Once you’ve written in hypertext, particularly using Storyspace, your thinking on links is forever affected by the process.
About an hour ago I linked to one of my own posts on a post I was entering into Spinning. What I wanted to do–and attempted without thinking twice–was to link to a particular phrase within the referenced post.
I was expecting a thread!
One step forward, three steps back. No doubt about it, for me (and likely only me) the hypertext format of Storyspace forces me to reread and rewrite the writing spaces individually each time I go in to work on a project. God only knows what the original one was worded as but this is likely not to survive too long either:
John Kellerman’s nights wrapped around him, tucked in by alley walls that held the day’s warmth in a fragile grasp within an hour’s touch of the new sun rising. The faint click of a traffic light, an occasional hailing of a lonesome cab the lullaby to which he slept.
It seems I just can’t bounce ahead blithely spewing story; a spit in every box. I read and fix and read and fix each box it takes me to get to the end where something new is supposed to happen. Sometimes I’m so worn out I never reach that point. But this: I think I’ve left a better trail.
It’s no new wisdom that we grow from what we experience, from the toddler’s first tumble to the failures and successes of adulthood man learns something from every episode of living. We are what we have been and what has happened to change us along the way.
When we write story, we have a character who comes to us full grown. We throw a few things out there for him and watch to see if he will avoid, stumble over, and face them head-on. We don’t always understand the reactions we get from him, and here’s where backstory comes in handy. Not to merely set up a situation by event, but by the character’s reaction to that event to more importantly round him out to comprehend him.
That’s what’s happening for me now in my current wip, and likely why it’s taking me so long; each character is being revealed slowly as they walk to the heartbeat of the park; the scenario and setting where they will meet in some manner for just a fraction of a moment but one that changes them each in certain ways forever.
Hypertext is the perfect medium for such strong character development. We get an idea of who someone is by what they’re doing, and when we ask why? we take that trail and discover an answer. In hypertext, we can mark that trail for others who are curious enough to follow. Is it vital information? Maybe not–to the plot of story anyway. But to the understanding and enjoyment of the story? Yes.
Here I was, all nicely balanced map-wise and then a stroke of thought that something I had written in another blog was perfect for and needed as a grounding in this hypertext. So copy and paste I did, and then went to disconnect and reconnect the links and lo and behold! – It screws the whole thing up!
So delicately I save and move away. I now have two spaces that both want to be the first and yet only one, the second, can properly branch out to story.
Major revision #12 to work on today.
Very nice interview with Mark Bernstein at the Ireland Intruders where he discusses weblogs and the importance of this phenomenon below the surface of its more obvious method of communication.
While my attendance at conference sessions may have been spotty, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being here. Thursday’s Workshop Sessions headed by Steve Ersinghaus was a small group, but representative of most of the various forms of creativity and creative tools available to the hypertext artist. Storyspace, Literatronica, Flash (or ‘net art’ as Alan put it), Hypertextopia, Storytron, Hyperdrama, Dene Griger’s human hypertext space; all here and represented for discussion.
It was my extreme pleasure to meet the creators like Mark Bernstein, Chris Crawford, Juan Guiterrez and Mark Marino, and to understand how they design and create for they are certainly as creative with story as they are with technology. And it was fun to share a beer (okay, a couple) and a meal with such folk as these and the artists albeit technologically skilled users as Alan Bigelow and of course, Steve, and those who I’ve known for years via weblogs and finally have had a chance to meet such as Dennis Jerz, who’s proven his journalistic abilities in his reporting of the events on a daily basis.
My thanks too to Jeff Smith for his warm welcome and such great handling of details of the event and particularly his helpful directions to downtown Pittsburgh.
So even though I may not have taken advantage of the full value of the event on the technical side of hypertext and all it encompasses, I’m glad to have spent this weekend in such a mood of inspiration and good people.
Though without the accompanying commentary (believe me, you’re all the better for it), I think I’ve been able to upload and direct you to the Keynote presentation made at Hypertext 2008 –
Oops–I think what you’ll get is the whole program view instead of just the presentation in ready to play format–I’ll have to rework this…
I’m going to play the “Rehearse” feature on this today which times it out (along with comments), but here’s the latest editing in “Lightbox” View:
Well, I’m down to three slides and my Buster Brown rendition.
Actually no, I haven’t had the heart to cut out any of my pretty slides yet. I spent all day so far changing fonts and colors. I know I hafta, and that you folk lucky enough to be at the Pittsburgh Hypertext 08 Workshops will be seeing the highly squished condensed version. What can I say? I’ve developed a hypertext mind and wandered off the the main trail as every good hypertexter should. Here then, for perhaps the last time, is the full show:
Realized as I was working on this that Keynote can be a hypertext piece in that a click on a box (if that’s how progression is made) brings in a new box that continues the story. Here’s an uncut view of the work in Lightbox mode:
Obviously it’s too long a slideshow for the time allotted, so more work is being done to either delete or “skip” by slides, but the point is clear that for now, it’s a strictly linear line of “story.” This can change if I wanted to jump around within the framework by marking certain slides to go elsewhere from the trail. I can–and have–some real hyperlinks in there as well. Those noted are all in the credits slide, but it would have been possible to jump out from the slideshow itself onto the web at any point.
Now to the hard work of editing.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology