Messages

1

General Chaos / Re: Calypsis

« on: August 17, 2011, 10:55:25 AM »

Okay, I'm not dead but have rather been developing a new site here:

http://trenthergenrader.com/calypsis/

To the right of the title you have three icons that display the story's metadata: time stamp, POV character, and location (the latter two are linked to a compendium, a Wikipedia-like site I'm building as part of the work rather than linking outside)

The body is more or less the same with colored links--red goes to the compendium, blue to other narratives, green to dream state narratives.

The footer presents the reader with different "jumps" to other narratives. The link tells the reader how much time is being traversed and the POV character. Or there's a completely random jump that will take you anywhere in the narrative.

Right now only 5-6 pages are currently linked. I've submitted this as a proof-of-concept site to my dissertation committee to get their feedback/reaction. If you get a second, take a look and let me know what you think.

Thanks!

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General Chaos / Re: Calypsis

« on: July 22, 2011, 05:10:35 PM »

Patrick, you've actually foreseeing version 2.0 of the whole concept. My solicitation for feedback is more along the lines of "how is the story flowing" rather than "what should happen next?" I've got a few different plot threads involving the characters that will result in a novel-length string of intertwined narratives, but my advisor is indeed encouraging me to make a different project very similar to what you describe.

Since this is probably going to be my dissertation though, apparently the university takes "single authorship" very seriously so, regrettably, I'm not really looking for plot ideas but rather input on the navigation.

I would love to get to know this community more and have some people here be part of project 2.0 where role-playing gaming (of a type) would be central to the emerging world.

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General Chaos / Re: Calypsis

« on: July 22, 2011, 02:17:47 PM »

Yeah, that's what I would do. I already have my own site running WordPress (http://www.trenthergenrader.com - not much there after a malware attack whacked my old WordPress install) and I would probably do a second WordPress install under a separate directory (e.g. trenthergenrader.com/calypsis). I tried setting up MediaWiki on my site last year and the documentation is pretty awful and I couldn't get anything to look half-way decent. I have a lot of WP experience though, so maybe that is the way to go...

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General Chaos / Re: Calypsis

« on: July 22, 2011, 12:14:46 PM »

I'd thought about WordPress too since I'm very familiar with it. The key would be finding a good theme to use and it does have Comment and tagging features. Maybe I'll fuss around with that too...

It's good to think about this stuff at 20K words rather than 80K!

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General Chaos / Re: Calypsis

« on: July 22, 2011, 10:57:06 AM »

Just to let you know, I'm taking a short hiatus from adding new vignettes to the site. We're going on vacation and I won't have a reliable Internet connection. I'm planning on tightening the prose in the existing vignettes and thinking more about the structure.

When I met with my advisor, he also thought tagging the stories better would be key (which means I'll be migrating it from wikispaces at some point). He also suggested that the narration become less chronologically driven and more game-like, so that readers could either begin with a randomly selected story or could "find" stories by doing search strings. He basically wants more interactivity between the reader and text.

In short, the "final" project (whatever that is) will probably look a lot different than what you have been reading. Hopefully when I start experimenting with these alternate interfaces you'll still be around to give some feedback, having read the more traditional/chronological structure. What I want to avoid doing is writing a novel, chunking it to 1K-word bits, add some hyperlinks and be done with it. Having said that, I want it to be a pleasurable and not frustrating reading experience. Too many hypertexts wind up being dissatisfying reads, I think.

Anyway, thanks for all your input. I'll be back at in earnest around August 1.

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General Chaos / Re: Calypsis

« on: July 20, 2011, 01:42:09 AM »

Awesome. Great feedback and a huge thanks to you both.

I like the idea of having options at the bottom of every page, maybe three: the next chronological story (which would likely switch characters' POV), that character's next chronological story (which would likely skip other events), and then maybe the author's order (which might jump back and forth in time, like a traditional novel does).

I suppose I could offer six links and include all of the above, only with the previous stories rather than the next one.

One of my discontents with other hypertexts is how quickly they can feel aimless.  What I'm trying to offer that different is many different entry points and many different ways to navigate the story, and to make the vignettes satisfying reading without necessarily needing to go forward or backward at that moment.

The tagging issue is one I've thought about and why I'm strongly considering moving the work off wikispaces. The tags are really inflexible. You can only create a page based on one tag and the pages are automatically sorted alphabetically with no way to modify it (or at least without some serious hacking). For example, if you pull a page based on the "fiction" tag, then you get them listed in order of title. So if I had an "Erik" tag then there's no way to order them in any other way besides alphabetically based on the title. I thought about titling each story with a number but that's both a) aesthetically ugly, and b) clumsy.

