Hypercompendia

Because, I guess, I just don’t trust enough.  Because my time has built on losses and their learning…

I’m reconstructing A Bottle of Beer into Storyspace.  To CYA in case of internet obliteration.

The format can work, though not as well as in Hypertextopia for this particular purpose; needing to go back into the story from threads that were written to be that gradual insight appearing out of nowhere–called out by a click.  The technical affects the purpose of the style; much the same as using sentence structure, punctuation.

Squeezing an elephant into a Chinese take-out carton; dropping a ring into the ocean.

Going back to this, the latest of the Storyspace projects, I see something very interesting.  It was obviously written in a few moments of creative fluidity that was open to the medium, using it in its purpose of choice.

Off the opening text box, I have two boxes.  One appears to follow a flight of fancy, the other provides a sense of realism.  Each of those branch off into three spaces.  The more surreal seems to ask the traveler–the natural term it seems for this area of story–to develop a psychological insight into life beyond what is known. 

The best part of all this is that since I’ve been away from the story, and have written others in between, it is a surprise to me and I am open completely to all the possibilities it appears to offer.

Just started a story with an idea, a man walking in the night through the woods.  Taking pause as that scene settles, I think about other things, yet never too far away that I cannot hear him if he calls. 

What I’m thinking about is this: What set the form of story?

Working and switching among straight text, hypertext in Storyspace and hypertext in Hypertextopia, it surprises me that I already know this story is meant for traditional linear telling.  It has no need for the roundabouts or playing with time of Storyspace mapping.  It does not call for the Shards of clarity from Hypertextopia.  At least not at this point. The man is alone, the night is rumbling. 

Is the situation what settles the form?  What calls out the innuendos and acuteness of side trails?  It certainly can’t be the loneness of the character, as in A Bottle of Beer, Yolanda sits alone on her porch awaiting a man running down the road towards her throughout the story.  Ah, but she is surrounded by ghosts; from her past, from human nature, and from instinct. There is a natural pattern that develops that is asking these ghosts to drift through the story.  The intricacy of Storyspace’s trails would be overkill; we don’t want the reader to wander away from the immediacy of Yolanda’s last hour–which is the whole of the story.  Hypertextopia is then perfect for that particular piece.  Paths was begging for parallel paths (uh, hence, it’s title) and needed the coexistence of threads that separated yet tied lives together.  Neither story could likely have been told in a different form with any degree of accuracy–of sense of exactly how it happened.

So it is not the singleness of character, the singleness of purpose–and perhaps if the focus of this man’s story was different it would indeed call out for an exploration via links.  What then?

I don’t truly know.

Since I tend to get totally immersed in a writing project to the extent of dropping meals and wifely duties to follow my fancy, I’ve been dawdling on the hypertext end of things and it’s nice that Storyspace isn’t a vocal program–though audio may be included and that’s a thought for another post and don’t you just love these long flowing sentences?  Rather stream of consciousness of me and I’m at least a notch about Faulkner’s Benjy for clarity of thinking.

Anyway, since I’m planning to use Paths as an example in a presentation on how hypertext and writers learn to play well together, I need to sharpen it up a bit.  And that’s got a deadline on it.

I’m also considering working on another piece in Hypercopendia even as I’m working on one (of several) in Storyspace because…well, just because. 

Then there’s good old fashioned single page single flow writing that I haven’t done in quite a while as far as the fiction end is concerned.  That’s got a more immediate deadline if I want to pass my CW course.  It’s all a case of what story works with what medium…

Then there’s flash.

Thanks once again, Steve….

There are many ways to look at hypertext story and usually the more complex the better the hypertexters like it.  I, unfortunately, like things simple and honest; don’t like (feeling as if I’m) being cheated out of story because I’m notoriously on the wrong path.

An image popped into my mind this morning of a raspberry bush, perhaps this came out of my jaunt around the backyard yesterday noting sadly that we should have pruned the peach trees (and the lilacs, the grapes, the everything) in what was considered ‘late winter.’  Then I rambled over to the neighbor’s raspberries which we haven’t really done much with since Andy died.  Just as expected, they’d grown wild and freely rooted wherever a cane touched soil.  This is natural tip-layering.

From a main cane several branches form to bear fruit.  If these branches are not trimmed back at the end of the producing season, they will eventually bow down to touch soil.  There they may, with proper conditions, root off the branch and sprout up as new canes.

I’m not sure it’s as complex a system as many hypertexts I’ve read, but I do see the loops that return to the soil or base (of story).  Meanwhile, they branch out to form new stories of their own.

Now raspberry bushes can become quite inextricable and unnavigable in time.  You can get hung up in their prickers and need to cut your way out.  Or you can follow from one branch to another, go underground where the roots are branching out as well.

Or, you can plant and be happy with the simple carrot.

