Hypercompendia

Done primarily as backup, a version of A Bottle of Beer has been put into Storyspace for safekeeping.  I do have a word document on it as well, as Jeremy at Hypertextopia has made it easy to grab off the internet.

Here’s the map:

The primary difference is that the “Shards” need to be linked back to the “Fragment” from which they are text-linked since they open up as a separate window in Storyspace, rather than as a text window alongside the main window as in Hyptextopia.  There is a possibility of doing this in SSP. but that would mean that all text windows would need to be kept open.

I was able to follow the color coding of the different threads of disconnected shards (themes) that I’ve used in BoB, as shown on the map above and on the text window below, which includes several text links:

The ‘shard’ windows have colored text to match the theme, as was done in Hypertextopia, though I may need to make the typeface larger to show up more clearly:

Finally signed up for this and am reading Extreme Conditions by Juan B. Gutierrez. Literatronica offers a different style of hypertext, wherein the reader follows by making defined choices page by page. He is offered three separate paths at the end of each page of story, and here there is a brief description of where that trail may lead.  This is not the case with hypertext normally where the specific text link may give a hint as to what the link will be relating to, but it is not always the case.  It’s sort of blind guessing on the part of the reader until he discovers a pattern or style particular to the author and to the piece.

More on this in a bit; I’m only 6% into the story right now.  The good thing with the signup is that you can signout and return to the spot in the narrative where you left off when you sign back in. 

Something’s still not right with The Hanging though it has been copied and renamed (to preserve the original after all that work!) to be reorganized into a thought of not the characters as much as the house that is the protagonist in the story.  Unfortunately, I still need to check Mark’s Eastgate site to insure that this idea has not already been produced in hypertext form.  I know, I know; a fresh approach would be just fine and I do see that, but I’m the type that doesn’t comprehend why any writer would really develop story based on another writer’s world (take heart, J.K.!) and look upon Originality as God (maybe influenced by the Garden and the whole Catholic original sin thing). 

At any rate, the concept still comes back to me–now that I’m performing hypertext maneuvers–about Alzheimers and its only benefit, that of suiting perfectly the Storyspace form.  Paths was like that, needing hypertext to tell it.  The idea of a single mind that lives in different times outside of reality intrigues me.  I’ve had the experience with my mother and it’s as fascinating as it is heartbreaking an affliction.  This whole idea goes well with my own frame of mind right now in exploring other genre.  For there is no dark blacker than the human mind caught up in mental illness.

What had temporarily stopped me (this time!) was a fellow student’s indication that she was planning a workshop story on Alzheimers and her experience with her grandmother’s unfortunate battle with the disease.  The very idea that someone else came up with the idea was like a barrier to me and it’s taken a few months to talk myself into believing that I wasn’t stealing the idea even though I hadn’t mentioned it before.  So there you go; Catholicism raises once again its demanding head.

So even as this post comes off as just one more "I’m gonna…" for every hypertext I’ve started there are at least ten straightlaced (ha!) stories sleeping on the hard drive of one or the other of five machines.  Bear with me; one is going to fly!

In the process of preparing an event covering the changes required in thinking as a writer of hypertext, there’s a barrier that I somehow keep brushing up against: a lot of people hate hypertext.

You, faithful readers, gasp and clutch your chest as if I’ve uttered some impossible theory of evolution such as man’s descent from elephants instead of apes. (Though think about it; don’t you know someone who is hairier than you’d like to think about with canines reminiscent of Nosferatu?)

But there it is, the facts of life, the bias of the masses for traditional book-form narrative and against the somewhat mazelike hedge of story in a map. (Though think about this too; there are outlines made for traditional novel-writing too and I just saw one the other day at a speaker’s slideshow presentation at the Tunxis Writers Festival that made me bounce up and down to keep from shouting, "Have you never heard of Tinderbox?")

So concurrent with my study I’ll be working on this prejudice problem we "cool" folk like to forget (or maybe feel a touch of elitist pride in taking) is there against the format of our stories.  It’s all well and good to cluster in groups discussing the latest hypertext offering and yet, unless you don’t have friends within your circle who’ve never read Joyce’s Afternoon, it’s a hard sell even to your very closest literary comrades.  Even to those, I find, who may have been exposed to such in campuses across the nation but will never ever think of ordering the latest greatest output in hypertext again.

