Because I’ve been sick for the past fortnight and missed the week 7 symposium, I decided to try to answer the questions raised myself.
- Which is more important in making a great book, form or content?
- Without a conventional narrative structure, how much control does an author lose?
1. Definitely content.
2. I think this question should be re-worded to “how much control does an author gain?”
When a convention narrative structure is lost, the author has so much more scope to do what they wish. Without the constraints of a beginning, middle and end, he/she can really write in any direction they want, therefore gaining a far larger amount of control over structure.
Take George P. Landow, for example. In Hypertext 3.0, he strays from typical narrative structure and, in doing so, more effectively demonstrates the nature of his subject: hypertext.
