Q. Do
you think the relationship between reader and writer is different on an
internet based project?
Not really.
The reader calls the shots in both print and online.
The reader
has to find the publication, the reader has to want to read it, and it
has to hit that readers at the right time of their lives for it. At any
point the reader can put the book down, or go elsewhere. It's the writers
job to keep delivering the goods so that a certain number of sympathetic
readers continue to read and enjoy.
253 invites
people to write the sequel, which means that there can be a difference
there if the site allows it.
And the
provision of mailto links mean that I've had so much more mail about 253
than any other novel.
So I guess
it's easier for readers and writers to chat online but off-site. But it's
very little different in substance from going to an SF convention and
having someone who's read your books start to talk about them.
Oh, there
is one other big difference. The reader pays money for both Internet fiction
and printed fiction, only if it's a book, the writer gets some of it.
Q. What sort of responces have you got from readers?
A good number
of accesses, which show most people are reading a substantial number of
characters, say about 10. About an email a day, all positive as far as
I can remember, but with some very helpful bug reports thrown in.
Q. Why make the sequel to 253 collaborative?
First, I was tired! Also, it just seemed to me that it was the Web, and it should be collaborative. It seemed to me that asking for mailto feedback was more or less the barest minimum and that something further was required. But also, since the characters have to be very different and varied, it seemed to me that a variety of different authors would come up with a variety of different characters.
Q. What will writers get out of being involved with the sequel? (or) Why should they contribute?
The same
thing I got in putting up the novel originally: you're part of something
new, different, fun that couldn't really have happened before, or rather,
could not have happened with anything like the same ease and grace. This
is something the Web audience does for itself for fun.
Q. What advise would you give to some one thinking about writing a hypertext story?
That it's far more work than writing an ordinary story. A traditional story works through how much it leaves out. You focus on one character, and how things look from their point of view. You describe only the things you absolutely have to, to keep the story moving while giving the reader's enough information to begin to see and feel it.
What you don't do is create all the stuff all the other characters see, or all the stuff you could see if left to walk around the story. You don't have to create interesting material that may never be read by anybody, ever. You have to accept that, provide the material, and make all of it good. That feels enormously wasteful and enormously taxing, but you've got to do.
You keep starting all over again. In telling a good story, the characters take over, the situation takes over, there is a sense for the writer by the end that he or she is just surfing the wave of narrative. It carries you.
This doesn't happen with a hypertext novel. You start all over with each new discreet section. Whether you offer the reader a choice at the end of each Web page to go on to two different choices and their consequences, or like 253, you're exploring everything in a closed space, the result is the same. Each section starts over, and that is exhausting.
I used to say that writing a story was only half the work. Then came the selling of it to a publisher, the proof-reading it, and the publicity work on it.
Well the
proof-reading is 4 times as long: there's spelling to be checked and revisions
to make sure are followed through. There's links and tables and image
maps to check, on your own machine and from the server and then... you've
got to print invites, send out your own press release, register with search
engines, etc…
Comments about this or any other Reactive Interview can be addressed to the editor L J Winson via email at leo@innotts.co.uk
Geoff Ryman can be contacted at: Ryman.Worksltd@btinternet.com while 253 can be found at http://www.ryman-novel.com/
