Hypercompendia

Have You Heard The One About…?

When I read today’s story from Steve the first thing I saw was its similarity to the traditional structure of a well-told joke. There is the setting, the buildup, the complication, the resolution. The conclusion is the punch line. There’s much to be learned about short story writing from the narrative structure of a joke.

His story is much more hard-hitting because of its topic but more because of this careful attention to structure. At the end, we’re not sure if our initial reaction to laugh is not terribly inappropriate. It’s a perfect example of hard-hitting provocative reading.

I followed the idea of jokes, but in the manner that we use them to communicate, to hide behind, to make life livable if it can be done at all.

Lovespeak – (Marley 4)

Likely the last in the series that involved hypertext stories #4, #5, and #32, this is a story of relationships, change, and hope. Marley, the protagonist, is in Tibet and Stephanie has followed him there. There’s a definite change in the relationship as Marley is affected by the calming influence of the monastery and Stephanie must consider her options weighed against her past.

There should be plenty of paths to follow and deeper penetration and rereading will bring insight into the characters. The map allows for one of two endings.

Final Exams

While I loved the subtle but evident humanness of Steve’s story The New Man, I wasn’t able to follow in that direction of common and yet meaningful scenario. Testing to me meant exams and that’s where I followed the trail with a few different characters and an hour and forty-five minutes of time.

Good thing I did some proofing: “He sympathized with poets who died young of addition and sexually transmitted diseases…”

The mapping once again allows for individual short bursts of character point of view as well as more intricate interaction of all characters in the silence of a classroom exam.

Family Lines

Skeletons in closets, a home dying along with its family. Secrets that get lost in time because of a new generation of sons. Interesting stories that are found in every family are whispered through the lines until the voice is too thin to hold the weight of sound.

The mapping allows for meandering and yet assures a conclusion.

Ill Humor

Steve’s story for Day 78 was the perfect setup for a teeny little hypertext that just recycled itself in laughter but that was not coming through for me and it’s likely why it took me so long to get this one done.

Luckily, while I have a huge cast of characters here, the thought that kept threatening to turn the story into a real downer was avoided though I’m not sure the story hasn’t suffered from that loss.

As far as the mapping and paths, I’ve tried to keep you from getting completely entangled but you might just get lost and I’d just suggest you laugh and move on.

The Writer

It’s surprising how stories form themselves and it’s even more surprising how the seed of an idea comes to bloom in a writer’s mind.

This is metafiction. A writer sitting at his keyboard looking around for an idea. He watches things happen outside his window and starts to write. But hypertext allows us to see what he missed.

Knife and Death

Some days the words form themselves into a story and sometimes the greatest idea just can’t get itself written eloquently. At the very least, I feel I’ll learn much from the editing of some of these if not the initial execution of them. Of course the ones I thought were pretty damned good aren’t always getting that response so who knows.

To follow Steve’s lead, I’ve continued the saga of Knife as the recent generation spawned of Ingnook and Pook that started with #7 Schematica and followed through with #25 Schematica 2 and #50 Knife and the Ballerina (references and links are available on the Flash Fiction page as well as within this latest part of the story).

This went places I didn’t expect, and it’s another case of one read-through won’t reveal the whole story although it will give a complete story. I’ve resurrected Knife as the main character as only a fiction writer can do.

Green Grass

Can’t believe this is already Day #75 of the 100 Days of creativity. But here we are, and fortunately, I was in a reflective mood for a story inspired by Steve’s The Dope Smoker.

I think many of us think of things while driving. Many of us feel that there’s something very vital to understand about life, but that it’s always just out of reach of comprehension.

This goes back to a more typical use of hypertext; side trails if you want ’em, a more direct route for those in a hurry.

Black Clouds Gathering

Well you know, hypertext doesn’t necessarily mean there have to be alternate pathways.

This story could have been another of my conversation with background but yet because of its nature, it needed to be conversational only to avoid giving away the ending. So it’s not a good representation of hypertext technology and yet I believe that the hypertext form of presentation, that is, one page at a time, greatly adds to the impact of a story such as this. One’s eyes cannot slip down the page to the end sentence nor flip to the last page in the book; one must follow step by step.

Ashbella and The Criminal

Couldn’t quite get Steve’s story but I knew it likely went a lot deeper than what I was getting from it so I sort of took the idea of a criminal and matched to it an antagonist that I shamelessly named Ashbella (cinders, you know?). What’s neat about this story is that at the get-go each character developed a need and the story was that naturally they had to meet.
So I played tricks again with the Title and that allowed two beginnings. The middle can be a direct route of five links, or it can weave around to give more details and run maybe a dozen spaces. There are four endings to this one, though in real life, a single click can bring you into infinite possibilities.

One thing that made me laugh just as I exported this and ran a quick check: The ‘back home’ and ‘back to start’ code was not available on all four end spaces. It took me a few minutes of checking code to realize that the problem was in the css sheet. I’d coded the color of the background of the box as the ‘visited’ link! But that is something to keep in mind for use in future stories.