by Debra Di Blasi
“Haunted” is
what I call a print hyperfiction. The story was created in Storyspace®, a
computer software program that allows the writer to compose individual sections
(or vignettes) in windows, connecting them via links that function very much
like links in a web page. For example:
(1) The
“Haunted” section, “In your neck of the woods,” was written in a window
of its own.
(2) The word
“neck” leaped out as something I wanted to explore further.
(3) “neck” was
highlighted and linked to a new empty window.
(4) Relative to
what I’d written in previous windows, “neck” made me think of
the rural life, and of a disturbing
early memory of my mother pulling the
heads off chicken by laying a broomstick
handle over them and yanking. I
switched the chicken to a turkey, and
began writing: “Sun is hot . . . .He
presses the turkey’s neck to the ground
. . .”
Once the story
feels complete in cyberspace, the windows are printed out and reorganized
according to what will look and read best on the page. I’m convinced that this
process allows greater freedom in storytelling and helps the writer produce
fiction more similar to the way we really think: nonlinear, leaping from one
word or image association to another. Also, the writer is forced to pay more
attention to the visual aspects of the text on the page, and to contextual
patterns set up between sections. Finally, because hypertext is interactive and
so much of the emotional force arises from an accumulation of images and ideas
rather than from a concluding epiphany, a print hyperfiction is more like the
cumulative effect of listening to music—and, I think, can sustain the same
beauty and resonance as, say, a nocturne.
Debra Di Blasi’s
current website: http://home.earthlink.net/~ddblasi
A new website is
under construction; check back sooner or later: www.debradiblasi.com