Hypercompendia

173 Writing Spaces, 245 Links. 

This experience of working with Storyspace, writing into it and reading it to bring out more with each reading and then writing in more, is something valuable I’m learning about writing in general.  I’m hoping that I’ll never revise as before, but look for what might be missing, or for clues that beg to be found.

Up to 157 writing spaces and just keep getting these impulses to pick up and run.  Hither and yon. Climbing fences or crawling under them.  Peeking into windows. 

Having fun in rambling with the stamp of approval that the software gives, yet I know that its intent is still to strategize and organize and leave threads of sense to follow.  Somehow, they do though.  I think that when one is immersed within a narrative it would be hard to obliviously throw in stuff that doesn’t fit the tone and story.  It’s hard enough sometimes to drag myself out of the story to realize that someone is asking me a question.  Another millisecond to recognize him as my husband.

Being more aware also of the poetics of what is being put inside each Writing Space.  Each one must be interesting in itself.  Almost a stanza of a poem. 

How the years race once the mysteries of life transition to the common and known.  Taste is tasted only once, yet the memory would have us believe it better. 

Impossible.  The most evil of all masqueraders is memory.

Using Writing Spaces to discover things.  Make a bunch of blank ones.  See what needs to be questioned, answered.  And that’s how I’m uncovering about how this character thinks.

In rewriting the second story, I can so much more easily see that it was indeed the "weak link" in the chain. 

Told in first person of a character who has such an impact on the entire piece, it needed to be delved into deeper.  Instead, it fell flat.  Sort of an afterthought, and it was and it shows.  But the guy needs to have a say, a rebuttal perhaps it may be called, to all the questions raised about him by the other characters.

I’m not sure that this wouldn’t have occured to me in linear format, but what makes it so much easier in Storyspace as a reading form is that drop-ins, thoughts out of the blue or minimally related, the niggling little questions sparked by a phrase, are not only allowable, but encouraged.

It is indeed, the process of building a story.  Architecture of narrative using language and presentation.

I’m pretty pleased with some additions and changes I made last night to the story that bothered me.  In addition to adding to the information we get about one of the main characters, we get a sense of how he got to this particular day in the main thread. 

I also suspect that this story–knowing it was the last in the group to be written–was sort of thrown together without happening by itself, just to meet a deadline.  It was reflective–as the stories really all are, both in the minds of the characters and hopefully, an introspection will be encouraged within the reader as events have relevancy both to the story and to some aspect of most readers’ lives.

One of the points of human nature and understanding I’ve been dwelling upon for a few years now with more intensity is the notion of perspective, how we each view the same item or thought in a different manner, based on individual experience and personality traits.  This project brings those perspectives into conflict as the three main characters recall their interaction of the past, and their relationship in the present.  Throw in the woulda, coulda, shoulda’s of life, and there’s no end to the possibilities.

When I woke up this morning I found myself once again anxious to get back into the program.  Stumbling down the hall towards the kitchen to make my husband’s lunch (yes, we’re that frugal; think of the $5/day saved, not to mention a sandwich the way he likes it and fruit, and turning one stupid light off to save $25 a year doesn’t measure up), uh, where was I…..

…oh yes, I hang a left into the living room and click on the laptop.  I can do this by feel so my eyes don’t necessarily need to be open.  This way, once I’ve kissed my husband out the door I can sit down and start playing immediately.

One thing I particularly like about the Storyspace program is the additional need to manipulate the text boxes apart from just working with typing words strung into a story.  Even the visual, the mapview (or chart or outline; tree, to me, is dopey, at least for this project), becomes a part of the writing process that once you get used to it, tells a story in itself as to the complication and depth of the narrative.  An easier way of putting it:  How exciting is it to wave even a hardcopy bunch of pages around versus colored plot points all laid out and connected.

Think the sight of a half-inch of text pages is fulfilling?  Try this: drop them on the floor from a height of six feet (all right, I’m really reaching here).  Pick them back up at random and read.  Then try to make sense of it.

Back to the main point here, and that is that where I used to play Freecell or some such idiot game as think time or not-think-at-all time, the Storyspace environment fulfills that need to tinker, to be actively doing something creative even when the creativity does not filter into language use and storytelling.   I noticed this same level of excitement–above story–in putting together a poem in Movie Maker.  Coordinating visuals, audio, and story wasn’t just a bunch of creative ideas, but required the manipulation of technical software direction in order to make the whole thing work.  Storyspace does this for me.  It’s like playing a game while you write.

