As somebody who is equally dedicated to books and the web, I’m endlessly fascinated by the failure of on-line writing to reside as much as its potential as a type. Previously, I wrote about how interactive ebooks had been as soon as seen as the way forward for books, and the way they’ve fully did not reside as much as what was projected about them. They are such a tiny area of interest that it’s debatable about whether or not they even rely as books as in any respect — what’s the line between a pick-a-path online game and an interactive e-book?
To some extent, I can see how interactive ebooks by no means took off. They are a formatting problem, since ePub or AZW is assumed to be principally textual content with the occasional static image, and ereaders and ereading apps are going to be designed round that. They’re more durable to provide for writers, too. And possibly that’s simply not what readers need from books; possibly the enchantment of a e-book is that it is a text-only medium — the reverse of one thing like TikTookay.
But setting apart ebooks for a second, why is it that the majority writing on-line is written precisely as if it was on paper? We have so many extra instruments accessible to us in this format. Online quick tales may have an embedded soundtrack, maybe one which adjustments as you scroll. (That positive feels like one thing we should always have the ability to do by now.) Articles may embrace embedded polls, maybe with a responsive article that adjustments with the outcomes. While there are a number of on-line articles that embrace interactive video and pictures that change as you scroll, these are uncommon, they usually’re nonetheless pretty primary makes use of.
So why is it that our on-line writing is so static, when it may very well be formatted in an countless array of the way? Look at this publish. I’m scripting this on a aircraft with no web connection. But that’s effective, as a result of I can simply kind away at a Word doc and replica it over later, possibly including a number of hyperlinks then. The course of is functionally not very completely different from writing on a typewriter, regardless of that it’s going to discover its dwelling on the churning technicolor explosion of stimulus that is the web.
There’s undoubtedly no scarcity of content material competing to your consideration on-line. There would possibly even be a video advert embedded someplace on this web page that is rather more flashy than these phrases. And for those who open different tabs or apps, there’s the firehouse of visible stimulus that is TikTookay, or a collage of visuals and textual content on Twitter, or a mess of different choices. With a lot competitors, shouldn’t that be breeding innovation? Instead, irrespective of which web site you open, from the New York Times to Book Riot to some rip-off weblog stuffed filled with search engine optimization phrase salad, you’ll see the similar primary format: black textual content on a white display, the occasional hyperlink, and possibly a number of embedded pictures or movies.
When I began writing on-line, it was for a website known as Everything2, which was form of like Wikipedia if Wikipedia was voiced and in addition had quick tales, poetry, essays, and so forth. It was a enjoyable place to get my toes moist in the writing world as a youngster, and what I fell in love with whereas writing for them was writing with pipelinks. Like Wikipedia, your posts would come with many hyperlinks, however in contrast to Wikipedia, these hyperlinks could lead on wherever. Hovering over a hyperlink would present the title of the web page it was directing you to, that means there was literal subtext in your writing.
I couldn’t get sufficient of this writing fashion. It gave poetry (sure, my teenage poetry, yikes) extra layers of that means, it clarified figures of speech with out clunky exposition, it added nuance and humor and even pressure via contradiction. It additionally opened up other ways for readers to work together with the textual content. It was completely coherent with out interacting with the pipelinks in any respect, however readers who hovered over them obtained that easter egg of extra content material. Of course, they may additionally select to click on via all of these hyperlinks, and people items would possibly work together with my very own in methods I didn’t even predict. And then they’d result in extra hyperlinks, and people to extra, and people to extra.
While I can nonetheless insert hyperlinks in this publish or in most anything I hyperlink on-line, the pipelink carried out a special operate. It was the textual content (in the title) that was the focus, greater than the URL itself. I generally miss writing in that method, although I’m fully off form: it’s its personal artwork type.
If simply that tiny operate that was included on a reasonably small website 15ish years in the past can change my writing a lot, I can solely think about which different instruments I’m lacking out on. I want that extra writing on-line rewarded attentive readers like these pipelinks did.
Truthfully, it’s exhausting to even think about what writing that was disconnected from the paper age would appear to be, however I think about it could contain interactive components, visuals, and (optionally available) sound. It would make the most of all of the prospects that internet hosting writing on-line introduces. That’s to not say that there’s no place, even on-line, for easy black textual content on a white background, nevertheless it may use some alternate options.
My coding abilities are such that sadly, I’ll seemingly not be the one to guide us into this courageous new world of on-line writing, however I’m hopeful that it’s coming, and that with it, I’ll have the ability to discover complete new methods to jot down and even to assume. It’s about time for writing as a medium to maneuver past the paper format that was the solely possibility for thus lengthy. From stone tablets to papyrus to books to ebooks, I consider {that a} new writing evolution is coming, and I can’t wait to see it.
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