I keep checking into the Hypertextopia Grand Library and have noticed several things going on.  One isn’t good news for hypertext: many have tried it out and left their work hanging there without completion.  Another is great news: many have used the format as a teaching tool.

In the first scenario, folks seem to have either become frustrated with the method of writing–whether it be a creative effort or a means of outlining an idea.  Does the thought of entering a new writing space without the prior work being visible sever the thought process in some way?  Does a blank space promote blankness of what comes next?  Do we need some tie-in to the previous thought to produce the flow that’s based on a visual confirmation of its existence? 

There’s also the possibility that the technical manipulation of working within a hypertext program is interfering with the idea being produced.  Many simply will not wish to be bothered by pulling out threads and new text boxes to continue onward.  Many may become frustrated with the necessary requirements of attending to the program in the implementation of story–and I use ‘story’ here in both fiction and non fiction terms.

But isn’t this just a case of a learning curve?  That once the program is mastered through knowledge and skill it is no more an impediment to the thinking-to-writing it down process than turning a page in a notebook?  Even there, in the most traditional way of writing, there’s a momentary break in procedure that might inhibit a train of thought, I suppose.  But are we really so easily put off track?  It’s hard for me to fathom that in this day of multitasking and working with computer screens holding several pages open (Storyspace allows this concept, as does Mac’s Spaces that shows up to four working screens in full view) that writers are so reluctant to assimilate the data via a natural memory chain–the human brain. 

I’d be interested in learning if what turns these writers off to hypertext writing is the same bugaboos that appear to turn off so many readers; one idea is the fear or sense of losing placement–fear of getting lost.

On the good side, I see an author, Paul Allison, who appears to be using Hypertextopia’s facilities as a teaching tool on weblogging, and on  hypertext poetry.  On  the latter,  Paul gives us an explanation:

"Here are the steps I asked 6th, 7th, and 8th graders to follow in creating their first hypertext poem in Hypertextopia"

And here’s the opening text space:

Make a chain of 15 or 20 memories
1.Join or Log in here at Hypertextopia.
2. Add a new story. Title: Memory Chain (You will change this later.)
3. Double-click
on "The Beginning" and replace the title with an object in the room.
4. Save with the green arrow.
5. What story from your life does this object remind you of? (This is not the same as word association.)
6. Move
the cursor across the bottom of the box that you just created, and find
the straight-up-and-down, vertical arrow. Drag this arrow out and let
go to create another box.
7. In the title box, type the memory/story that the object reminds you of, and save it with the Green arrow.
8. Move
the cursor across the bottom of the new box and find the vertical
arrow. Create another box, and write another memory in the title of
that box.
9. Continue making a "memory chain" of boxes until you get to 15 or 20 boxes.

I love it.  Both Paul’s dedication to the hypertext theory of writing and his use of it to promote acceptance of the form at an early stage in the academic journey.  Maybe this is what we need to do; catch them into the net before they hit the college campus. 

We all have our own comfort zones and we all have some preset formulas that encourage or discourage further venture beyond our borders.  Just as many in the plus-fifty age group are reluctant to try out computer technology, those who have been brought up in its environment are disdainful of organizing their work and their lives with paper and pencil. 

Seems to me we’re always at a crossroads.

For what purpose I don’t know, except perhaps to not have something out there that’s bound to bite you in the ass someday.  There are still two copies of a novel I wrote ten years ago that readers haven’t returned that while I’m certain have long since been thrown away, make me cringe to think are still possibly available somewhere to be seen.

Little by little, I’m reaclimating myself to the Storyspace hypertext Paths in an effort to reassess and reclaim it.  The writer of A Bottle of Beer might be ashamed of a connection to the former hypertext, and the next piece of work should be even more unwilling to claim it, as well as a long series of traditional text stories that she for some pale reason cannot find the courage to delete from the hard drive.  There are a very few of the many that have value in a majority of the elements: style, story, narrative pace and plot, language, meaning, impact.

Yet it’s a writer’s conflict to look back or move on.  Choices must be made. Time is short.

A nice little introduction to Tinderbox for planning out a book–I’d say both fiction and non-fiction would benefit from the ability to create a pretty elaborate skeleton of the narrative while enabling the intricacy of fully informed notes on character, setting, plot, etc. without losing the trail of ideas.

Mark does a great job of explaining the process of planning a story as well as the manipulation of Tinderbox to best serve the job.

I’ve been wanting for a long time to write a text adventure in Inform or some such, ever since getting riled up by Photopia years ago in a new media class.  Likely should’ve taken this course this semester because they did indeed put together an IF piece called “The Good, The Bad, and The Lolli” which I of course tried out.  It’s been a while since I’ve played in IF, and yet the same issues prevailed:  I am directionally dysfunctional, do not state clearly what I want, and get annoyed easily.