Writer's Resources

Exciting new hypertext fiction projects seem to be emerging with increasing frequency in the last few months. One such project is The Company Therapist created by Pipsqueak Productions. Of course these projects do not just appear over night a lot of work goes on behind the scenes. In our latest interview we talk to Christopher Werby about this exciting new web site.

Q. What attracted you to doing a collaborative hypertext fiction project?

My partner (and wife) and I have been involved with hypertext since 1989. In 1990, she created what we believe are the first "hypergraphic" applications, "A Field Trip into the Rainforest" and "A Field Trip to the Sea" both still distributed by Sunburst Communications. In one of my incarnations, I am an attorney. I worked on an extremely complex case in 1989-1990 and created a hypertext evidence system which helped win the case. It was 6,000 files and 30 megs of text when we were through, each fully linked in a web of data. I developed a lot of theories about how to think about the logic of links through that experience.

Anyway, we both are comfortable with a hypertext sensibility.

For The Company Therapist we were trying to devise a web-based entertainment that would also serve an educational purpose. It's what we do--coming up with "authentic" activities in a computer context that stimulate learning. It was clear that the project was going to have to be collaborative if merely because we couldn't do all the work ourselves. Eventually, we hope to have about a hundred writers working on the site.

Q. Why did you choose to base the story around a psychiatrist?

In looking at other collaborative projects, we found that a major problem was that the projects often attempted to meld the voices of the individual authors into a single work. Unless the authors are exceptionally well matched, I think that this is a flawed concept. The result is often an unsatisfying patchwork. Beyond that, it takes what should be the strength of collaborative writing--the diversity of its writers--and turns it into a weakness. It tries to get a group of writers to emulate what could probably be done better by a single writer.

The Company Therapist, by contrast, attempts to utilize the diversity of the writers to create a diversity of characters. Each writer's individual voice is showcased through the uniqueness of their character. The psychiatrist is a constant that holds the "story" together. Each writer collaborates by writing the transcripts (and collateral material) of the therapy session involving the doctor and their character. The stories of the characters, revealed mostly through monologues, is what creates the heart of the site.

We thought a psychiatrist's practice provided an ideal vehicle. Characters can talk about anything, past or future, inner turmoil or outer conflict. Characters can be painfully honest with their therapist, but don't have to be. Although there is a specific format, the therapy sessions allow for a great degree of freedom for each writer to write about what is of interest. And each character is separate in their sessions. Interactions between characters are revealed over the course of time, rather than in dialogue scenes together. Someday, though, we would love to have a group therapy session with the writers working their characters live through a fictional world chat room. But that is in the future.

Our psychiatrist has signed a contract with an HMO to provide mental health services for a large computer company, Silicon Impressions. So many of his patients know each other and can interact outside of his office. This "back channel" allows each of the writers to interact with other characters, to the degree they desire. Also, many issues of the work place can be explored through their impact on the characters.

Q. Although you give plenty of opportunities for the reader to explore your hyperdrama there is still a fairly rigid structure. How important do you feel this structure is to the over all experience when someone reads or interacts with this site?

That's an important question. It gets into the whole linear narrative versus hypertext fiction question. I'm afraid my answer may be a bit long-winded.

We've embraced a "top down" approach to hypertext, where each file is linked to related files at a higher or lower level of abstraction. So a page detailing all of the patient's transcripts as a group, for example, are linked to the individual transcripts (lower level) or to the patient's overall file (higher level). Similarly the patient's overall file is linked to the file cabinet (higher level) and may be linked to the patient's doodles (lower level). Each file can be linked to several higher level and several lower level files.

We think the structure is critical for a number of reasons. We are trying to create a unified narrative line melding the collaboration of many different authors. In essence, we're creating a holder into which a number of different writers can pour content. But we want it to feel like one thing to the readers--not like a group of disparate articles in a literary journal, for example. Once the reader understands our structure, they know all they need to know to explore as many characters as they want as thoroughly as they want.

While poetry can often benefit from the metaphorical or imagistic links that hypertext can provide, the links in hypertext narrative material need to serve the story or the story can get lost in a maze of diverting detail. A simple example is the difficulty of reading a story in one of those "annotated" volumes. I have a volume of scholarly annotations to Sherlock Holmes stories. The annotations, which are thickly strewn through the text, give fascinating details about the people, places, and things mentioned in the stories. But the stories themselves are virtually lost. If I want to read a Sherlock Holmes story, I vastly prefer to read a simple version of the text. And those annotations are just one level deep. Hypertext can draw the reader away from the narrative on a linked journey through a landscape wholly unrelated to the story.

However, we welcome the authors to create other forms, we just link to them separately. Many of the patients come from a large computer company. So, for example, it makes sense for a character to write a hypertext journal. We would love to link to that as collateral material from the patient's file. If there was a character who was a poet, it wouldn't make sense to carry out his therapy sessions in iambic pentameter. But it would be perfectly sensible to link to the patient's poetry. In fact, it would make the site much richer. A partial example can be found now in Sylvia Bows' file. She created a family collage which is linked to the site and reveals some fascinating detail about her character and her family.

