What does it mean to be nonlinear? At face value, it means not denoting, involving, or arranged in a straight line. The mathematical interpretation of that is that the output of a function is not directly proportional to the input. Mathematicians, and physicists, and engineers often take that definition further and talk of systems of equations consisting of a set of simultaneous equations in which the unknowns (or the unknown functions in the case of differential equations) appear as variables of a polynomial of degree higher than one. Whew! (Hang in there, all my non-mathematical friends. It’s all downhill from here.)
In digital film editing it means having all the various scenes available for editing in a nondestructive way. This was a revolutionary change in the way that film and audio were edited. Prior to the existence of nonlinear editing software, the original content (or copies of it) had to be cut into pieces and reassembled by splicing them together. This was both time consuming and tedious, requiring careful cataloging of shots (or takes in the case of audio editing) and patient assembly of the pieces into a coherent finished product.
But what does it mean when we are talking about prose? Nonlinear fiction, as I envision it anyway, is a story that is broken up into very small pieces that the reader can then explore by clicking on links. It has some of the feel of the old create your own story books where you were given the choice of going to page 26 if you want to pick up the rock or page 100 if you turn and run away. Only it’s slightly different. There is only one story. You don’t choose on of two actions. Instead you choose what you want to read about next.
It blurs the distinction between beginning, middle, and end. It may not even be particularly satisfying for the reader to read. I suspect that depends more on the skill of the author than it does on the nonlinear mechanism itself.
I have never read a story composed in this fashion. I am attracted to the idea of trying to write one. I may have to figure out the details of how to deliver the story to a reader. I might be able to adapt an existing framework like TiddlyWiki upon which to build the story.
There is a game that was written for the Macintosh called A Fool’s Errand that has a number of the qualities that I am striving for here. Also, Myst and Riven were stories that were similar in concept to what I have in mind. Those stories had a similar structure but not necessarily similar content to what I propose to write.
Let me know what you think of the idea.
Sweet dreams, don’t forget to tell the people you love that you love them, and most important of all, be kind.