Hypertext Narrative/Fiction

In a normal story you have a book and you flip through pages. Each page occurs in the same order every time you read it. However, in hypertext the pages do not appear in a certain order. There are many different ways to read it because there are many different links on each page. One page leads to many other pages making the story not occur in the same order every time. Hypertext is nonlinear. It is a story that is written without a definite beginning, middle, and end.

“Since hypertexts are structured as networks rather than linear plots, they lend themselves to openness and disorientation” (Steve Ersinghaus, Reading Hypertext: Reading Blue Hyacinth http://www.steveersinghaus.com/archives/1142 ) There is Openness in that when you read the story multiple times, what you read is different from what you will read in the future. No story will be read by each person exactly the same way. There is also openness in your interpretation. Since, there is no particular way to go through a story, what you take from the story changes depending on what you read when. There is also disorientation in that you might not understand the story and the pieces may not fit together in an understandable way. Disorientation can occur when there is no ending; some hypertexts are continuous in a loop. “The navigational aspect of hypertext changes our interaction with both the story at hand and also with the concept of narrative itself.” (Steve Ersinghaus, Reading Hypertext: Reading Blue Hyacinth http://www.steveersinghaus.com/archives/1142 )

            Hypertext Fiction/Narrative can be read in many ways. In one story, Blue Hyacinth by Mazurel and Andrews, you read the story by scrolling over the words and four different stories combine into one. As you can see in the below screen shots, sentences change and you have a mix of different sentences from the different stories. Because of this there are many different ways to read it. You may never read it the same way twice. There is no beginning of the story or an end. It is nonlinear. However, each story can be read on its own. There is a box at the bottom with four different colors. When you click on a certain color box there is that whole story in the respective color. When the stories are jumbled up the lines for the certain stories stay the color they were originally so that you can see which story it came from.

   In another story, 10:01 by Olsen and Guthrie, is set in a movie theater as you can see in the screen shot below. You read the story by scrolling over the people’s faces and it says what that person is thinking at a particular time. It is nonlinear because it depends on whose head you click on when. The people do not have thoughts that line up.  They are random. However, there is a time line on the bottom so that you can go in the order of the time that each thought occurred. This is only a time order, not a story order.

  In a third story, my body—a Wunderkammer by Jackson, you read it by clicking on different words in the text that lead you to another page of text as you can see in the below screen shot with the purple and blue underlined text. The different pages of text do not always make sense together. For example, after she talked about her feet I click on “bubbling in a controlled flow through my nose” and I got the nose page. It does not line up feet and nose. They are at opposite ends of the body and yet they were together. There is no end page in this hypertext, and often you get stuck in a loop. These are all examples of reading Hypertext and how the nonlinear narrative works.

 Patchwork Girl is a hypertext about a girl that is sewn together with different pieces of other people and made to be a person, but instead she is a monster. She has patches and is put together like a quilt. The story is put together the same way. Just like she is put together by many different people, the hypertext has many different narrators and authors. Mary Shelley is one of the narrators and authors. In the hypertext she is the creator of Patchwork Girl. She writes about her experiences with Patchwork Girl. In real life, she is the creator Frankenstein, the novel. Shelley Jackson is another narrator/author because she wrote the hypertext and talks about her experiences writing the hypertext in her story. Patchwork Girl is also a narrator/author because in most of the hypertext she is talking about her experiences being the monster and where her body parts came from. The different narrators of the story create disorientation because figuring out who is narrating at the time is confusing. This is why (as you can see below) it is by Mary/Shelley, & Herself. It is already confusing and it is already making you think. As you read the story you understand that the Mary comes from Mary Shelley, the Shelley comes from Shelley Jackson, and Herself comes from Patchwork Girl herself. Finally, the reader is an author. This is because the reader creates their own story because they follow their own path through the story because it is not linear.

Patchwork Girl by Jackson, works the same way a my body—a Wunderkammer. When you read it you click on different words in the text and it leads you a different page of text. The pages also do not always make sense together. On each page you can click on many things that will lead to many other pages. There is not just one path. This a characteristic of a good hypertext. In Patchwork Girl there is also a thematic connection, another characteristic of a good hypertext. The story is disconnected, has different perspectives, and has different aspects that are taken together to make a thematic connection. One theme has to do with finding your identity. Patchwork Girl has issues with this because she was created not born and therefore does not have a past. She also has troubles with her identity because she is made up of many different people. She does not fit in with society’s identity of a girl and battles with that as an identity issue. As seen in the screen shot below she has many issues which lead to her identity confusion.

  Another theme is feminism. Patchwork Girl has issues being the feminine ideal because she is big and monstrous and women are supposed to be petite and gentle. She wants to conform to society and be the way society sees femininity, but her body will not allow it. Yet she tries to make her body do these feminine things. This is explained more fully in the screen shot below.

Mary Shelley the character also shows how feminism is a theme. She has to always be conscious of what her husband, Percy, wants. For example and as you can see in the below screen shot, Patchwork Girl leaves her creator Mary Shelley for good. Mary Shelley wishes she had given Patchwork Girl a piece of herself so that she will always be with Patchwork Girl, but in this wish she must think of her husband and she could only choose a piece of herself that her husband will not miss. Also after Patchwork Girl leaves, Mary Shelley is confronted by her husband about her strange personality lately. All she has to say is women issues and her husband leaves her alone because he wants nothing to do with those. However, it is really due to her missing Patchwork Girl.

Interactive Fiction

“Interactive fiction (IF) is computer-mediated narrative, resembling a fine-grained "Choose Your Own Adventure" story, in which the reader helps to determine the outcome of the story. The classic IF interface is a command-based textual feedback loop: the computer displays a few lines or paragraphs of text; the interactor types a command; the computer describes what happens next, and then waits for additional input.” (http://jerz.setonhill.edu/if/intro.htm Dennis G. Jerz, What is Interactive Fiction) Interactive fiction can be written using Inform 7 which is a programming software package that allows the creation of interactive fiction. It is a text based interface that allows the programmer to create different scenarios as well as different branches of a story which can then be played to the end user. After completion of the story design, Inform 7 allows publication of the interactive fiction in the appropriate format which can then be used with software programs such as gargoyle.

One such story that can be played by gargoyle is Galatea, by Emily Short, which is an interactive fiction piece that takes place in a single virtual room within the software program. The room is an exhibit and in the room is Galatea. Throughout the interactive fiction story, the player realizes that she is a sculpture that has come to life. The objective of the story is all about interacting with her. Unlike Galatea in most interactive fiction there is usually more to the story than just interacting with one person. You enter many rooms and interact with many people. In Galatea elements of literary fiction are present and therefore allow more options for the player to speak. There is a lot of interaction with non-player characters. Galatea is a non-player character and she is the main interaction in Galatea.

Interacting with Galatea is the puzzle. Initially Galatea is facing away from you, and trying to learn more about Galatea while getting her to face you is an interactive challenge. Some things you say may make her angry, while others might make her interested and make her turn towards you. Deciding what to say or do next is the puzzle. I played Galatea twice. The first time that I played Galatea, all I got was a back view. I pressed her about the artist and she became upset so the game ended and I did not get her to turn and I did not learn much about her.

The second time I played however I did get a front view, and when I talked more to Galatea about myself she seemed to like it. I told her about the job, family, and childhood. After entering the command “talk about childhood” she faced me. She told me about herself, and we even ended with a hug.

