a test. Publishers of magazines often have theme-based story lines that they are seeking, so this type of Agent will be a more precise segregation based on theme, or even a particular word.

While I haven’t completely edited all the stories, nor have I marked them all for most logical genre(s), I think that as soon as that effort is done, Tinderbox will make the rest of the submission process streamlined and simple.

There are only so many technology toys I can afford, most are luxuries these days. So when a friend mentioned I should read Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger, I added it to my Amazon book wish list. He mentioned that’s it’s available free on Kindle and since I don’t have a Kindle, said that a free download of “Kindle for Mac” on the Amazon site would enable me to read books on my Mac. Who knew? Somehow, when I know something’s sort of a luxury item I just don’t dig any deeper because I know I’ll just feel that much worse that I won’t allow myself to have it. (Man, would I love to have gotten a job!)

Meanwhile, I found book online at the Sam Houston State University at Texas. Here’s a view of the opening page:

Of course, I can make the print larger though it’s a decent size. It’s more the full page across that’s annoying. That too I can fix. But here’s the downloaded book via Kindle:

Obviously, the font, format, etc. have all been planned specifically for the reader’s normal enjoyable and preferred reading manner. To be fair, SHSU has done a great service by offering this (and much more) for free to the internet public, but the text is planned for reading, research, and literary review rather than pleasure.

I’m getting used to the Kindle for Mac format, and I do like it, mainly because I’m on the laptop for a large part of my waking day so this gives me a great opportunity to get back into reading the literature I just don’t seem to find time for lately. The image above is also a bit misleading: while the right-hand “notes and marks” would make this application extremely useful for organizing my notes for reviews (and keep me reading in longer spurts rather than dropping the book and running for the computer), it is inactive in the Kindle for Mac program. Why? I don’t know. I’m hoping they work on this. I’m sure it’s not the make or break decision to purchase the Kindle.

More on the story itself will be posted on Spinning.

What this Tinderbox map tells me is that I tend to write more relationship-based stories than other themes. What I don’t have yet (and it’s about time I did but I’m just so overwhelmed with writing right now) is have each story coded for genre, although I do have the easier, obvious ones like sci fi and magical realism done on the more recent entries. The Agents will be a huge help in September when it comes to start submitting some of these stories to literary journals. More on my participation in the project on Spinning.

Some minor changes from the last post, aside from the additional stories added–I’m up to fifty now. While I haven’t sorted them all out, I have agents set up for some of the genres, as well as stories set for publication and those I’ve started to send out.

Meanwhile, the setup that I have for the stories is to include an image with each. I usually end up taking a new photograph but can often find something from my files that I can use. If worst comes to worst, I depend on paper and pencil. Then comes the fun part, I make a dupe to cover my ass, then open up Photoshop and start to play. While no, I haven’t yet gotten completely over the filter gallery, I do know how to manipulate the effects to get an image that has the feel of the story.

Today I tried something new; layering two completely different images into one. Now that was fun and I’m sure it’ll come in handy in the future and it opens up all sorts of possibilities. Of course, the next ten stories are likely to be graced with these two-in-ones as I do tend to go overboard on new things.

Still haven’t quite figured out the Attributes to get them working with the Agents, but that’s my own fault because 1) I’m not a good follower of directions but tend to wander off and poke around on my own, and 2) because of 1) I’ve got something that works for me, though it’s not the right way of doing it and will undoubtedly not work for a project that isn’t set up the same way or for the same purpose.

What I’m attempting to do is write a string of code that will tell the agent that something is any of a few specific genres (Humor, Magical Realism, blah-blah-blah) and I’m not sure that the attribute can be assigned to certain notes only. This is what the Tinderbox manual is for, the Tinderbox Way book, and the Tinderbox Forum.

Update on the 100 Days Project tomorrow or in a couple days, as I’ve reached the fifty-stories mark.

It’s something we all get upset about now and then, or rather half of us do–the other half are the people who upset us. They’re the ones who send friend requests when we don’t even know them or anyone who does know them. This happens on the social networking sites, Facebook, My Space, and all the small groups that have formed on the web due to some kind of sense that folks who like the same things are just bound to like each other. On twitter, you get followers and I’ve learned that a lady’s name followed by four numerals is most likely a minor porn star.

This morning I got fed up. Within the space of an hour I had five “friend” requests and within minutes of confirming, I received requests for favors, i.e., “please go and vote for me here”, from four of them. No, I’m not going to vote for you blindly, and I don’t owe you that much time to figure out not only who you are, if you’re worthy, but what the whole contest’s about as well.

So I’m sort of sweeping up, cleaning house, dumping “friends.” Lord knows, the ones that I know personally as well as so many of the ones I’ve made online are precious, responsive, and supportive. That’s all I need.