Hypercompendia

Stacey Mason at Eastgate (Tinderbox and Storyspace) has an interesting concept up over at HLit: what about reading hypertext aloud.

Inspired perhaps by Finnegan Flawnt’s extraordinary reading voice rather than my own little ditty he’s reading, she weighs the possibilities and decides “The thought of a work and a user interacting back and forth through sound to create a narrative is worth exploring.”

I like her inquisitive nature and the willingness to project ideas way beyond their intent. And, this is a damn good idea too. What came instantly to my mind is the robot helpers you get on the phone that can understand your responses to direct you step by step to a resolution (or a real person who can intercept and help). I could well envision a voice-activated reading of a hypertext, whether the reader says a linking word aloud and thus moves the narrative forward, or how’s this, totally phone conversationally driven where an obvious link (perhaps obvious by tone or inflection) is offered to the listener who then repeats a word or phrase to direct the story to their own choice.

This sounds like an interesting project, audio controlled hypertext. I’m sure touch-text is already in the making with the touch-screens, and visual images will play a big part in that endeavor. But Stacey’s come up with a pattern of thought here that I hope she pursues.

Thought I’d point to an interview I recently did over at Fictionaut about hypertext and new media in general. I had formed a Hypertext Group within this online writers colony and am thrilled to encourage interest and find a receptive and curious audience there.

At Facebook there is some commentary between myself and Finnegan Flawnt, who just recently started playing with the Tinderbox program, that entertains the question of new media being metafictional by nature. It is worth thinking about, if perhaps even the simplest hypertext is in fact calling attention to the act of writing by its visual invitation to interact with the text.

We’ve gotten used to seeing text as thoughts and read them not as signs and symbolic marks upon a background (think of looking at a page of Chinese writing when you can’t read the language), but see the idea presented in the pattern formed by the letters. Possibly seeing beyond the words and sentences to the images they represent. Hypertext includes links within text of a different and obvious color that is saying something about the text itself and the process of reading it, rather than merely being a part of the story. It’s talking directly to the reader. It’s an interesting way of looking at new media, particularly when it includes audio and visual effects that further call attention to the experience. Is it screaming, louder than the story it presents, “Look at me, I’m a story!”?

I’d posted this at fictionaut, but wanted to repost it here as Hypercompendia’s been sort of a journal of a learning process.

“In just recently having had two hypertext works accepted for publication, I find there is a bit more to the submission process of hyperfiction just as there is to the writing of it.

Word length is an important consideration in all story submissions, and in hypertext, the length of the story read may not necessarily include all the separate sections involved. For example, in one of my pieces, the story can be complete in as little as five pages, or as many as twelve. The word count can be figured out, and the longest form can be the goal to remain within restrictions.

Another factor is styling; some publications that take only new media may require the addition of colored background pages as well as images, film clips, or sound. Others may be set up for, or merely prefer, a simpler more basic text format.

All this, of course, is a simple matter of changing the css and html template so that a story can be tailored to an online magazine’s specific needs.”

I’d add a few additional thoughts here. One, in sending a file to a literary e-zine, while I can get away much easier (and it’s easier reading for them as well) to direct them to my site as a submission link, once something in hypertext has been accepted, it needs to be recoded so that the links all point to the publication’s server. Tinderbox makes this extraordinarily easy by simply coding the html template in Tinderbox for the document and exporting to a file on my own drive from there. And then, I can easily send the whole file out to the wonderful editor who accepted the piece for publication. This takes a lot of the reluctance out of the editorial process and I make sure to include the offer upfront “should a piece be accepted.”

As ya’ll know, I’m a stark-raving maniac when it comes to my love of hypertext fiction and that, teamed with my overbearing, hard-headed, determined to make people see it-nature, made for a rather unhappy and tormented artistic soul at best since I can’t always have my own way.

Persistence is key; persistence and insistence can swiftly become unbearable to those upon whom it is focused. Even with my own experience of hypertext (and IF I might add) being one of cursing and slamming fists onto keyboards (I’m small but highly volatile) I still sought an avenue that was gold-paved and happy-treelined and as invitational and welcoming as possible.

And then came Maude. Maude Nichols was the fun, learning experience of hypertext. It is not put-offish, it’s a humorous easy read, it directly relates to the reader, and it looks like it’s brought in some writers interested in the medium now that it doesn’t seem so scary.

I belong to an online writers community called Fictionaut and the writing quality there, I must say, is phenomenal overall (I’m in awe and feel like I’m reading the best of the best contemporary short story writers and poets around). I’m easily intimidated but what the hell, I threw in a couple flash fiction pieces I wrote specifically for posting and then a hypertext piece. The piece was The Perfect Woman (also, like Maude, one of the 100 hypertexts from last summer’s project) and got a bit of interest. A few weeks later, I put up Maude. Maude now has twelve “favs” to it and more importantly, the comments indicate that these seasoned writers like the medium; had fun with it; some even impressed enough to try their own hand at it.

I just love it.

One of the hardest things for me to accept in my writing was to not only give up my work to the reader, but let him decipher it for himself, thus risking complete misunderstanding of “my” story. Beaten into submission by several Creative Writing and Literature courses taught by one harder-headed than I, and faced with the scowling sardonic Roland Barthes as my new theological icon, I reluctantly let the concept of writerly filter into my soul and take it into my heart.