So now I don’t have to go to Freecell or Solitaire to be productive (using that loosely here) while my mind is taken with the thought process of story prior to it becoming a tangible typed text.

Rolling back around to the creative edge of the project, after doing a lot of work on the fiddling with presentation via the typeface and box sizes–a pull down the edit ruler, change, save, put up the edit ruler, save again for each writing space.  Realized that saving immediately after a change, such as moving the box or changing its size, is the best bet rather than moving on to the next and saving a few at a time when a major change is being made. 

On the writing end, there are still plenty of things I’m curious about in each of the stories–after doubling them in word count (or at least write spaces)–but first there’s a major overhaul begging to be done on one of them. One path is a rather sad reflection brought up by memories and possibilities.  Another is rather whimsical on the surface yet holds the key to learning the consequences of choice.  The last story is perhaps a less romantic, more realistic acceptance of where we lead ourselves.  But one story appears shallow.  The character himself, with each addition of discovery, only gets worse.

I either try to expose the better side of this character if it exists, or I’m going to redeem him.  My tactic is to ask some things of him and see how he chooses to handle them.

Not as creative this morning so I attended to the technical side of the project. 

Though I was too antsy to have set it up before, I am changing the font size to 14 from the teeny weeny 12 that is the program’s default. (12 in our world is not the same as 12 in the world of Storyspace.)  I’m not changing the typeface though I would like to, but this at least makes it that much easier for me to work with.

Overall, the Storyspace environment is very easy to work with and to learn.  Though I haven’t touched into all of its power, it already is very comfortable (esp. now with the 14 pt) and much of the manipulation has become second nature in a very short time.  Constant, to the exclusion of all else, but what has it been–a couple of weeks?

By the way, for those who do look at manuals–and even I did when I ran into the unknown or my guesses weren’t working–the Adobe PDF format Storyspace manual is extremely well laid out and clearly describes the action to be taken to do whatever.  Breezing through it prior to playing within the program, it would look rather complicated, but once one is familiar with working the software, it’s all crystal-clear.

I want to thank Steve Ersinghaus for some time spent yesterday on discussion of the current Storyspace project and the Storyspace program itself.  He’s given me some ideas that will take me away from my clinging to a somewhat organized layout as well as the impetus to play with some of the guard links and maybe allow the reader more freedom.

We also discussed the idea of the combination of Storyspace and traditional Interactive Fiction–games or narrative requiring reader input to move forward, but input via typing in words that are coded into the program to progress the narrative.  There’s a possibility that we can offer options (well, idiot, of course we can!) in Storyspace that respond via clicks taking the place of the actual typing of word choice.  An e-mail story we’ve been playing with may be the perfect choice to explore this possibility.

I’m really having fun–though it’s the satisfying, serious kind of fun–with Storyspace and while it opens the story and characters so much more to the writer (or maybe it’s just the key that fit for this particular writer), I think that Steve has shown me even more options that I haven’t taken advantage of yet.

"I ride my bike, I roller skate, don’t drive no car,
don’t go too fast, but I go pretty far,"

Starting yesterday with an e-mail astrological notice that:

This is a mixed results day — meaning that although you will probably get a lot achieved, you might not be happy with the quality of what you have created. Listen to your gut, and if you want to ask for a ‘do-over,’ then do so. The standards to which you hold yourself are getting higher and higher, and this is a very good thing. You are ready to challenge yourself, and you should. It’s only when you expect the best out of yourself that you have a chance to make yourself proud.

Seeings that I’ve been working on nothing but Paths in Storyspace and had an appointment to meet with Steve Ersinghaus to discuss it, I deflated rather quickly and read it more critically many times before I got in the car and took off.

Just as I approached campus, one of my favorite happy songs came on and I felt oh so much better only because since I was smiling as I sang along, the worry got lost in the lyrics:

There’s nothing quite as fulfilling to a writer (or anyone who works on something creative for that matter) as to get feedback on something.  You kind of know it might or could be good and have some idea that even without fine tuning, the piece is going somewhere, but only only some of that is justified and sometimes it’s just parental pride.  All you have to do is look around to see what some people feel is not only their best work, but really the best out there to understand why I find it so hard to overcome doubt.

But good or bad, go on or start something new, the reaction of others is meaningful.  Particularly if it’s someone you trust (most important) and who has the expertise in that field (my husband’s honest, but frankly, he’d probably not get turned on by this narrative).

So back to the drawing board and and attempt as well to get started on two more ideas that are ripe and ready for hypertext–or as Steve suggested, using one to create the other.