Q. How have you attracted writers to the site and what sort of reactions have you had to the site so far?

The site is in preview prior to our August 1 launch date and so we haven't publicized the site much yet. We have posted announcements and requests for contributions on the writing groups of USENET, AOL and OWLs (On-line Writing Labs). The response has been somewhat disappointing so far from those venues, actually. There are a few writers from USENET who are nibbling at the idea of contributing, but only one has actually started writing yet. We find that we get better response talking one on one with our friends and acquaintances about the site.

We also tried to reach out to some of the senior citizens active on Senior Net. It didn't go well at all. The response was quite odd--almost paranoid, in fact. We are hopeful that future efforts to reach out to this community are better met. We are also talking to several universities who are interested in including our site as part of their curriculum, but that will become more active during the Fall semester.

Once people check out the site, they are often quite enthusiastic. They often see lots of possibilities. We are not wedded to text and graphics solely. As the web's bandwidth improves, we have structured the site to allow for the inclusion of audio and video, for example. We are investigating chat room technology too. For example, we'd love to have a group therapy session with the authors' "driving" their characters live.

People really seem to like the site as readers, too. We've talked to people who can't wait for the next instalment of one or the other of the characters. They get caught up in the continuing drama of the character's lives, I guess like soap opera. Due to the hypertext structure, it is possible for a reader to follow just one or two characters. If we get the hundred writers that we feel is our full capacity, it would be very difficult for one reader to get all the content out of the site. An analogy might be being immersed in a world where a lot of things are happening, but you only have interest in certain issues and people.

We really think we are on to something. So if you know any writers who might like to contribute, pass along our URL and tell them to check us out.

After August 1, we will be doing a heavy media blitz--sending out press packets and the like. We hope that this will attract more writers to the site as well as more readers.

Q. Why wait until August to launch the site officially?

This was a good move. We learned a lot between our preview and our official launch. On the Web, users will give you just one chance. If you start marketing a site before it is really ready for "prime time", you will not get a second look. We needed to figure out a lot of things about how to best showcase the work, how to improve navigation, how to sharpen the interface, etc. The comments that we got were invaluable. We overlooked some obvious things because our efforts were focused elsewhere. As an example, our premise as a whole was difficult to find, unless the user went "backstage". Someone pointed that out and it was easily corrected. But if a bunch of visitors had gone to the site and couldn't quickly figure out what it was about, we would have lost them forever.

Q. Response to attract writers for different projects on the internet seems to meet with varying amounts of success. Do you think this is because the internet is something people like to turn on and then turn off like they do more traditional entertainment systems, and what would you say to persuade people that yours is the project to get involved in?

Actually, I think writers don't like to write very much. Somebody else said that "writers hate writing, but they love having written." We have to be patient on this issue. We are asking amateur writers to write for free and, until they perceive it to be in their own best interest to do so, they will not. We try to make it in the writer's interest to contribute to our site by featuring their contribution as separate from those of other writers, and by actively marketing our site. If writers believe that their work will be nicely showcased on a popular, well marketed site, they will feel that it is in their best interest to write, even for free. This is especially true because we encourage writers to write about what they care about, even if it is in the context of a patient's therapy session. So we define the world and the form of the writing and leave it to the writer to provide the content. Our form is also designed to remove elements of narrative "arc" (beginning, middle and end) which can stymie writers. So, we try to make it relevant to the writers, relatively easy for them to execute, and exciting once the work is complete. Once a writer has written two sessions and seen their work up on the web site, they're hooked. Their character has come alive.

Q. In retrospect what advise would you give to someone else tying to set up a similar project?

The graphics have to be appealing and the linking structure has to be logical and unobtrusive. But remember that it's all about content. Try to make the site as narratively interesting as possible. People will return because the stories are good, not because of the graphics or the artistic linking structure. I think that people are looking for entertainment on the web. We are just getting through the period, for example, where people were thrilled to see something--anything--move on a web page just because it was moving. I'm reminded of the Cinematograph and the Lumiere Brothers. We're at the point where movies were when they showed moving images of baby being fed. Edwin Porter's "The Great Train Robbery" hasn't been made yet. The opportunity to help define the grammar of a new medium is exciting and challenging. One thing is for sure, though. If you figure out how to do something well, it will be rapidly appropriated by others on the web. Be prepared to work all the time. Mornings, nights, weekends, they all get sucked up in the venture. Oh, and there's no money in it either. But this doesn't stop independent film makers, so it shouldn't stop you. Best of luck!

Comments and questions to leo@innotts.co.uk
Copyright © L J Winson 1996,
Last Updated 08 February 1998 17:39:35