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New plots for hypertext?: towards poetics of a hypertext node

Published: 06 June 2011 Publication History

Abstract

While the significance of hypertext links for the new ways of telling stories has been widely discussed, there has been not many debates about the very elements that are being connected: hypertext nodes. Apart from few exceptions, poetics of the link overshadows poetics of the node. My goal is to re-focus on a single node, or lexia, by introducing the concept of contextual regulation as the major force that shapes hypertext narrative units. Because many lexias must be capable of occurring in different contexts and at different stages of the unfolding story, several compromises have to be made on the level of language, style, plot and discourse. Each node, depending on its position and importance, has a varying level of connectivity and autonomy, which affects the global coherence of text.
After focusing on relations between the notion of lexia (as a coherent and flexible unit) and the notion of kernel in narrative theory, an explanation of rules behind contextual regulation is presented, along with the basic typology of nodes. Then an attempt to enhance existing plot pools for hypertext fiction is undertaken. Several suggestions for the new plots, offered by the node-centered approach, are introduced.

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Cited By

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  • (2021)Genre-bending on an Academic Platform: Three Creative Works on ScalarProceedings of the 32nd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media10.1145/3465336.3475099(211-215)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2021
  • (2021)Hypertext as a Lens into Interactive Digital NarrativeInteractive Storytelling10.1007/978-3-030-92300-6_51(509-524)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2021
  • (2019)Narrating the Sociality of the DatabaseProceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media10.1145/3342220.3343654(117-121)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2019
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cover image ACM Conferences
HT '11: Proceedings of the 22nd ACM conference on Hypertext and hypermedia
June 2011
348 pages
ISBN:9781450302562
DOI:10.1145/1995966
  • General Chair:
  • Paul De Bra,
  • Program Chair:
  • Kaj Grønbæk
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 06 June 2011

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Author Tags

  1. coherence
  2. fiction
  3. hypertext
  4. kernel
  5. lexia
  6. narrative
  7. node
  8. poetics

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HT '11
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HT '11: 22nd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia
June 6 - 9, 2011
Eindhoven, The Netherlands

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Overall Acceptance Rate 378 of 1,158 submissions, 33%

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Cited By

View all
  • (2021)Genre-bending on an Academic Platform: Three Creative Works on ScalarProceedings of the 32nd ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media10.1145/3465336.3475099(211-215)Online publication date: 30-Aug-2021
  • (2021)Hypertext as a Lens into Interactive Digital NarrativeInteractive Storytelling10.1007/978-3-030-92300-6_51(509-524)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2021
  • (2019)Narrating the Sociality of the DatabaseProceedings of the 30th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media10.1145/3342220.3343654(117-121)Online publication date: 12-Sep-2019
  • (2017)Tiree TalesProceedings of the 28th ACM Conference on Hypertext and Social Media10.1145/3078714.3078716(15-24)Online publication date: 4-Jul-2017
  • (2016)Location Location Location: Experiences of Authoring an Interactive Location-Based NarrativeInteractive Storytelling10.1007/978-3-319-48279-8_40(419-422)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2016
  • (2012)Exploring (the poetics of) strange (and fractal) hypertextsProceedings of the 23rd ACM conference on Hypertext and social media10.1145/2309996.2310027(181-186)Online publication date: 25-Jun-2012

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