As I turned in the text to the title of this chapter I immediately began to think about the second "Hypertext" assignment for this course, and what I would do for that project. While I am not planning on producing a work of fiction (at least not something that is entirely fictitious) I do want to experiment with hypertextual linkages and narrative formatting versus more abstract linkages.

On page 123 of Writing Space, Bolter writes "In its simplest form, interactive fiction requires only those two elements that we have already identified for electronic writing: episodes (topics) and decision points (links) between episodes." I assume that the same two elements are all that is required for any hypertextual document: text and links that bring that textual information together, regardless of the topic, the contents, or the navigation scheme. Bolter goes on to explain that by using just these two elements any hypertext author can create an interactive document for their audience. He also explains how every author can create a hypertext document that is unique and that guides its readers through the information in a different manner. I found this argument to be very interesting, in that the uniqueness of each document would evolve, although the foundation of each is identical.

One of the interesting things that I realized, as I read this chapter, is the fact that it is difficult to "put into words" the descriptions of hypertextual interactive fictional works. As Bolter uses words to explain the organization and appearance of various sites, I found myself frustrated that I could not "visualize" what it is that he is describing. I am not certain if this is a reflection on the author’s writing style and writing abilities or if this is a case where visual explanations and visual components might better convey the information that is constrained by the text. This is strongly illustrated on page 131 of Writing Space, where Bolter has included a graphic titled "The middle map of Stuart Moulthrop’s Victory Garden". By including this simple image Bolter effectively conveys to his audience the basic organization of this hypertext fiction. (And I find myself thinking of some of the arguments that occurred in Chapter Four "Breakout of the Visual" of this text.)

Something that I am struggling with, as I work on my first hypertext assignment, is how to organize the document. I know the content and am in the process of developing the text and visual components. However, I am attempting to codify how I want my audience (or, conversely, how I do not want my audience) to navigate of "move" through the document. In other words, what will I link to what, where will these links lead and do they go "forward and backward", and do I want to provide my audience with different means of navigating through the hypertext, or do I want them to follow a set path? I think that these are many of the same concerns shared by anyone who is creating a document for the web.

Later in this chapter, under the subheading "Disrupting the Linear", Bolter expands on the idea that hypertext creations are different from traditionally created documents. He writes, on page 137 "[f]or hypertext, displacement becomes the customary rhetorical strategy, whereas consecutive, chronological order is the exception. Hypertext reverses the relative values of ornamented and ‘clear’ narrative. When we read a hypertext, we expect to jump from one place and time to others." This is a key passage for me, in this chapter, as it verbalizes the organizational challenges of creating documents utilizing hypertextual elements. For my second hypertext assignment for this course I am contemplating creating a website that, at least in one organized manner, could be read as a travelogue. I am thinking of using a diary that I kept during a trip to Spain, incorporating many of the photographs that I took on that trip, and then creating a site that offers different navigational options to the audience. For example, the audience might choose to read through the site in a chronological and narrative format, moving "forward" in time and space. But the audience might also choose to move through the site by looking at images and text of specific "groupings" such as "Great Art" and "People" and "Daily Life" and "Picturesque Images". Some of these navigational options would be image driven, with text used to "caption" the images. On the other hand, navigation might be textually-based with images being used to illustrate the text. By offering different "organizations" to the audience, it might be possible to create a hypertext document that appeals to a wide-audience, in that it would acknowledge the increasingly apparent differences in preferences for navigation through hypertexts.

The final idea that I will touch upon in this Response to Bolter’s Writing Space is the idea of using hypertext to present fictional information in manners that are not traditional. When I think about this idea, three movies come to mind. I think about these movies as they took a "traditional" manner of presenting a story on film and manipulated that to create something new, much as hypertext is changing the way that authors manipulate their tools to create something novel. The first movie that came to mind is titled Memento, which came out earlier this year. This movie was "new" in that the story was presented in reverse chronological order, with the "conclusion" being the first scene, and then, as the movie progressed, moving backward in time through five- to ten-minutes scenes. It is a complex idea to verbalize, and I think I joined much of the audience in the theater by feeling bewildered and slightly "put-off" by the movie, at the beginning, until I was able to accept the new chronological path that was being presented. The second movie is called Run Lola Run and I believe that it is a German film. In Lola, the audience is first presented with a sequence of events and taken through a chronological story with the traditional three components of "beginning, middle, end". However, the movie then moves back to the "beginning" and retells this story, with one or two key differences in timing. So that while in the "first" story, Lola might have been stopped, as she ran along the street, by something in her path. However, in the second telling she might swerve around the obstacle and thereby alter the time it takes her to reach a certain location and therefore what occurs next is altered, too. I cannot recall how many times the story was told, except that it was very repetitive and fascinating. Lola is, to me, an excellent example of how some old tools are used to create something new. The final movie, titled Time Code plays with the idea of presenting information vital to the "narrative" of the movie in a simultaneous manner. In this last movie, the screen is divided into four rectangles, with action and dialogue occurring in each of these rectangles, simultaneously. The audience is free to watch the action and listen to the dialogue in whichever screen catches their attention. However, the movie-makers do "guide" the audience by increasing the volume in a particular rectangle and therefore bringing attention to what is occurring in that area. It is difficult to convey, in words, how each of these movies plays with accepted concepts of linear storytelling and navigation. However, each of these movies is similar to Interactive Fiction in that they are telling a story in a non-traditional manner.