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Teaching the hypertext novel.

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Abstract

How can students learn to negotiate the non-linear structures, multiple, divergent readings, and open-ended narratives of hypertext fiction? How can they study electronic texts to understand narrative elements and their effects on readers? This paper discusses pedagogical strategies for helping beginners read this genre, as well as how new media texts encourage creative inspiration, growth of writing craft, and students' understanding of cultural effects of technology.

However intimidated my students feel anticipating our study of a hypertext novel, it takes no more than a little description of what we'll engage to make them comfortable. [1] After all, a hypertext novel is exactly what it claims to be: a novel that's built with hypertext--the very same sort of text that they and you and I surf on the internet. Once reassured, they then typically have the same question. You mean we're going to read this entire book on the computer screen? It's not that uncomfortable, and it is worth it.

Let me take one step back and explain the hypertext novel more fully. As described, such a novel is a text with links throughout. The text is not an extended document, but rather a series of interconnected writing spaces--autonomous text windows that typically run less than a page. Each writing space is titled and contains from one to several of the links mentioned above. The links tie each writing space to another, and sometimes several others. In some cases, one link will lead in different directions at different times, depending on how the initial link was reached. But no more on this. Suffice to say, a hypertext novel takes shape in the reading in part through the linking choices a reader makes as she moves from writing space to writing space. It's probably also important to mention that most hypertexts nowadays are hypermedia texts, complete with still and moving images--which are sometimes interactive--and sound.

There are also a few important differences between the hypertext environment of a web page and that of StorySpace, the application with which most hypertext novels are written and read. Many of these differences make the hypertext novel reading experience more manageable and productive. For example, the StorySpace "save" function allows readers to preserve any given path they've traced through a hypertext novel and assign it a distinctive name. This path can be restored and continued, or restored for any other function, such as comparison to other paths the reader carves into the novel. The "notes" function allows readers to append marginal comments to any writing spaces to which they'd like to add specific notes. Search functions allow readers to locate key words or phrases in the novel's...

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