Storyspace is a software program for creating, editing, and reading

hypertext fiction Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature, characterized by the use of hypertext links that provide a new context for non-linearity in literature and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text t ...

. It can also be used for writing and organizing fiction and non-fiction intended for print. Maintained and distributed by

Eastgate Systems Eastgate Systems is a publisher and software company headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts, which publishes hypertext. Eastgate is a pioneer in hypertext publishing and electronic literature and one of the best known publishers of hypertext ...

, the software is available both for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and Mac.

History

Storyspace was the first software program specifically developed for creating, editing, and reading hypertext fiction. It was created in the 1980s by

Jay David Bolter Jay David Bolter (born August 17, 1951) is the Wesley Chair of New Media and a professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His areas of study include the evolution of media, the use of tec ...

, UNC Computer Science Professor John B. Smith, and Michael Joyce. Bolter and Joyce presented it to the first international meeting on Hypertext at Chapel Hill in October 1987.

Artistic and educational use

Several classics of hypertext literature were created using Storyspace, such as ''

Afternoon, a story ''afternoon, a story'', spelled with a lowercase 'a', is a work of electronic literature written in 1987 by American author Michael Joyce. It was published by Eastgate Systems in 1990 and is known as one of the first works of hypertext fiction. ...

'' by Michael Joyce, ''

Victory Garden Victory gardens, also called war gardens or food gardens for defense, were vegetable, fruit, and herb gardens planted at private residences and public parks in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Germany during World War I ...

'' by

Stuart Moulthrop Stuart Moulthrop (born 1957 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States) is an innovator of electronic literature and hypertext fiction, both as a theoretician and as a writer. He is author of the hypertext fiction works ''Victory Garden'' (1992), whic ...

, ''

Patchwork Girl The Patchwork Girl (a.k.a. Scraps) is a character from the fantasy Oz Book series by L. Frank Baum. She first appeared in ''The Patchwork Girl of Oz''. History Scraps is a teenaged (possibly fourteen) living rag doll made of patchwork, butto ...

'' by Shelley Jackson, and ''

Figurski at Findhorn on Acid ''Figurski at Findhorn on Acid'' is a hypertext novel by Richard Holeton published on CD-ROM by Eastgate Systems in 2001 and republished on the open web by the Electronic Literature Lab, Washington State University, in 2021. It is a work of inte ...

'' by Richard Holeton. Storyspace has also been used extensively in secondary and tertiary education for teaching writing skills and critical thinking. It has been used for teaching creative writing in particular, and was especially popular in the early years of the web when hypertext linking was less fluid and web pages had to be hand-coded in

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

. Proponents argue that Storyspace's visual maps of how hypertext nodes are connected allow students to focus on writing in hypertext rather than on technical issues, and that linking and/or visually juxtaposing ideas allows students to develop a visual logic.Tan, Kenneth Paul A.S.-S. (2002
"Storyspace: Using Hypertext in the Classroom"
''The Technology Source'', July/August.

References

External links

* {{Official website, www.eastgate.com/storyspace/index.html Editing software Electronic literature Educational software Hypertext MacOS text-related software Windows text-related software

History

Artistic and educational use

See also

References

External links