 I felt like I accomplished much more the second time when I got her to face me and we created a bond. This was very challenging to achieve however and I had to really think about what I did wrong the first time in order to please her. It was a challenge because she is very temperamental and because you know that there are many different outcomes, not just one. “The results of different discussions can sometimes even lead the user to uncover different stories that, while consistent within themselves, suggest different possible worlds.” (http://collection.eliterature.org/1/works/short__galatea.html Emily Short, Galatea) Throughout the game you are striving to get the best outcome while at the same time knowing that you may never get some outcomes, no matter how hard you try. While someone else may have gotten an outcome you have, you may have achieved an outcome that they have never been able to. “Interactive fiction, however, contains not only gaps in meaning, but physical gaps in the text that the reader must fill in. These physical gaps in the interactive text allow such a wide range of explanations or interpretations of the fictional events taking place in Colossal Cave that it often seems as if different readers are not reading the same story.” (http://www.malinche.net/interactivefictionasliterature.html Mary Ann Buckles, Interactive Fiction as Literature) In this way different readers interpret the story in different ways thus leading to separate outcomes within the same interactive fiction.

In Galatea story elements and game elements work together to create a great piece of interactive fiction. However, Galatea is more of a game than a story in which the story elements are learning more about her and how she became to be. The game elements were getting her to talk and figuring out what to say in order to make her turn and face you. The goal of the game is to make Galatea face you. The treasure in the game is having more interaction with Galatea and making her want to talk to you. The story elements and the game elements conflict because the story can get lost and you can start to only focus on the game elements and trying to get Galatea to face you. “Some interactive fiction has a strong story and very little in the way of game-type fun. Other interactive fiction is mainly a game, and the story is so weak it might as well not exist at all.” (Jim Aikin, The Inform 7 Handbook)  Galatea is more like the second one. The perfect interactive fiction is supposed to be both story and game together equally. In Galatea, there is more game then there is story, and therefore, there is not that perfect mix. Both the story elements and the game elements contribute to the reader’s experience. The reader is influenced by the story elements because without reading everything that pops up on the screen the reader would not know how to proceed and know what to do next. The reader is influenced by the game elements because without the goal, the reader would not have a purpose and then would have no reason to play.

The interactive fiction that I wrote contained a Girl Scout learning about camping. My prologue was as follows…. “You are a girl scout excited to start your adventure at camp and earn a badge entitled: Ready, Set, Go Camping! You will complete different tasks in order to complete your badge. Be sure to use words such as Examine. Also talk to the different leaders in each place. What they have to say will be useful in completing your tasks.” I had three rooms, a camp site a cooking room and a camp fire ring. In the cooking room the player makes baked apples and in the camp fire ring the player makes a fire.

Writing interactive fiction opened up creative possibilities because there was more to it than writing a story. You had to be able to know what the possibilities for interactive fiction were and what the possible things someone might type in are. There is also more to interactive fiction than writing a story because of the need for a lot of programming. You could not just start writing, and if you wanted someone to be able to take, examine, etc. something, you had to first state that it was a thing, then state where that thing was and describe it.  I enjoyed the creative process because you wrote the story in a completely different way than you would normally write a story. I liked the programming and I also liked deciding what I wanted it to say when someone typed in a certain command. It was more fun than writing a normal story because there were a lot more possibilities.

The creative process frustrated me because there were things that I could not figure out how to do or took a long time for me to figure out how to do with the programming. “Creativity and storytelling are definitely part of the process, but you’ll also be doing a type of computer programming, ‘Programming’ means you’re giving the computer instructions about what to do?” (Jim Aikin, The Inform 7 Handbook) I could not figure how to get my virtual match to light, and no matter what programming I did, it always told me “That dangerous act would achieve little.” This was frustrating because it seemed like such a simple concept and yet it would not let me do it. Also, I could not figure out how lighting a match is dangerous.

It took me a long time to figure out how to put an ending statement in for each room I had. For example, after you put the pan in the box oven, I wanted a final statement to pop up. After much trying, I finally created a note that you could not open until you had put the pan in the box oven. When you read the note, there was your final statement. This however was not good enough so I looked for other ways to make my final statement pop up. Finally, I got it with a statement that says “After inserting the pan into the box oven:”. Just this little piece of programming took me hours to figure out.

