"Storyspace," a hypertext platform like "Guide" or "HyperCard," was developed expressly to offer software for writing, for composition, for organizing ideas. My own attempts at writing with "Storyspace" are not sufficient for a valid assessment of whether this platform will truly support writing as a process analogous to thinking. There may be something to it, as the development was helped by, among others, a veritable author (Michael Joyce), a theoretician of writing (David J. Bolter), and a computer scientist (John B. Smith). As the software is to support writing, not text layout, "Storyspace" largely functions without typography; incidentally, it is available for the Macintosh and Windows operating systems.

In contrast to the "folding mechanism" of "Guide" and the "card and stacking mechanism" of "HyperCard," "Storyspace" may be compared to a nesting principle similar to that incorporated in Russian dolls: "Storyspace" contains a basic unit, "writing space," which is made up of two parts, i.e. a text field and a space in which more "boxes," as we will call them below, can be generated. This mechanism needs to be understood because it is important to the structure of "Quibbling" and for finding ones way in it.

Figure 1: Two levels from "Quibbling"

Figure 1 shows only two levels, first the "lake," "moon," and "prairie" parts located below the title, and then those in "moon."

- "Lake" is a small compartment with a sequence told in a relatively straight way. Its beginning is a scene in which Heta gives Priam a cigar box; the other boxes tell what she collected at the shore of Lake Michigan.

- "Prairie" (on the right in the diagram) is a writing space with highly condensed and sparse texts, in a way corresponding to the landscape.

- "Moon" is the main section. By double clicking on the writing space we reach the next level (indicated by the arrow), at which the four men, Jacob, Will, Priam, and Cy, are placed opposite three probably more extensive boxes ("mothers," "nun," and "arcs"). This contrast is not only an impression gained of the reader and viewer; the arrangement corresponds to the author's intention, as she explains in "arcs," which also contains some editing comments.

The writing space of a topic only shows the boxes of the next level. It could be that clicking into the space at "Priam" would reveal the boxes visible there, but would not indicate any further breakdown in depth. In actual fact, however, we can go through "cellaress" (a story in the story about "Margret & Henry") on to "Priam writes," a kind of diary about the effort of writing this story; then we could go on to "untitled" with two boxes, one of them on "Dimitra," and then on to "Catherine." Only her text field reveals that Priam lives with Catherine who, in turn, has a close relationship with Emma whose daughter Dimitra (as we learn in the text in "Dimitra") reminds Catherine of her own daughter whom she had given up for adoption as a baby.

This structuring pattern has consequences which will have to be covered in greater detail under the heading of "findings," and which can only be alluded to at this point: One must have read relatively much, gone over certain passages with very great attention, observed the hints hidden there and filed them away in one's memory "for further reference," if one wants to place this network of relationships opening up with "Catherine" into the proper place of the reconstruction of the story up to this point. This also reveals the type of fragmentation and the narrative structure. The entire story is subdivided into a great many boxes arranged more or less consistently by topics and "interlinked." The total scope is indicated to amount to 662 writing spaces, 1064 links, and 352 KB of data.

The arrangement of the pieces of the narration, and the possibilities for navigation attached to the "reader version," result in three or four, respectively, fundamental ways of reading this hypertext:

1. The first way of reading is indicated by the arrangement by topics of the boxes, mainly by subjects and characters, respectively: After the introductory sequence of "lake" one could go on to one of the women, perhaps "Heta," and then on to "mothers," and on to one of the men, perhaps "Priam," etc.
2. Another way of reading may be called traversing, i.e., moving across the network. In this approach, we may be guided by the author and take part in something like a guided tour, or we detect the points of departure and the links on our own and are driven by our own conjectures and associations.
3. Finally, there is a third way of reading, which I would call assembling. Even in the reader version of "Quibbling," the reader has a possibility to shift text boxes, establish his or her own order in the writing spaces, and rearrange boxes also between levels. Thus, for instance, we could select from "nun" the boxes of the four women and assign them to the men: Angela & Jacob; Agnes & Will; Heta & Priam; Hilda & Cy. After extensive reading in "Heta," the reader would know that she has a relationship with Priam, while it is still completely open at this stage of reading that also the other combinations may result in couples (cf. Section 4.3).

All three or four ways of reading are offered by the "object," and by accepting these valencies as requests to start exploring, we already talk about "tasks." Actually, all these modes of reading were tested. But the reading task by far exceeds merely trying these modes of reading.

- Index - 1 - 2 >> 3 - 4 - 5 - Bibliography -