blog: The Puzzle Box, Chapter 6 (and other items of interest)

Torsten Reimer, who runs this site, was suggesting that rather than just publicise The Puzzle Box I ought to write a word or two about what I'm trying to achieve with it and why it might be interest to student of the new media/hyperliterature field.

On the whole I'm suspicious of work which seems to need a technical or theoretical explanation before it can be properly appreciated, but basically this is my attempt to produce a new media, interactive but still user-friendly story for children and adults, in the tradition of The Box of Delights and (to a lesser extent) the Narnia books. One of the things I'm trying to do is explore the design and layout potential of Flash and HTML - I mean their potential for enhancing text on the screen, and making it a pleasurable reading experience rather than a trial of endurance - because I think this has tended to be neglected by new media writers, and there's actually a lot of mileage in it. I'm also trying to get hyperliterature away from the paradigm of plonking the reader in a text-maze and letting him/her grope around until some kind of pattern starts to emerge - which in theory is supposed to set readers free from authorial tyranny, but in practice usually makes them feel bewildered and victimised.

I was recently in correspondence with the hypertext writer and teacher Deena Larsen about a digital literature primer she's putting together called "Fundamentals" (http://www.deenalarsen.net/fundamentals/). It's a thoroughly useful piece of work, not too laden with jargon, full of examples of hyperliterature (including mine) from various practitioners around the Web, and also full of practical exercises for wannabee hypertext writers to try. The trouble is, it starts from the assumption that the link is the basic building block of electronic literature - and because of this opening assumption, it gives the impression that electronic literature "ought" to have lots and lots of little bits of text linked together by lots and lots of different links, in the manner of most texts published by Eastgate. I simply don't believe in this assumption. I'm not saying that hyperliterature shouldn't be like that, but in my opinion this is only one possible style from a whole potential range - and the fact that it's still being pushed as the preferred style, particularly in USA colleges, seems a bit limiting and problematic to me.

Incidentally, if anyone takes a look at The Puzzle Box (www.edwardpicot.com/puzzlebox) and wonders what's supposed to be new media about it, it has come to my attention that a lot of people aren't clicking on the opening-and-shutting box icon when they're inside the story. If you do this, it opens an interactive window with the Puzzle Box in it, and lets you look at the clue cards and help cards.

- Edward Picot

Yggdrasil image