The programming is very tricky to use. If you do not have the correct punctuation, it will not work. Everything has to be very particular for the programming to work. I ran into many problems, especially when I wanted to do “Instead of…” statements. It  took me a half hour to get the right punctuation, just for a little statement. “a single misspelled word or a missing period at the end of a sentence can stop the computer dead in its tracks.” (Jim Aikin, The Inform 7 Handbook)

I was able to express my ideas more fully in the interactive fiction than I was to in a book. I was able to make my interactive fiction more like a game than a story. If it was a book, it would have been all story, no game. However, in the interactive fiction, I was able to have a goal, which was to earn a badge. I was also able to have the player be a character in my story. If I was writing a book this would not have been possible. I was inspired differently then I would have been if I had sat down to write with a pencil and pen. I was able to make my story more game like. Also, my topic and my end goal, would not have worked if I had used a pencil or pen. In a book you follow the same words every time you read it. However, in interactive fiction, you may never take the same path twice. Also you can always change what you want to do, were as In a book there is only one ending. In interactive fiction you can have many endings. “When programmed properly, the plot can change based on what the interactor types.” (http://jerz.setonhill.edu/if/intro.htm Dennis G. Jerz, What Is Interactive Fiction)

My opinion of interactive fiction has changed from my experience of writing it in such a way that before I wrote it, I did not like all the comments I got. One such comment was “that is not a verb that I recognize”. I did not understand why such a simple question could not be answered.

When I started writing interactive fiction and finally started to understand all of the programming that went into it, I realized why it could not have an answer to everything I asked. It does not matter if it is a simple question; the programming is still very complicated. Also, I gained respect for people who wrote interactive fiction. They must have a lot of patience in order to deal with all the frustrations of creating interactive fiction. I do not know how they do this without throwing their computer out the window. I got very frustrated at times creating my interactive fiction and just wanted to give up. I also look at interactive fiction with new eyes when I play, now that I have created it myself. I now understand better what interactive fiction is and what you are supposed to accomplish when you are playing a piece of interactive fiction.

Electronic elements

In the poem Soliloquy by Goldsmith there are many electronic elements that are used that could not be created on the page. You could not have the poem only show the first line and have nothing show up until you touched it. On a page every word would just show up. The reader learns to interact with the poem by moving the mouse around the page and seeing what is available to click. Clicking on everything that you can helps to reveal the poem. Sometimes there are sections before the electronic poem appears in which it will tell you a little about the poem. This can help you to know how to interact with the poem and what you should do with the poem. In Soliloquy, The about tells you that the poem is Goldsmiths side of the conversation that he recorded for a week. This helps you to understand why each line of the poem does match up. The process of interaction can be very complicated and confusing. For example, In Soliloquy, if you did not put your mouse over the whole page, you would not have realized that lines appeared as you did so. More of the poem was revealed. At first the fact that no other words besides the first line appeared might have been confusing because of course that is not all that Goldsmith could have said in an entire hour. The electronic elements can add to the experience of poetry. It makes it more interactive and interesting. It does things that cannot be achieved on paper. It causes the reader to think more than a poem on paper would. They have to think about how to make the poem work unlike paper poems in which you just simply have to read. However, electronic poems can take away from the poem too. Like, in Soliloquy, the poem would be much easier to read if it was on paper. It would also really show how much a person says in an hour or a day or a week. With all the paper right there in front of you it would be easier to see and people would better understand the concept of, you really do not realize how much you say. In the interactive format, you see the words and it looks like a lot, but I feel like on paper, it would really hit home how much is really said. In my opinion for this particular poem I would rather read it on paper than electronically. I feel like this poem could be said better on paper. You could better see how much a person actually says. Also I feel that the interaction with this poem is minimal and unsubstantial to the poem. I did not get anything out of the electronic poem that I could not get from the paper version.

