Hyperfiction: Click away!

Reading through some of the blogposts, I notice a lot of my own thoughts being spread out before me. A lot of hyperfiction surprises and story comprehension problems.

I thought in both stories, it was either one way or another. In Charmin' Cleary, I understood the storyline and the language being used. However, trying to navigate through the pages was another story completely. It would jump from storyline to storyline, sometimes it would repeat a paragraph I had read before, and sometimes I would get lucky enough to read something I hadn't seen before. It was like rolling a dice. The instancy of the process didn't necessarily make it easier to digest, because I'm pretty sure if this story was laid out on the page in front of me without all the nonsense of clicking, I would understand it much easier. However, with the day and age we are in, with the hyperlink mania and the struggles of reading a long article, perhaps the clicking made it more modern and attractive.

Anyway, it was different and it kept my attention. I'm not completely sure I reached the end of the story. I'm not sure what the point of the story was. I think it was a rambling of ideas that seemed to connect with the plot sprawled out on different pages. I'll give it creativity points.

Moving on to Twelve Blue. Points for poetic courage and vocabulary. It was much easier to navigate with the simple hyperlinks that would continue on to the next page. But the words written on the page were excruciating to follow. It was almost beatnik in nature, I definitely felt the intensity of the poetry. I didn't understand a lot of what I was reading, but I could feel it pretty well. I'm not sure if the point of the story is to be understood, but being a writer myself, I definitely want to try writing a piece like this. I feel putting stories/poems/any work of art online is courageous, but making it hyperfiction puts it on a whole different level.

Basically, if you are going to make the site easy to navigate, make the language understandable. If you are going to make it hard to maneuver, make it relevant. People will want to click away no matter what is on the page, because that's the society we live in. That's all I'm sayin'.