This may get mean and dirty, but I intend to dig.

Some of the Google searches to get to my place are just too funny; often pornographic and just plain dumb.  I check sometimes and something catches my eye that makes me go back to the Google page and see exactly what these searchers are seeking.  "Pineapple and Jello" is still one of my biggest draws (fresh pineapple contains an enzyme which inhibits the setting process) so loads of folks are curious about that little warning on the Jello box, but hey, I’m likely one of the very few rebellious gelatin makers who tried it and ended up drinking the stuff.

But there’s another use for weblogs and Google searches that allow the sharing of knowledge:  advertising.

This one is an example:

where can i find a box to write text in and it has a space for a title

Hypercompendia was among the list of possibilities, and I’ll betcha that from whatever post they landed on, they followed a link within it to Storyspace or maybe Hypertextopia or Steve Ersinghaus‘ weblog. What better way to answer the question than to put hypertext in action by the very process of the query?

First love dies hard; comes back in spirit.  Edgar laughs in glee:

The story that wouldn’t make itself known beyond the details of the characters and a death has taken a turn that’s not exactly sci fi but will be leaning towards magical realism bordering on fantasy.  I had an itch to try my hand at a completely new genre but just don’t get the urge to create mythical creatures or alien anime.  The thrust that The Hanging lacked for me–and this, quite far into the narrative–may be the very opening for a more mystical and philosophical romp through a metaphor of mankind.

Here’s a new beginning:

And here’s the building blocks that need to be taken apart and reassembled into a different pattern of ideas, many of which will be discarded in the new schematic as it develops itself:

There is a tightrope that lays itself out in the story and there is a new form of structure that wants to be fragile steel.

Interesting principle brought up by one of the speakers yesterday at the Festival. Sandi Shelton, author of several fiction and non-fiction books and articles mentioned that she felt the internet was often an enemy of the writer as we spend precious minutes surfing the web or checking email when we drift from the business of writing.

True to a certain degree, yet I feel obliged to stand up in defense of internet connection as its benefits may well balance out or even tip the scales in its favor as a boon to writers.

For one thing, research is more quickly done and readily available: a click away instead of notes scribbled for a trip to the library when you get a chance to go.  For me, the function of the weblogs–all three of them–keep me writing when I might otherwise be playing mah-jong or some such time-consumer as I hit a stumbling block of white space in the narrative.  I’ll mention too the wonder of the strictly online Hypertextopia which was the only way A Bottle of Beer even would have been created.

Less obvious are the resources other than clear research that the internet provides.  Grammar and language tools, fine literature available to get one in the mood, images and stories that go on every single day to create inspiration.

I’d say, it’s all in how you use the web to your advantage as a writer that makes the difference.  That and a heavy sense of guilt when you’ve clicked too far away from a justifiable purpose.

I know, the title sounds like something really deep and interesting and the concept itself is going to be a letdown for most of you who read this, but I couldn’t think of a better way to say it.

The premise is much more simple:  As I sit here in the frameshop with the door open to the spring breath of sweetly greening buds and leaves I go to check the mail, hit "Mail" to get to the Mac Mail app, even as I hear the engine of the mailtruck stopping at the neighbor’s, revving up to stop and idle again at our own mailbox directly across the street, I hear the ‘ding’ that tells me I have email.  Simultaneously, the second clank of the mailbox that is mine that tells me I have physical mail there too.

Neat world we live in these days, no?

Even as I wrap up a creative writing course with one new hypertext and two half-decent unhypertexted stories under my belt, I return again to this Storyspace work I’d started on a couple months ago and somehow drifted far away from.

During the Tunxis Writers Festival yesterday I hooked up to the internet and played a bit and then found myself checking out the Storyspace work I have here on the laptop.  I read The Hanging as if I’d never seen it before–as if I hadn’t been the one who wrote it.  There’s a story here I like.  Though the characters never grabbed me completely as did Yolanda in A Bottle of Beer, I think I have found some feeling for them, something behind their sullen unwillingness to divulge their story quite as easily as did Yolanda.  But then, Yolanda only had an hour or so to live.