Current Project- The Next Phase of Hyperfiction
| Now: Creating Database | Create Reports |
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I never pick small projects.
As with many things, there are two sides to this project. I'm going to be making a PhP application that, once people register, will keep track of the different pages they visit of my hyperfiction. "What's so cool about that?" you ask. "That's just a tracker," you say.
A tracker with the ability to act in real time, dear reader. In more abstract terms, I'll be keeping tabs on how readers are interacting with my works. And if you hyperfictionists out there aren't squirming yet, here's why you should. A short development list of capabilities, ranging from easiest to hardest:
- Providing a "homepage" where the user can view how much of each piece they have read, and return to where they were last time. I'm all for decentralized, non-linear narrative, but I still want to be reminded what the last thing I read was, before I read more.
- Make it possible for extra values to be associated with each user. Such as things they want to take out of one story, and put into others.
- Streamline and autonomize the code to the point where writing hyperfiction utilizing it is easy and intuitive.
- Open the doors to other hyperfictionists. Keep the entire thing open source during development, and get other hyperfictionists involved so that reader data is shared across works and writers. For example, choices you make in my work would influence what you see when you read Hyperfictionist A and B. Hopefully this results in slowly building a community of hyperfictionists and readers.
I'm sure most of you realize what you could do with this, but let me make everything plain. More interactivity.You could have "Steve looked at the knife on the table. He contemplated killing his wife. Slowly, he reached out to take it." Make the knife a link. The reader clicks it, it disappears. Then have a panel of things they've picked up. Allow them to re-insert them into the story later. Or into different stories. That's game-like. Have them use the elements to write something at the end.
Have readers actually write. Have it display whenever they click a link to it. Make it so others can visit it. Or let readers actually create their own links. Wasn't there something in the hyperfiction manifesto about co-authorship / us dying somewhere along the way? Wasn't that the price of putting a "w" in front of reader?
Writing that learns. A la A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer , start writing in such a way that it adapts to the reader.
There will be ever more temptation to what would amount to nothing more than a textual video game. Future users beware!
If you want to talk about this project with me, contribute, jam on ideas, feel free to email me.