“This is the old kind of interactive writing: writing so dense or so slippery that the mind must do a dance to keep a grip on it.”
No kidding. At first I had no idea what this reading was about, the text seems to jump everywhere like a streaming consciousness. But by reading carefully and staying along with it, Shelley Jackson gives some sound advice on writing as well as describing hypertext and the differences of our normal narrative writing that we are familiar with.
“In hypertext, you can’t find out what’s important so you have to pay attention to everything, which is exhausting like being in a foreign country; you are not native.”
I believe this is what is happening to most of us reading this chapter. Hypertext is different from the normal style of writing that we are used to. We are dropped off in a foreign style text to which we are not native. Narrative writing, she explains, is worried about what comes next. It’s beginning, middle end. We are used to this and sometimes we don’t have to think while reading narrative style writing. Hypertext allows for a non-linear style of writing in which she describes is always at the beginning and the end. Instead of having a set of instructions on how to read, the reader has a choice of what comes next. I think this is an interesting concept. Jackson goes on to explain her writing saying, “I am interested in writing that verges on nonsense, where nonsense is not the absence of sense, but the superfluity of it.”
After some initial confusion, like being stuck in a foreign country, this reading makes sense with more descriptions and advice. An interesting read and interesting points about what and how hypertext works.
One Response to Craig’s Stitch Bitch Thoughts