Advanced Hypertext Poetry and Fiction

An On-Line Class Offered by
The New School Online University
Creative Writing Department
New York, New York

Offered periodically (next dates TBA)
Instructor: Robert Kendall

Course Description

This course is for students who already have experience creating poetry or fiction in the new literary medium of hypertext. Each student should come to class with a hypertext work-in-progress. Students will receive highly focused feedback on their work and guidance in advanced authoring techniques. Each student work will be scrutinized to see how it might best benefit from visual navigation aids such as maps, structural controls such as predefined paths, or dynamic elements such as conditional or random links. Students will explore methods for test-reading their work and resolving structural problems. They will also have the option of working with the Word Circuits Connection System, which introduces sophisticated hypertext functions into Web texts. Students can work with either Storyspace or HTML in either Windows or Mac environments.

From the Instructor

This class will be an intensive workshop for your hypertext-in-progress. My guidance and the feedback from other class members will help you make your work the best it can be. Don't worry if your creative process seems to have stalled and you don't know where to go next with your project. We will help you come up with new ideas and directions if necessary. If you have run up against technical or artistic problems that seem insoluble, having some fresh eyes and additional knowledge brought to bear upon the work may help you get over the hump. On the other hand, if your piece is generally in good shape, we will help you polish and refine it. You will also learn how readers actually interact with your work, which may be quite revealing. Readers don't always navigate a hypertext the way its author expects them to.

We will go through each student project systematically evaluating not only the writing, but also the quality of the interaction and the effectiveness of the overall hypertext structure. We will pose questions such as: Should the structure be more flexible to enable a greater variety of different readings? Does the reading stall because of too many loops in the structure? Does the reader have enough information to make informed navigational choices? Could additional interface or structural components (such as an image map, conditional links, or a progress gauge) make this work more effective?

I will do my best to introduce you to new technical approaches and software tools you could find useful. The look and behavior of a hypertext is partly determined by the tools at its author's disposal. The better your software skills, the more fully you will be able to realize your artistic vision. Discovering new potential in the medium can open doors for you as a writer.

For those who wish to work with advanced Web techniques, the class will offer a tutorial for the Word Circuits Connection System, a powerful new JavaScript library that I have codeveloped. This system enables HTML hypertexts to be more responsive to the reader's needs. It can track the reader's progress, indicate how much material is left to be read, activate links only if the circumstances are appropriate, display text randomly or conditionally, and provide many other enhancements. Even if you choose not to use the Connection System in your current work, you may find it valuable for future projects.

The Course Outline below lays out the main issues we will cover in regard to your own work. Though I've assigned topics to specific weeks, this outline will be a set of flexible guidelines rather than a rigid schedule. We will focus on issues as they come up in discussions of particular student works. I intend to let the course adapt itself to your individual needs as much as possible.

Course Outline

Week 1:

Orientation and introductions.

Week 2:

Software options: To make sure you're using the best tools for your project, we'll consider the relative merits of HTML editors, the Connection System (a JavaScript library for advanced hypertext features), and Storyspace.

Assignment: Read my column But I Know What I Like.

Week 3:

Elements of quality interaction: Facilitating reader agency (or control) by enabling truly variant readings and making options meaningful; maintaining reading momentum by keeping new material easily accessible and making recurrence meaningful; allowing satisfying closure.

Elements of effective structure: Integrating form and content and making the overall structure comprehensible.

Week 4:

The concept of organic hypertext: Narrative or thematic elements as program objects with properties and behaviors.

Conveying information to the reader: Maps, navigation bars, progress gauges, prompts, and link descriptions.

Week 5:

Organizational methods: Paths, categories, geometric patterns, and temporal rhythms.

Week 6:

Dynamic elements: Conditional links, variable text, and randomization.

Week 7:

Multimedia: Graphics, animation, and audio.

Week 8:

"Usability" testing: Examining assumptions about how people read hypertext and exploring methods for test-reading your work.

Archival considerations: Ensuring that your work will be readable years hence.

The final details: Proofreading, title page, and instructions to the reader.

Week 9:

Publishing and reading opportunities.

Keeping in touch: Mailing lists, conferences, Web resources.

Course Requirements

Complete a work of hypertext poetry or fiction or make substantial progress toward its completion.

Contact Robert Kendall at
kendall@wordcircuits.com