Link: https://www.eastgate.com/patterns/Print.html
Examples are drawn from published stand-alone hypertexts as well as from the Web. Some pattern examples are drawn from literary fiction.
Nor does our interest in structural vocabulary necessarily imply a structuralist or post-structuralist stance; we need to describe phenomena, whatever our theoretical beliefs. Two patterns – Tree and Sequence – have been described many times in the hypertext literature. Both are useful, indeed indispensable, and can be found in almost any hypertext.
Counterpoint often gives a clear sense of structure, a resonance of call and response reminiscent at once of liturgy and of casual dialogue.
To retain coherence, writers of both texts and hypertexts frequently adhere to a single voice and point of view. Mirrorworlds provide a parallel or intertextual narrative that adopts a different voice or contrasting perspective. The Mirrorworld echoes a central theme or exposition, either amplifying it or elaborating it in ways impractical within the main thread.
The Tangle confronts the reader with a variety of links without providing sufficient clues to guide the reader’s choice. Tangles can be used purely for their value as intellectual amusement, but also appear in more serious roles. In particular, tangles can help intentionally disorient readers in order to make them more receptive to a new argument or an unexpected conclusion.
Sieves sort readers through one or more layers of choice in order to direct them to sections or episodes. Sieves are often trees, but may be multitrees, DAGs, or nearly-hierarchical graphs; different topologies may all serve the same rhetorical function.
In Montage, several distinct writing spaces appear simultaneously, reinforcing each other while retaining their separate identities. Montage is most frequently effected through superimposed windows which establish connections across the boundaries of explicit nodes and links.
establishes an association among nodes through proximity, shared ornament, or common navigational landmarks. Unvarying thumbtabs, a navigation bar, or a miniature site map can all inform readers that the lexia in which they appear are “close” in some planned way.
The Split/Join pattern knits two or more sequences together. Split/Join is indispensable to interactive narratives in which the reader’s intervention changes the course of events. If each decision changes everything that happens subsequently, authors cannot allow the reader to make many decisions while keeping the work within manageable bounds
Allusion, iteration, and ellipsis can all suggest a Missing Link. Structural irregularity, introduced in a context where regular structure has been established, presents an especially powerful Missing Link, for a place to which we cannot navigate may seem, by its inaccessibility, uniquely attractive.
The Feint establishes the existence of a navigational opportunity that is not meant to be followed immediately; instead, the Feint informs the reader of possibilities that may be pursued in the future. By revealing navigational opportunities even where they may not be immediately pursued, a hypertext writer conveys valuable information about the scope of the hypertext or about the organization of the ideas that underlie it.
In narrative, navigational feints can establish spatial and temporal relationships without interrupting the narrative strand. By establishing a conventional link type – for example, an icon denoting “link to a simultaneous event occurring elsewhere” – a narrator can clarify and interconnect disparate events without interrupting the topic under discussion.
##