Huh?

What's it all about, Travie? Although I've been publishing fiction since 1988 and futzing around online since the mid-'90s, I've never really experimented before with fiction that incorporates interactivity, modularity, randomization, etc.

Why This Story?

I picked "Parchment" to be the guinea pig for an online narrative experiment for a couple of reasons:

- It's not a plot-dependent story but more about the free association that happens while working out, having sex, taking a steam, etc. It's when my mind wanders, at least. I thought this type of story would lend itself better to nonlinear presentation than a story that was chronology dependent.

- It has a lot of sentences and phrases I really like, and this modular presentation allows the words and writing to get some of the spotlight traditionally reserved for the narrative. (Online, this story has moved closer to poetry than most of what I usually write.)

What the F*ck was it About?!

I'm mighty comfy with different readers having different interpretations. An editor thought one of my thanatotic smut stories presented a cautionary tale; a critic thought my first novel retold a Biblical narrative. To which, I'm like, Well, alright, then.

But opacity is a pain in the ass, I know. So, here's some breadcrumbs:

- Childhood power relations; adult relationship dynamics

- Such dynamics as narrative

- Narratives revealed from changes in distance or perspective

- Narratives written upon you, assumed, and self-authored

- Narrative as organizational architecture of understanding

- Insight from nonlinear contemplation; epiphanies via dreamtime

Kee-rist, that all sounds pretty hifalootin' ... more proof of my theory that you should never ask an artist about their work. It always ruins it. Also it's pretty general: you could apply those to almost all of my fiction.

What's With the Pictures?

The images are all manipulated stills of digital video I shot in Las Vegas and at the first anniversary of the Seattle WTO protests.

Uh ... power, capital, women's bodies as commodities, tabla rasa, Vegas as simulacra, speech, voice, authorship, sexuality, capitalism.... OK, so keeping a narrow focus is not my strong point.

So Whadya Think Now, Mr. CyberSmartyPants?

Of the 107 frames, there's some sentence/image combinations I really, really like. They say more than the entire print version, I think.

It's hard for me to assess the randomized linear structure, since I'm so familiar with the text. I do, however, like that the images are allowed to repeat. They accumulate new meanings and associations with each recurrence. I also like that allowing repetition makes it unclear when/if the story ends.

[update! 061904] This is now version 2.0, whcih finally has the mouseover effect I originally intended. I really like this for several reasons. It increases the interactivity from more than just advancing the story. Now you have to actually reach out and 'touch' the text to read it. And on some of the more sexual or violent lines, this has a really visceral effect I like. It makes the online reading experience a lot less detached, less 'specular.'

-->Huge thanks to Kathy Gill and Jennifer Hodgdon for figuring out the code to implement my idea!!<--

Ultimately I like this experiment and want to do more. The real challenge would be to apply formats like this to a more plot-driven story and try to make it still work.