Good feedback on the links too, and I'm in agreement. I suspected that linking to mundane things cluttered up the page too much.

I've also mulled a time stamp as a header. It's probably not clear, but there are some significant jumps in time (in the biggest, Utter Loss of Being takes places 16 years before Alessandra).

Patrick, I love the idea of bringing in more realistic concerns too. I probably won't get into the nuclear issues in this particular novel but my hope is that I can attract enough of a following to do a second one of these.

The other thing I would mention, to either of you, is that you should feel free to write stories of your own based on this world if you want and add to the Rivertown wiki. I have to keep Calypsis as a single-author work unfortunately (and I do mean unfortunately) or I can't use it as my dissertation.

Again, thanks so much for your feedback. It's tremendously helpful! Hope you're enjoying the work. These vignettes are pretty first drafty but I'll be tightening them up in the coming weeks.

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General Chaos / Re: Calypsis

« on: July 19, 2011, 12:11:42 PM »

Okay, the novel is now up to 20K words, or about 1/4th done, which seems about right to me in terms of plotting. I'm taking a short break from producing new material and will revise what's already up. At this stage I have some specific questions pertaining to navigation I'd like input on, for whoever is willing.

How do you feel about navigating the stories? Unlike earlier hypertexts that played up the fragmented nature of knowledge-building, I'm doing something a little different where each page functions as a discrete, self-contained unit. Do you have problems or troubles of understanding where to go next? The concept is that you could literally jump in at any page and have a satisfying reading experience, but we're culturally hardwired to prefer linear narratives.

Also, how do you feel about the links to the other wiki? I'm trying to link back there as much as possible to suggest the depth of the content on that site but I'm not sure if having some obvious things (like canned food or boxes of matches) helps or hinders. I could easily scale it back so only essential items linked back.

Again, *any* comments are appreciated. I'm working in the dark here and haven't gotten any feedback despite having between 50-90 unique visitors daily. 

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General Chaos / Re: Calypsis

« on: July 14, 2011, 06:24:49 PM »

This is a link to the Prezi I used when I presented at the Games+Learning+Society 7.0 conference in Madison last month.

http://prezi.com/ql3jpv3g4r0r/gls-70-gaming-world-building-and-narrative/

(the class number is 236, by the way - introductory topics in cw)

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General Chaos / Re: Calypsis

« on: July 14, 2011, 04:02:48 PM »

Hey folks,

My name is Trent Hergenrader, the guy writing this online novel "Calypsis." Patrick kindly introduced me to these boards and pimped my work, all without a kickback. I'm a PhD candidate in creative writing and typically write stuff that's classified as science fiction, fantasy, and horror. If you're interested in my more traditional print fiction check out my work in the anthologies Federations and Best Horror of the Year #1.

It might interest you to know that this fictional world (a post-apocalyptic version of Milwaukee) was created entirely by a class of undergraduate students for a creative writing course entitled "Gaming, World Building, and Narrative." In the first third of the course we studied post-apocalyptic narratives across media, in the second part they populated a wiki with characters, items, and locations, and in the final third they created characters and explored the world via tabletop RPG sessions and wrote vignettes (1K words or less) describing a moment in their campaign. We used Vampire: The Masquerade as the system.

I was so impressed with their work that I wanted to write my own series of stories set in this world. I'm about 85% sure that Calypsis will wind up being my creative dissertation. This is an experiment in non-traditional publishing, intending to show how a self-published work can be of professional quality and generate interest via social media and word-of-mouth. Also all of the images on the site have been taken from Creative Commons-licensed works found on the Internet and altered via Photoshop filters.

Right now the novel is at about 16K words. I don't have any specific questions about it yet as I'm still focused on production. Once I hit 20K words (hopefully in the next week or so) I plan on doing a more comprehensive edit before I start on the next 20K. At this stage I would love to get some general impressions about the format, and you're invited (and strongly encouraged!) to leave feedback on the Discussion tabs for each page on the site. I'm also happy to get feedback or answer any questions here or via email at trent.hergenrader@gmail.com.

Patrick already linked the site below but I'll do so again: http://calypsis.wikispaces.com

My students' wiki (the source for a lot my writing) is here: http://rivertown.wikispaces.com

Thanks in advance!