• Links are a punctuation mark

• many Web contexts offer perverse incentives for the hypertext writer: deceptive linkbait attracts clicks.

• Raymond Queneau’s 1947 - Exercices De Style

  • retells the same short banal story 99 times in different styles (100 days of?)
    • emphasizing how different prose and storytelling mechanics change aesthetic impact through genre styles and literary conventions.

• Our goal is not to enforce good style or to decry bad style, but rather to explore how different approaches can create different effects and may convey distinct impressions to readers

  • by using different ways of splitting text, altering link anchors, and varying other mechanics of linking

• Writing narrative implies what we express, as well as what we omit

LEXIA

• links exist to join, and our links must have “writing spaces" (or pages, or lexia) to connect.

Dividing LEXIA

1. Into sentences and paragraphs

   • Useful, but sometimes a single action may span more than a sentence or more than a paragraph

2. Dramatic Beats

• divide the text into more-or-less coherent and discrete actions
• the sequence of images supplies an implicit narrative closure here, just as in the cinematic cut

3. Protagonist Throughline

• Follows the protagonist view/ sequence of events

4. Antagonist Throughline

• Follows the view/ sequence of events of everything besides the protagonist

5. Coover Splits

• Boundaries between lexia frequently fall between thoughts, scenes, or episodes, allowing each lexia to complete itself and to arrive at an intermediate resting place. A number of writers, however, have experimented with more abrupt transitions, notably transitions in the midst of a sentence.

6. Intensification

• Our progress through the scene might be interrupted by digressions that intensify the narrative. A separate path may omit those digressions, or replace them with digressive passages that defuse the implicit tension through humor or self-deprecation
• Cuts which intensify the reading, immerses more

7. Acceleration

• In hypertext, acceleration translates to shortened lexia, more suspenseful breaks, and increased propensity for inviting interaction, propelling the reader ever-faster toward the next lexia