Hypercompendia

A lot of changes have taken place on the Hypertextopia site since I started writing a story into it about a week and a half ago.  This morning, I found another tab on the top of the main writing space page and found this:

 
    This story is not available for your friends to collaborate on.
    Adding a password will allow them to write in it as well.

This, I believe, came out of a suggestion in the commentary at if:books which posted and hosted a lively discussion on hypertext and it’s rather small audience (to put it politely).  Some even prayed it would never resurface.  That part particularly bugs me; I dislike the color orange but certainly would never wish it banned or eradicated because there are some people who love it.  I just never wear orange or drink orange soda.  My favorite color is green.  I wear it a lot and eat limes.

Back to the thread here: I’m not really sure what is accomplished by adding collaborators to a piece, though I would suppose that if a piece were to be at its best by using several writers, then you can do it in hypertext as well as any other medium.  To me it just comes off as a case of misunderstanding the theory of hypertext and making new writers of a piece out of readers albeit by offering the reading of different paths written by a single writer.

Such fun!

When I first started writing more seriously a little over ten years ago now, starting out with a novel sort of squelched the idea of longhand though I still scribbled a bit here and there, especially when we had only a single computer to even rewrite into.  I’ve always loved the feel of a pencil–more so than a pen–in my hand, a hand broken into shape by the whap of a ruler wielded by penguins (trans. nuns)  and danced down in steps on a clean white ballroom floor.  So much so, that Arithmetic (what we called Math way back when) was my third favorite subject after English and Penmanship, and even a couple years ago, Algebra became a love of writing symbols and figures and who cared if they made any sense?

So it took a while for me to write directly from brain into keyboard, fingers picking out words by clicking on images of letters rather than forming the letters into words by drawing curved lines. Sometimes I’d write something out in longhand, transfer it to type and it just didn’t sound the same.  It’s much easier to make  corrections in typing, of course, and in time I learned to think ‘onto the monitor’ as if the fingers were no part of it at all; much as the pencil loses itself except as a tool.

Okay, time to move on.  Once something is easy, another path need be found, a higher mountain climbed, anything, anything at all to make one more aware of the ongoing learning process that all communication really seems to be.

Paragraphs, thoughts, become text boxes, writing spaces.  Backstory, clues, foreshadowing, all becomes trails off the main path.  Stuck between a character married or single?  A miraculous recovery or a decapitating automobile crash?  No need to choose; use both.  This is the true hypertext capability, and it opens up for the reader but more for the writer to discover all the ways through a story without needing to merely select one to display. 

I’m not sure I’ll ever use this multiple choice rhythm of story to write in; I never liked multiple choice questions on tests.  To me, you either know something or you don’t.  Choices given were either so obviously dopey to be no test of skill or knowledge, or as I’ve seen lately, so tricky dependent upon exact situation and meaning and syllable count that it is just a guessing game.  Choice in hypertext reading is not based on knowledge–though it may be based on curiosity and some skill at uncovering an author’s patterns–since a word of text is a link to ….what?  The word chosen is the author’s decision; all then we need to do is decide what he’s possibly thinking on linking.  This would, it seems to me, bring the damn author right back into the story hypertext claims to prohibit his overbearing self to inhabit.

But hypertext need not be used for maze and intrigue, choice and enjoyment, but can as well be used in any way a writer can tell a story in the best way he sees fit.  I’ve just been through a short story in BASS 2007 that used italics for backstory and avoided their use for thoughts of multiple characters.  Gee, hypertext would sure work here.  Dreams, hopes, woulda-coulda-shoulda’s work extremely well in hypertext.  The Road Not Taken would be a shoo-in.

I have worked in Storyspace, an elaborate system for hypertext that just had me nuts over opportunity and ideas.  I loved it. I’ve just worked a short story in Hypertextopia that gave me not what I was looking for, but found me working into it in a natural form of thinking, clicking "Shards" without considering whether it was a Shard or a Fragment but coming as natural as clicking an A on the keyboard or forming it in cursive with pencil in hand.   

I suppose it all comes down to this:  If it works, use it.  If you love it, enjoy it.  If you can share it with others, you’ve done a good thing.

You beg, plead, piss and moan for readers of your work and then the moment comes and drags the stones of doubt behind it. 

It’s good/it sucks/it’s good/it sucks/it’s good/it sucks and sucks and sucks.

And that is the second hurdle that stands in the way of good writing.

Mixed emotions since last night about the growth–regrowth?–of hypertext as an exciting form of literary endeavor.  Excitement similar, I suppose, to discovering a great new restaurant or shoe store or singer and talking it up breathlessly to everyone you know because life is short and sharing something you almost missed yourself is what it’s partially about.

Flipped over, it becomes a case of you go your way, I’ll go mine–and isn’t that a hoot when talking hypertext and its alternative directions.

Somewhere is a compromise of let me show you this and I know you’re going to love/hate it.

Well, semi-final anyway.  I finally wrote the ending.  I’ve seen where this was heading–unusual for me, though with this story, there’s only about an hour of time passed in the narrative–but didn’t want to throw it out there until it kind of happened as I brought Yolanda back to her chair on the porch.  I love how it did come about, and though it may be a bit sparse, I think it should be fairly evident to a reader as to what has happened.  Then again, I’m the one who had a protagonist live through a split, bled-out head wound in my interpretation of a story I recently read.

There is much to be done in rewriting and editing; for one thing, there’s some south of the border weather and architecture and terms to research and confirm or come up with a viable alternate.  There are names in Spanish, as well as terms and and the tilde for n’s and other symbols that I’ve not been able to figure out yet in Mac’s iPage program. 