As part of the literary group Fictionaut, I just put up one of my hypertext pieces “Maude Nichols” to share with the membership and boy, I can’t tell you how excited I was to read this comment from writer Finnegan Flawnt:

“Finally, “Maude Nichols” is a wonderful title/name. Harold and Maude, Harvey Nichols…etc. very well done. the habitual “love it” that overcomes me often when i read your stuff seems strangely inappropriate. you somehow let go of this fiction as an author…most fascinating!”

Ohmigod–did you read that? “you somehow let go of this fiction as an author..most fascinating!” (Are you reading this, Steve? Are you believin’ it?)

Hypertext to me has been a major step in the right direction of “letting go” of my work and giving it to the reader to then “rewrite” via his own opinions and experience. For one thing, it appears to give full control to the reader but in truth, the writer must lay out all paths, all the different ways of getting from a)the beginning to c) the end no matter what steps are used to get there. While the writer has limited control (guidance at best) on which particular steps (writing spaces/links) the reader may choose, he will have planned each out carefully so he is in fact writing the same story many different ways; just as a reader will read it differently than another reader, or even than himself in a future reading.

Believe me, you don’t know how difficult it was for this control freak to give up the wheel and allow some reader to risk his own interpretation of my stories. It’s taken years, but I think I’m there now, in a happy place where I can smile as someone takes my words and runs helter skelter with them spilling out all over the hillside. This revelation is extremely exciting to me as a writer. It’s like winning a contest, breaking the ribbon, just plain feeling good.

Thought I already had posted on this exciting event but realized I’d only tweeted and Facebooked it:

(Click on the image for more information)

It’s going to be an informal, pajama-party-friendly gathering of great minds and minds that do great things with hypertextual software and concepts, as Mark says, “a weekend-long writers colony for electronic literature.” It sounds like it’s going to be exciting, informational, and fun!

In this case, methods of working up funding for a project that someone may feel passionate about but can’t get others interested in backing.

Led by the notorious Anne (who has more skills at tunneling through the web than a mole underground) to Kickstarter, which seems to be a place to lay out your idea and hope for some promises of dollars to help you get started. This one, for example, caught my eye because it’s so close to what I took part in with the 100 Days Project: 50 Characters in 50 Weeks, spiels the maker, is,

“…an exploration of humanity. It’s an exploration of acting and storytelling, but also of what it is to be human. There are lots of laughs, there are some tears. There are nice people and mean ones, but none of them are two-dimensional. Each film is designed to transport you, to make you laugh, think, and feel, if only for a few minutes… and I’m trying to create fifty of them in a year.”

Hi, my name is Brent Rose. I’m an actor, writer, and film-maker, and I’m working on the toughest project of my life. I am trying to create fifty short films in under a year. The project is called 50 Characters in 50 Weeks (or “50in50”).

An ambitious endeavor, and as of this moment, he’s got $1748 collected with 44 backers and 26 days to go.

What then, can I promise in return for some cash to fund CD’s and a website on hypertext stories? This is a possibility to get this project off the ground, not just for the money–which would take it above the personally-funded hokey stage to a more professional level–but for the chance to generate interest in the hypertext medium.

Ach, more thinking to do.

This is something I’ve wanted to do since I’d started the hypertext stories for the 100 day project and just never got time to spend to learn the full scope of the Tinderbox software and write some type of story too.

Right now, I’m putting the stories, which were each individually written in a Tinderbox file, into a Tinderbox 100 Stories File, hoping to eventually find out if they can be easily exported into html individually which was what I had to do with the stories being written and put online at the rate of one per day through this past summer.

There are things that I’d like to do with the project that would tie the individual stories into each other–some are actually serialized–and this compilation into one Tinderbox file would be the way to achieve that. In the image above, there are only twenty of the 100 hypertexts entered. I want to see exactly how they relate to each other before I put in the rest, make sure I can export each individually, and make use of some of the Tinderbox features. I’ve already created prototypes and some common attributes and there are some other delights to discover.

And yes, maybe I’ll even break out of my grid-form once I feel more comfortable.

(Click here to enlarge map)
So it’s sort of done; about 44 writing spaces and 153 links. While I was surprised to see what all the linking back did to the story–it makes it appear as if you’ve read it all but if you click on a ‘visited’ link you’ll usually find that you haven’t followed many off that next space. There are three different endings and God only knows how many different ways of getting there.

The story is of an artist who is getting ready for a gallery showing and whose past becomes part of the paint that swirls onto the canvas. A little risque in parts, but I had fun with the stream of consciousness method of narrative that works so very well in the hypertext format.

Boy, this story I’m writing would never have made the 24-hour deadline as part of the 100 Days Project. I’m really enjoying the writing of it. It’s psychological realism and while that can get boring reading, it’s the most fun for me to write.

When I get to this point, it involves a lot of rereading, going back to the beginning and trying a few of the paths to insure that all characters are mentioned, all situations at least foreshadowed, all necessary information has been covered via the path chosen when landing on the text in question. It’s not a case of the whole story having to be told in each path, but there has to be some indication of what’s going on or why.

Should be done in another day or two.