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith/soliloquy/01/01_05.html

In the poem Over There, there is one main electronic element that could not be created on paper. That is when you press over there the first time, it brings you to the page the poem is on. On that page, anytime you click the word over there, it brings you back to the title page. This obviously could not be created on paper. It is a key element to the poem. It shows that you do not know where over there is. Is over there the title page or the poem page or is over there somewhere else. Over there is unknown. The reader learns to interact with this poem by running the mouse over the words and when the pointer become a hand you know you can click on it. Also the things that you can click on are all in bolded and/or underlined. Once you notice this pattern, the electronic poem is easy to understand. The responses that this brings up in the reader is that they want to know why over there keeps bringing them back to the over there on the other page. It makes the reader think about why the electronic poem is doing this. The interaction with the poem has a big impact on the poem because it makes the reader really think about why this is happening and it helps them to understand the point that the poem is trying to make more clearly. The interaction with the poem definitely affects the content of the piece. The electronic elements that are added to the poetry is it gets you to think more about the poem more than if it had been written on paper. Paper could not have achieved the same amount of thinking that the electronic poetry did. If the poem was on paper rather than in an electronic, interactive format, it still would have achieved its point. The poem still would have made sense and maybe instead of focusing so much on why the poem kept bringing you from one page to the next every time you clicked over there, the reader would have focused more on the actual poem and what it was saying. If I had to chose which I like reading better, the poem on paper or the electronic poem, I would choose the electronic poem. I feel that the changing of the page from the title page to the poem page every time the word over there was clicked helped to make the poem more understandable and helped to make you think a lot more about what the author’s point was. On paper I feel that the same level of understanding and thinking would not have been achieved.

http://www.overthere.com.au/overthere.html

Writing my own electronic poetry helped to open up my creative side. Electronic literature allows for many creative possibilities. For each word or phrase in your electronic literature you must think how can I make this an illustration? What animation will help to portray the word or phrase better? I enjoyed figuring out the answers to these questions. It made my electronic literature more creative and more meaningful. I enjoyed the creative process because it was fun working with the animations and figuring out which illustrations would best portray my poem. In my electronic poem I was also able to express it more fully than I could have on a page. The electronic poem was more engaging to the individual reading it than the poem was on paper because it provides more stimulation that the paper version does. The animation draws in the reader and makes them want to keep reading more than the poem does on paper. I had the phrases that if I could focus and on both of them go everywhere on the page showing that you cannot focus on both of them. I was able to have words like absorb actually come out and take up the whole page, as if it was absorbing the page. I had the whole world go in a circle because the world turns in a circle. And at the end when it says and everything else disappears, I had all the other words except for that sentence disappear. These are all things that I could not have done on paper. They are also all things that made the poem much more engaging. It reiterated the concept of the paper version. However, it is easy to get carried away with all the possibilities of the animations and start to lose the integrity of the original poem. It is easy to give everything an animation to it even when one is not needed. This is why for the words in the poem that are not key words it is okay to just have them appear on the poem. Sometimes not using any animation at all says more than putting animation. Because of all the possibilities of animation the creative process can be frustrating. The creative process can also be frustrating because sometimes you have an idea for an animation that is not available to you. For example, in my electronic poem, I wanted the word widened to widen across the whole page. However, this animation was not possible so I had to use a wider font that was different from the rest of the poem. This might make the reader think that the word is particularly special because its font is different. But this is not the case. It was just a lack of animation choices. This one word was a frustrating part of the creative process because in electronic poetry every little thing can say something about the poem. This electronic poem inspired me differently than if I had to sit down and write a poem with pen and paper because I had to think about the poem differently. I had use words that would fit animations. Also I had to see if the poem would be better as an electronic poem than as a poem put on paper. This was more inspiring to see if the poem had good words such as absorb that can absorb the whole page.