As the story winds up to its close, I’ve much fewer ‘shards’ (Hypertextopia’s dangling enhancements of story) and while the map looks like I ran out of ’em, I think that if the story has been told fully to this point, that the pace would be slowed by their inclusion in these last few ‘fragments’ of narrative.  Though I might bring back the proud little scorpion just as a sign of some sort to close out the blue threads.

Totally, totally enjoyed this project and am embarrassed to say that I dropped everything else to work on it.  Deadlines meant nothing, promises will still be met; when the muse in my head speaks I must listen.  Though frankly, my language use in this story is not as lyrical as normal; yet more importantly, the story, for once, has been told.

While I still believe that Hypertextopia is fully capable of multi-linear story paths, it is not the ideal environment for that–Storyspace most likely is the best vehicle if that is the intent.  Perhaps because I’m coming out of the middle of my second Storyspace project to take advantage of the opportunity when Hypertextopia came to my attention, I am still thinking along those lines (though I’m not as excited about the ‘choose your own path’ idea [since basically, the path is not always chosen with any knowledge of data for a basis of decision] I do love the side trails and intricacy of weaving a story that hypertext in any form offers so well).

So, in reading through A Bottle of Beer in its unfinished form, and finding that I’ve often missed the loops that were vital to the linear narrative part of the story (versus the non-linear flashbacks and backstory that are clearly necessary inclusions), I have untied some loops, rethreaded the narrative so that it does, in effect, go in one direction for all who read it–except for the side trails that are read by reader choice.

I’ve got to say that I am thrilled with this form and particularly that it has been made available to both readers and writers by its creator, Jeremy Ashkenas to whom I am very grateful for the opportunity to work in it.

Well here I was, so jumping up and down excited about discovering Hypertextopia via Grand Text Auto, and beginning the writing of a story into it that at the very least, I thought was well-served by the medium–if not compelling in itself, and find there is still a dismissal of the form as "boring" by those who don’t enjoy it. Ben Vershbow of if:book gives his take on it, and luckily there appear to be hypertext advocates as well as dissers in the commentary.

I’ve used Storyspace after reading some excellent work written in the form as writers learn to explore and discover the opportunity within it.  I well understand that it takes some getting used to in the reading, and some people will just never like it–and that’s fine.  What I don’t understand is why anyone would want something they don’t enjoy made unavailable for those who do, and this is what I got from some of the comments there.

Luckily we have an argument to Ben’s post at Steve Ersinghaus’ weblog: Hypertext is Boring?   Steve covers the questions raised point by point, and it seems to me that while there is viable argument on both sides of the hypertext issue, the fact remains as Steve hints, that there should be no argument at all as to its right to grow and form.  Literary tastes vary and thankfully, there is room for all in this world.

First of all, a new mapview, though it doesn’t include all the ending boxes at the bottom of the screen:

And this, in filling out story with tidbits of information:

Herve was not only a selfish cabron,
he was stingy and stupid as well. The beautiful furniture he had made
for their home was only done because he refused to buy any at all.  God
had blessed his hands with great talent in carpentry and for that,
Yolanda was grateful.

Such sensitive hands, she thought,
that could feel the beauty of grain and of texture and shape, yet never
learned how to pleasure a woman.

I just love it.  I love working in this and I love developing story via the hypertext form and structure.  It doesn’t ask for the whole thing at once; which is good because I never know what that is.  It tweaks and teases it out of me, much as a teacher with student.

Going back and changing, rewriting, shining things up a bit, but more just to stay in the flavor of story since Yolanda’s story is about to come to an end.

For me, what hypertext allows is insight into story, clues as to what has led it to this point.  It may offer information via vignette about character, about the human condition, about society or just a particular individual.  It can offer without going into great detail a particular scenario that is representative of the big picture, the tone of the setting and the time.

For three days the old man lay in his bed.  Flies had laid eggs in his nose and his eyes.  No one noticed him missing. No one saw that in the late afternoons he no longer sat outside his small house on the edge of the town, across from the church where he had been baptized. 

They found him instead by the rank stench of death.

His wife had long ago passed into the world that awaits all of mankind.  His sons had  their own wives and children to care for; his daughters had married away from the town.  He was a good man, good to his children, generous to his friends and his church. He wasted little time at the cantina with the others, and he snuck candy to children on Sundays as they came out from Mass. For many years he had been the lone shoemaker in the whole of the surrounding area up to the hills in the north, the river to the south his border of labor.  But there were other makers of shoes for them now, so it was the his neighbors who found him that day.

While still far from refined as to language and movement through the story with pacing, I have been able to get some work done on the polishing of form and brevitizing of content to insure as much as possible that I don’t bore readers with the mundane and redundant.  It amazed me to find that the story is over 7,000 words right now, and yet not much has happened in that evening hour of story.

I’m checking on maneuvering a few little ‘hubs’ of action or data dissemination without loss of enjoyment should they be missed–or complete annoyance should they be led to a reread.  I don’t have a problem with Hypertextopia’s focus on axial structure.  The way that the ‘shards’ appear gives a reader enough choice to investigate or read straight through and that straight reading–Fragment to Fragment–is where the line of story must remain consistent.  While it can veer off into paths–I’m not particularly anxious to do that.  There is no reason why a story written into Hypertextopia can’t be a "Choose Your Own Adventure" narrative. 

But while I realize I need to explore this further both in this format and in that of Storyspace, I still cling stubbornly to the idea of the writer being forced to present his story in the best possible manner, thus negating any need for a reader to find a better way.