From Page to Screen - WRAP: Warwick Research Archive Portal ...

Coser, Kadushin and Powell describe, and the attempt to use the possibilities of
electronic publishing, such as Alternative X, to cut out the later by direct publishing and
encourage the first by peer review and instant feedback on text by a close community of
fellow writers and readers.
In the second part ofthis chapter I will focus on projects which approach the question
of collaboration in a very direct and practical way, by setting up facilities for a group of
authors to work in parallel on, in principle, an evergrowing and everchanging literary
project. These collaborations, not unheard of but rare in print, have developed into an
important part of the literary internet scene" and can have different emphases: a small
number of authors or large-scale collaborations, crediting the individual contributions of
their respective authors or anonYmous, heavily edited or open for changes and additions.
Another possible categorisation, one which is proposed by the "Collaboration on the
Web" website" and which I like to adopt is a categorisation by structure, and more
precisely between a linear and a non-linear structure. Despite the vagueness and
inadequacies of the terminology of linear and non-linear when used to distinguish
hypertext from print (see chapter 2), it is, in this clearly defined context, a valid and
useful distinction.
In a linear structure, one initial node (e.g. a paragraph of a short story or a chapter of a
novella) is followed by only one other, which in turn is continued by just one; the
collaboration is strictly temporal and linearly accumulating. In a non-linear arrangement,
often organised in a branching out tree-structure, contributors are free to add to an
already existing branch or create a new one, therefore offering a greater flexibility as to
where to add a link, but also of developing any branch locally in more unexpected
directions. Cross-referencing between nodes is often possible, and contributions are
more spatially located since they affect the narrative development only locally. These are
the hyperfictions, claim the authors of "Collaboration on the Web", which "take full
advantage oftheir hypertext and collaborative styles {...and} are true hypcrfiction'Y .
82 They often use a combination of eMail and the WWW: contributions are mailed to the
editor/editorial board/facilitator and then selected, edited and finally uploaded to the project's webpages
(the selection and editing powers do vary from project to project).
B3 http://www.innotts.co.uk/-leo/collwr.html.,
84http://www.innotts.co.uk/-leo/collwr.html.
Chapter 4 - page 157