As you turn you see a spectral figure in white staring at you from the other chair.
Surprised and fearful, you recoil towards the fireplace.
Amazed but curious, you sit down in your chair and ask the figure "Who are you? What do you want?"
As you turn you see a spectral figure in white staring at you from the other chair.
Surprised and fearful, you recoil towards the fireplace.
Amazed but curious, you sit down in your chair and ask the figure "Who are you? What do you want?"
This is one of four branches on the second split of the story tree.
This looks like a good start. But I'm not so sure what I should say about it because I know how it ends.
Writing a hypertext narrative, especially a branching one, you have to keep track of what is happening all over the graph. A linear story can be written in the spirit of "let's see what happens". A single branch of the story can be written that way, but as soon as one branch is growing it puts pressure on what can happen on the other branches.
I can sense that pressure on the author to keep it all connected and in view. The reader is in the opposite position. Each is constructing a narrative but the author needs a wider view.
Are you the author's voice?
No, are you? How many voices are there here, anyway?
There's you and me on the metalevel, and the narrator of the story, and its two speaking characters, the "you" and the ghost, and the speaking characters in the included mini-stories.
But you and I and those are all written by the author.
But the implied author of this whole piece is not necessarily the same as him.
Is he hiding?
No, and there is always a meta-story to be told about the author finding the voice for any piece of writing. It is implicit, though often standardized, as in most academic writing.
That's why we're doing it differently. If we're in dialogue, which of us is Socrates?
I don't know.