(no subject)

[labellementeuse]

Guys, I need some help. I'm writing about how web pages and books are structured differently. It's really easy to give examples for non-fiction (I'm probably going to talk about feminism 101 and TV tropes) but I'm really struggling to think of examples for fiction, especially narrative fiction, because all of the best examples I can think of are, of course, fanfiction. I'd really like to find some stuff that demonstrates flexible narration, like Crysothemis' Fix or Cesperanza's Scrabble; I'd also really like something like Catherynne M. Valente's The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making that includes links to all parts (instead of just before and after parts) on each page, like most Big Bang fics do, for example. (I feel like before and after merely replicate the structure of the conventional book.)

Comments

[meigui]

This might be a good starting point?

[labellementeuse]

That's really cool, thank you! (God I love that xkcd comic.)

[caramarie]

Would IFs work? I think most you'd download to play, but you can get them in browser, or more basic ones just done with hypertext. Everything about which I know from when yhlee's written about them. ...I've played visual novels, but not straight text games. I think Hera might know more about them. But then where do you draw the line between that and video games?

Less interactive, but Juxtapose Fantasy is web-based original slash fiction – you sign up on a subscription basis, so most of it's pay, but the way the stories are produced seems more fanficcy than traditional print publishing.

Or, I'm sure there're online shared universes. And they must do wikis and stuff. I actually use a wiki to keep track of all the characters and everything for one of my worlds... I also read RPG guides for fun... I think that's something you could use for storytelling, but I'm not sure how much it's actually been done.

Not entirely related, but have you read Aidan Chamber's This is All? I think it would possibly work better as a well-constructed ebook than it does as a straight novel. Um, because it isn't a straight novel, I guess - but it does a lot with the going back and forward, reading two texts at the same time, having the protag's essays and poems – having an index!

Um, can you tell I'm procrastinating at the moment?

[labellementeuse]

Not entirely related, but have you read Aidan Chamber's This is All? I think it would possibly work better as a well-constructed ebook than it does as a straight novel. Um, because it isn't a straight novel, I guess - but it does a lot with the going back and forward, reading two texts at the same time, having the protag's essays and poems – having an index!

Actually, that's a really good example. My central thesis is that there's basically nothing a website can do that a physical book can't do too, but that some things - including doing back & forth etc - are faster/slicker/better on web than on paper.

[cyphomandra]

Are you aware of Geoff Ryman's '253'? It started as a web page, but there's also a book form - 253 passengers on a tube train, 253 word descriptions of each of them, vast numbers of hyperlinks. Here - not my favourite of his works, but certainly interesting from a structural pov.

(and I saw this on china_shop's reading list, but obviously I am familiar with you from a previous Yuletide!)

[paxpinnae]

I don't know if your analysis includes graphic works as well as written ones, but once you get into infinite canvas territory you can have real fun. One quick example would be Knite by Yuumei. It's mostly set up like a traditional graphic novel/comic, but with some animated transitions that really help bring the story to life in ways that you don't get in either a cartoon or a flat image.

[blademistress.livejournal.com]

Look in these eyes (http://petronelle.livejournal.com/182236.html?style=mine) is a Superman/Batman fic set in the style of the Superman/Batman comic.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Cool! But I'm actually looking for non fanfiction, stuff I can respectably cite for class. (I hate doing this, of course, but I just am not ready for my class to know I read slash, yanno?)

[wanderlight.livejournal.com]

Hm, that's tricky. A lot of books I know which fool around with narrative chronology do so in a way that you still kind of need to read the book in order to "get it." The best example I can think of is Manifesto, which ... is basically a blank white paperback novel, no writing on the outside, no author or title. I own it, I found a copy in a local independent bookstore, but I don't know how you can reliably find it. It's basically the stream-of-consciousness life story of a nameless typical disaffected youth, & the book is made of exactly 200 pages of nonchronological paragraphs of first-person narrative. This (http://dedrabbit.com/) is the book website. This (http://microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/zines/1986/) is one of the few places online which gives a review/blurb thing -- it's incredibly nontraditional so it's hard to describe, but if this sounds like something that would work for your paper, give me a shout & I'll try to keep explaining it? :)

As for parallel narratives -- a YA novel did that a few years back. I think? I didn't read it so I can't say for sure, but it's Flipped (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped). A very "literary" novel did the same thing (in prose poem, 400-page-long format, if I recall), but unfortunately I can't remember the name of it.

[deutscheami.livejournal.com]

I can't give you a good example for fiction, but if you'd like to talk about poetry, Stephanie Strickland wrote V (http://home.roadrunner.com/~strickland10021/V.html),which is a collection of poems that exists in three parts: two printed (Wave Son.nets/Losing L'una), one on the Internet (Vniverse).

She does some really interesting work with structure and access points-- and specifically addresses the poetical narrative structure in one poem--

"7.113

Gentle Reader, begin anywhere. Skip anything. This text
is framed
fully for the purposes of skipping. Of course

7.114

it can
be read straight through, but this is not a better reading,
not a better life."

--"Errand Upon Which We Came"