if:book always has some interesting points on what both artists and audience are reaching toward in story. This is a particularly fine post regarding changing methods of reading, therefore, filling the demand with adjustments to writing styles and means.
"The boundaries between page and screen, inside and outside, imagination and reality are shifting around us. We are fumbling towards new ways to make and publish fictions online. Interaction needs to be more than the multiple choice options for what’s next. Readers want to inhabit a good book, not be pressured into helping to write it."
This gives the would-be writer much to think about. As I stand in the dark morning kitchen of James Agee’s Jay and Mary as they say goodbye (A Death in the Family), I feel the familiarity and yet the tension between them that’s hidden in learned marital politeness. Is this something I want to change or is it something I want to explore. In hypertext, a story such as Steve Ersinghaus’ The Life of Geronimo Sandoval, there are other possibilities–not options, but possibilities. In Agee’s novel then, it wouldn’t be of my doing, but I might see a character such as Jay, instead of kissing Mary goodbye and getting into his car, instead pull off his tie, unbutton his shirt, grab Mary by the wrist and take her back upstairs.
The post at if:book also questions the necessity of story arc and conclusion:
(…)has grown out of observation of how children actually play; they don’t enact complete adventures but drop in and out of narrative threads – walk along a wall and you’re escaping across a chasm; clamber up a tree and you’re creeping up on an enemy; enter an enclosed space and it becomes a homestead where imaginary meals are cooked and served.
My initial thought is that adults have learned to organize their thought process and this is essential to survival. But why can’t the child in us be retained for some areas of our lives–such as reading, as the posting suggests?
So then, Jay leaves, has second thoughts and returns home to find that Mary, his kids, the house are all missing and a Wal-mart stands in place. In the space of an instant of thought, his world of the past is no longer there.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology