Hypercompendia

I’m having a helluva time here, on about the fourth ‘version’ of Paths, now it looks like the best method of doing this is in Map View, and the hell with what Chart and Outline and Tree look like.  Though what I’m doing can certainly be done in Chart or Outline, the links won’t show up and I won’t have a purdy pit’cher of the layout in Map View.

The bigger problem:  How to pull out all those children from their parents so that all the trails are out on one map instead of each story on a separate one. It looks like I may have to try yet another version and start from scratch because it doesn’t look like I can find twenty spaces and pull them out if I can’t see them.  If I open the mother space, I can see them, but can’t take them out.  The other option is to make that change via the chart view and then go back to map and work in there.

It took a while to solidfy from the fog, but there seems to be a logical progression of narrative happening now that is closer to the general idea of the stories, and to the work as a whole.

Basically there is a main narrative that is a sort of story in itself.  At certain points in the narrative, there are text links that lead off to the beginning of each of the original four stories.  Once on the path of a story, a reader will follow this thread, being able to go off on some of the relative text links particular to that story, and eventually will be returned to the main thread, either back to the place from which he left, or to the very next space.  This ensures that no opportunity is lost.  Eventually, another text link will take him off to the story where he left off, although in the meantime, he may have ‘visited’ other story threads as well.

I’m working it in the Chart View right now, with the hard copy as script, but will post  a Map View to show the links as soon as I can figure out how to get the Map View of each story unloaded into one big picture.

Oooh–oooh—oooh!  I think the project is forming a structure.  I can see that with a vague path that’s relative to all the stories yet not specific to any one, a path that’s actually a comment on society of the 70’s in its amalgam, it offers a multitude of openings.  Doorways.  Links.

What the building blocks of Writing Spaces are starting to do is form itself into a small town.  Main Street is for every man and every day travel.  The side streets run off to suburbia, the mountains, the docks.  I see a systematic and practical structure that can support past, present and dreams alike.

It could be the quiet cold of a coming snow, the waiting out as if for a package in the mail.  The hushed anticipation that bursts out in unanticipated ways; riding around like an Indian brave, warpaint as bold as the wild Pinto he commands with his thighs. 

I’m writing like it’s my last will and testament and the final draft is due by midnight.

I’ll betcha it’s the excitement of colored titles on the Writing Spaces, or the grand expanse of the widescreen.  It’s gotta be something like that that’s got me writing more on Paths instead of cutting the ribbons holding the story together.

I’m beginning to formulate a pattern in my mind though that will be a better route for the piece as a whole unit.  It is almost as if the four trails are themselves writing this linear fifth that will set each of the others free to wander and roam and collide  as they should.

So I’m flying high on creative story; the engineering grunt work of laying down tracks which I set myself up for today, may work out easier with the help of a plot.

Weird, man.  I was just posting and went to make a link to another site and had both windows open.  Clicked on one, went to find the key that allows a link to be drawn like a thread to the other. 

Then I realized that after a few hours into it, I was out of Storyspace.

The reorganization of the mapping out of Paths seemed overwhelming but it’s something that has to be done.  To assist in the relayout, I abashedly state that I have come to depend upon the use of paper supplementation to the Storyspace technology.

There is a print feature in Storyspace, but it was more coherent a picture if I copy and pasted the stories space by space, with child spaces into Word and printed it out from there.  Not do-able with a larger piece, and this has 235 spaces.

While I almost thought I’d have to cut the paragraphs apart and put them back together like a puzzle, with the Chart View that I’ve reopened a version into I find that all I need to use the hard copy for is a guideline, or script, as I move the boxes around in the Storyspace program.  It’s a bit dangerous to just clip all the linking threads and set the packages (spaces) free without some manner of direction, so the "script" comes in handy to see what’s happening and what lays ahead since it is necessary to work with the text of the spaces more than just the titles.

I’m into it now.  Up to my eyebrows.

Very interesting post, Bloggers Ignoring Link Semantics, at Google Blogoscoped .Com on the use and ignoring of links on weblogs:

You can see it all the time on commercial or amateurish pages: the “click here"-syndrome of funny link text. We all should know better and give links a meaningful text, one that would also be a valid title for the document you are taking your unassuming reader to. And yet some who should know about link semantics (bloggers, that is) still use words like “Permalink” or “Permanent Link to this entry” to point to a static page which is not about to move its location.

And a response post to it here.

So part of the appearance of Storyspace is related to what is set up as the Win XP preferences.  On the new pc, I just have  a more exciting color scheme selected:

I’m thinking more intelligently–or at the very least, more informed–about narrative presented in hypertext format.  It’s not all about giving the reader free tickets to roam the park at will without guidance of some sort, but rather to lay down the trail through the rides, the petting zoos, and the concession stands in a logical order so that as the sun sets in the western sky, he’ll have eaten fried pizza dough, thrown up on the roller coaster, and just missed getting pissed on by the nubian goats.

As writer, you’ll want him to experience all the loopty-loops you’ve so poetically entered into those Writing Spaces off the main track.  Not only that, he’ll get a different, possibly clearer, possibly more questionable view of the characters with each extra bit of insight that information allows.  But, if he’s determined to race straight through past the monkeys and toss-a-balls-to-win a cheap stuffed purple gorilla just to get sick on the fried dough, than you just have to let him.

Is that a plan or what?