Hypercompendia

We lost good men to lions and we lost good men to gas.

More to hold us all together, one would think.  Tears the sticky web wrought by an all-knowing spider, pain the exquisite experience of all men at some pinpoint in parallels of time.

I don’t care.  I like it.  It also reveals by a short hop of three Writing Spaces some background of this central relationship, the religious upbringing that can’t help but appear in even the most liberal of thought.

Just as this establishes a place and framework of mind for our heroine, Anne:

But the baby, the youngest of the brood, ah that’s the sweet spot of family life.

I wore the same dress in a different size and just a slightly different style for nine years straight as I grew into them, those swirls of flowers caught up on a bolt, cut out and so lovingly sewn by my mother to save some money.

My sisters still tease and offer hand-me-downs in exchange for last year’s cashmere sweater.

What I’m doing then as I read through what is hopefully one of the finally final times, is polishing words and decorating characters.  I’ve thought about adding more time, but that’s not necessary here.  This really should be a day’s depression, a backache that leaves you low, a snowstorm that cuts off electricity (and your laptop’s battery has run down).   But there’s always room for detail if it shows me one more thing about the characters and their story.

Not by the deadline of the year’s ending, but surely within a day or two this project will be called complete and I will move on to something else of one form or another.

Today I’m blessed with poetry of mind–usually indicative of somber reflection at best; ill will at worst–and find the better word or phrase or lyrical device to say the same thing that was said already but not as well.

Some new characteristics of the characters have come to light as scenes from their pasts–if that is true at all–come to their mind and thus to mine.  Perhaps it is this time of change; the year simmering to a cooling leftover memory.  Perhaps it is my own need to close some books and put them far away upon a shelf I barely reach, but can.

Just nice to have some movement here.  Laying down some lines to offer whoever else may ever read this story.  Strange feelings here too; the audience–if any–would not likely be the type familiar with the form.  Those familiar with the form not likely to care about the story.  This, I suppose, is what is meant by writing for oneself alone.

Well this is what I came up with and stopped when I like it.  Now I’m thinking it looks a bit too much like Gateway’s cows.

Likely I’ll do it again, wanted to incorporate real hypertext activity into the banner but it got too complicated for this little blog.  Or maybe I’ll do it anyway, just for practice.

Me do like designing banners.

I think it’s time to run off into new directions and I’m considering a 3-D Animation course that will get me up to par on the Flash a lot quicker than I’ve been able to manage on my own.  It’s also the discipline of a course that, like writing courses, keeps one’s mind from slacking off when times get tough.

Also think it’s time to change the banner here and that’s fun stuff to do.  Maybe open the New Year with new ideas and a logo to reflect that goal.

Needed to get away from this project for a few days because I really want to finish it up and maybe start on something new. 

But have I taken it as far as it can go?  Even if the story sucks it should be complete (suck completely?) before I shelve it and move on.  My concern here has been that in twisting the story to fit into the hypertext environment (not a big problem since it was made for this) I still feel that I haven’t used the concept of hypertext to its full potential.  To do this, however, messes the narrative up–or so I think.  Maybe I just don’t truly understand what I’m doing, or maybe my view of hypertext is not completely faithful to its purpose, I don’t know. 

I think that I’m just going to let this one do what it wants to do naturally, and where the hypertext helps and enhances, it truly does.  But where it’s not going to work to help the story above making it a reader’s choice for paths, I’m going to avoid forcing it to fit the mold.

I’m anxious to write something fresh and new into the Storyspace environment but I really need to close out Paths first.  I really like the concept, the story, and most of the writing though I’m likely the only one who does.  Which brings me to a toss-and-turn of several nights running.

Who do I please?  I’m really not writing for the reader completely, though it’s always been a factor in any type of writing and particularly in fiction.  In hypertext, it wants to become tantamount to prime reader enjoyment and that’s not where my head’s at.  I still seem to want to lead him through the narrative.

Maybe it’s because I’ve started with a story that lent itself to this form.  Maybe it’s just my bossy nature.  But I just can’t seem to make the loops and connections that would allow a reader to run willy-nilly through my work and come out scratching his head (as I’ve admittedly done on other hypertext pieces and found them not a pleasant experience). 

I think that what I’m saying here is that I don’t want to write according to hypertext, but rather use the tool of hypertext to write the story the way I want.  If I can manage to do that, it could be a phenomenal piece of work.

Blender is an animation program that I first noticed on Dennis Jerz’s website and I’ve file away as a ‘someday’ thing to learn.

It’s neat to see a seasonal bit worked up by Dennis that demonstrates the action:  Reindeer in the Snow.

I do hope to spend more time in the graphics area of new media to at least learn how it works.  My favorite so far has been Carnegie Mellon’s New Media Department’s Alice, and it’s a good starter program for anyone just testing their interests as well as offering quite a nice presentation.

I’m happier now with the way I have the structure of Paths set up, though it does appear to follow a more obvious one-track line that I’ve drawn through the stories to connect the various cars into a train.

There are spaces though that take the reader off into other directions for a while, though none that carry them away from the narrative.  I’m okay with this.  I’ve allowed the curious reader to explore all the cubbyholes of the characters’ lives.  The less assured reader may still enjoy a narrative simply following space to space; he will never, however, have the full depth of character and thus, story.

But I’m not finished yet.  There are many places where I want to loop around or add something that will enhance what has already been written down. 

Now I’m back to the fun part.

Had a moment of panic this morning. Opened up the Paths file I’ve been working with and clicked on a Writing Space…

No text!  There was nothing in any of the writing spaces!

Now this wouldn’t be a big problem except that yesterday was a busy day in the shop and I had gotten this big idea about changing some of the structure and had done some of it without saving it to the two other files since I wasn’t sure about it.  And, I’d made some other important changes.

Hard work counts.  Laziness or lackadaisical effort counts even more towards destruction.

I quickly checked the Preferences and Document boxes to see if I’d made any changes there such as "Don’t show the text–let me guess along with the reader" but I didn’t see any immediate change between this file and the others.  For all I know, I might have marked both background and text as "white". 

More important was to try and fix this copy without upsetting the others.  Here’s what I did:  Deleted the nupatest.sni file (knowing that that’s where the author peculiarities are filed {oh to be able to delete author peculiarities so easily!}) figuring that I could always retrieve it out of the recycle bin if the program didn’t work, or try to copy the ones from the other two files if necessary.  However, I started the program up without it and it works jes’ fine.  Likely has created a new .sni file.  Hmmm.  It’d be interesting to see if you can make changes to the document as far as selection of font, etc., delete the .sni, close the program, reopen it to all new text, etc.

But I’m not about to try it.