by J. Nathan Matias

Display-Panes, Scenes, and Nodes

Link/Node structure is fundamental to writing in hypertext. Unless you choose to create a one-page document, you will be stringing together bits of writing with links. However, this node/link structure isn't unique to hypertext. It can be found in creative nonfiction, in film documentaries, and even in the physical layout of museums like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Eastern State Penitentiary.

These commonalities provide a good basis for understanding the potentials of hypertext through analysis of non-electronic narrative. Of course, ideas cannot be directly transferred. Instead, the careful observer will find the underlying concepts behind the medium-specific techniques. These concepts can then be reinterpreted in the context of hypertextual writing.

For example, one can learn about nesting several levels of detail inside nonfiction writing by looking at the anatomy of a display pane.

Display Panes

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum permanent exhibit is a walk-through narrative. The most common unit in this narrative is the Display Pane, which represents three levels of explanation several-paragraph segments, each indicated by single glass-pane. Each segment presents a single idea or discusses a single angle of the holocaust. These segments contain a mini-thesis surrounded by labeled artifacts that supply supporting evidence or connect the thesis with real-life experiences. These segments are then strung together to form the story-line.

Physical space becomes the link between these ideas. The path through the museum provides narrative flow and direction while still at times giving visitors the agency to choose the order they encounter ideas.

Numbered Circles

At Eastern State Penitentiary, the labels found on-site tell visitors what node to queue on their audio players. However, this museum gives visitors much more freedom to explore. Physical space, as in the Holocaust Memorial Museum, can be used as a link, but the voice in the machine gives visitors suggestions about where to walk. Often, the recorded voice will encourage visitors to explore and stray from the path. Other times, multiple path suggestions are given.

Where are the links? They are in the suggestions, the map, and even the freeform, wandering nature of the penitentiary layout. Friendly information guides sit under booths at key places in the prison complex, offering more links and suggestions for exploration.

Scenes

Almost all films are constructed, at some level, with scenes. You know how this goes -- the bar room, the apartment, the coffeeshop. The argument, the incident with the hitchhiker, the subway. In a movie-like nonfiction work like Band of Brothers or Seabiscuit, scenes work very similarly to their theatre cousins. In these scenes, stuff happens in a place. Using the scene as a building block, the entire story is assembled from pieces, connected by the thin thread of time.

Documentaries are no exception.

Scenes in a more traditional documentary, like Ken Burns's Brooklyn Bridge documentary, depict the conceptual. They resemble window-panes of the Holocaust Memorial Museum more than the action of a retelling. Here, the documentary writer wishes to convey a carefully-organized bundle of information. Each self-contained segment/scene/subargument needs to be told. Each has its own thesis, its own fun facts, its own stories, like points in a traditional outline. But each serves the final-product, a linear whole. They are assembled in order, with time forming their natural link organization.

Scenes

Tom Wolfe coined this term for creative nonfiction in his seminal book on the topic, New Journalism. He suggested that good, narrative nonfiction would be separated into scenes with their own atmosphere, action, and symbolic significance.

But the idea wasn't new. Writer Alfred Lansing had used the technique in Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage. By using different scenes to bring out different aspects of life on the ice, Lansing turns the doldrums of a year into an exciting adventure story. In Cold Blood, a nonfiction novel by Truman Capote, switches between narrators to help craft scene. The book took years to write.

Both works analyzed here -- Last Night's Fun by Ciaran Carson, and Old Friends by Tracy Kidder -- make extensive use of scenes.