[PREV - ATOMIC_THOUGHT]    [TOP]

ORIGINAL_DOOMFILE

                                              December 20, 2006


The first conception of "the doomfile"
was for each paragraph to be completely          HISTORY
independant of each other, with a set of
keywords associated with it.

There would be no distinction between the
beginning and the ending of a link,                       (Sept 22, 2013)
rather the presence of a keyword would           Much like the more recent
group that paragraph into a set.                 notion of "tag clouds".

This is an example of the way it might
have been:

  SHADOW MYTHS_EVOLVE PULP WRITING
  Maxwell Grant wrote the Shadow novels
  originally to supply a narrative about
  a character that was first used to
  narrate other stories on the radio.
  Years later, radio shows *about* this
  character were produced, with additional
  details filled in, and many details changed.
  Lamont Cranston became the one true secret
  identity, and the Shadow's hypnotic
  power of invisibility was introduced.
  Around the same time, rather than change
  the written stories to match the radio
  show, the books diverged further in a new
  direction, with the introduction of a
  different one true identity: Kent Allard.


  MYTHS_EVOLVE WRITING MYSTERIES ORIGINALITY
  A complication of the study of classic
  myths is that they clearly change over
  time.  Unlike, say, the novel "War and
  Peace", which has a fixed text and date of
  release, there is no one definitive
  version of the King Arthur legend.  In
  this respect, the "low art" of popular
  fiction resembles myth, to a large
  extent...  A series fiction character
  often evolves throughout the life of a
  series, and genres develop by shamlessly
  stealing motifs from other examples of the
  art, slowly mutating, breeding a stronger
  strain.  Holmes is not a terribly original
  work, having been preceded by the
  creations of Poe, Collins, and Gaboriau,
  and yet Holmes is the greater character.

  APHORISMS ORIGINALITY
  Maybe novelty is overrated

  WRITING CRITICISM HYPOCRISY
  The literary critic is the butt of many
  an unkind remark about "those who can't do".
  If these remarks don't apply to me,
  I can't offer any proof of it.


I dropped this disjointed paragraph idea
*very* quickly, largely because I realized
how difficult it was to write short,             I've seen similar problems
independant bits that could fit together         in people's attempts at
smoothly along multiple paths.                   writing hypertext fiction...
                                                 it's hard to get the words
One of my great           And also:              to make sense coming at them
discoveries was           how are                from different ways.
that readability          you supposed
was enhanced              to *read* it?              HYPERART
tremendously by
often leading off             The doomfiles can
with a connecting             (sort of) be read
phrase such as                straight through,     If the units in
"Further"; "And";             following the         the sequence
or "However",                 "browse sequence".    were as small as
"But", "Though".                                    originally
                                                    intended, it
It turns out that it's                              would be even
important to indicate                               more disjointed.
whether you're
continuing along the
same line, or changing
direction.                Graphical changes of
                          direction help to
                          indicate this also,
                          of course.





--------
[NEXT - AXIS_OF_COMPARISON]