Discussion → Elements of Linking
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Marcelle Heath commented on "The Perfect Woman" at the story site and mentioned that "The great thing about hypertext is its Choose-Your-Own-Adventure process."
In this particular piece a very simple structure formed that would mostly be considered fairly linear and really has only one main trail and one ending to the story. This really is not a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure form though one would not know that unless the map were seen or the reader went through the story several times trying all possibilities of linkage.
For me, it's not really the CYOA potential of hypertext but rather the intricacy that it allows by enhancing the story with details that add depth to the character and situation.
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this seems a good place as any other in this group to ask the ultimate (or initial) newbie question: how do i start? do you usually print/format your text as a whole and then split it up according to a plan? just curious and curatively clueless. thanks!
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Welcome to our weird little world. To answer your question, there's no single way to start. I might suggest reading Mark's Patterns (http://www.eastgate.com/patterns/Patterns.html) to understand some of the purposes of linking, but to just play with it yourself.
Start writing your story; there will come a time when you might make a decision whether a character does one thing or another, so create two more writing spaces and link to them from that point, thus allowing the story to take those two different paths. Eventually, they will need to come back around--or not.
Another practice; if you want to round out a character by giving some backstory of an event, that's when you'd throw out a link that will be a side trail rather than the linear form of what might come next.
Eventually it'll become second nature as to where to stop in a writing space just as you would for paragraphs, pages, chapters, dramatic effect.
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Furthermore---
When I was doing a hypertext a day I had a basic template made with about twenty spaces, so that I didn't have to redraw a new map each time. Then as I wrote, I'd link to a blank space and rearrange the boxes. BTW, I always write in map view but others don't necessarily do that. I also didn't use any nesting (parents/children) because these were really short. I did do a very long hypertext story once and that was done differently.
Basically, I wrote into the maps sometimes, knowing that I'd want to have a particular story take off in different directions and then cross over and link to each other at various points (see the map that I used for this group logo). I will gladly send you larger versions of maps of any of my stories if you think it'll help...
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thank you, susan. patterns link looks great. i am a great friend of patterns in my day job...i should have expected something like this here. incidentally, i find that a particularly interesting application of HT, to consciously go beyond simple (e.g. aristotelic) patterns...though they're, of course, very effective. bernstein even identifies a "joycean pattern"!
i'll keep playing around.
Group Description
While many are introduced to hypertext fiction in contemporary lit or new media college courses, the general reading (and writing!) public seems to still be unaware or reluctant to explore this form of narrative.
In this age of electronic reading, hypertext--which is simply clicking on links to discover different paths within a story--is particularly well-suited to the medium.
If you have written in the hypertext format, are curious about it, or have some thoughts or questions about its emergence into mainstream reading, this is the place to be.
This is a public group.
Anyone can see it and join.