*casual 2 week hiatus….*

So, I’ve been thinking about hypertext recently…

Hypertext storytelling is FAR more expansive than just ‘choose your own adventure’ style books. While authors do have a large amount of control over that people think when they read/ consume what they are presented, this becomes more complicated with the idea of telling stories through hypertext, as no specific narrative, structure, causality and ending mean that interpretation of what people make of it. You interpret the story based on how you have created it.

Although this idea is rather mind-blowing, and at first hypertext fiction sounded exciting, i don’t think its something i would really enjoy. A story which is different each time you read it, as well as for each person that reads it is cool, but reading has so much more worth than just giving you an experience, it creates shared experiences (with minor interpretive differences) which you can discuss and learn from. You can learn from them because you are learning from what the author is presenting, but if fiction was included into the hypertext structure, I just don’t see how that could work. If I’m choosing where I am going next, I can learn things and explore things but I wont get a sense of what the author was trying to get across and where the story was going to take me, I would have to take myself there, which seems far less fun.

Honestly, the way I am picturing it now, is like browsing a wiki made up of fiction and false events/ knowledge, with no specific structure. So what is there to keep me reading/ draw me in?