Whilst undertaking my communications degree at the University of Technology in Sydney, one of the subjects that I completed was Writing and New Media, a subject, I must say, gave me way too many ideas.
From the last year of primary school, to the end of the last millennium, I used to read and collect Choose Your Own Adventure, Fighting Fantasy, Lone Wolf and various other gamebooks. Some of them were read so often that they fell apart. I endeavored to find as many different ones as possible, combing through second-hand bookshops, going to sales, etc. just to find series or volumes that I didn't have. At one stage I even tried my hand at writing one. The collection, at it's height, numbered well over seventy books. I sold/gave away the collection nearly five years ago, seeing I didn't have any further interest in them. (That and I really did need the room!)
What the subject taught me, is that an early love of these type of books, that gave you different options, allowing you to take your own path, can be pretty easily converted into an electronic format, even if it is just a basic HTML website with underlined links.
My first (and at this stage, only) solo effort in this type of writing, is called Scars. Inspired by some of the work that I had seen during class, this major assignment is an autobiographical piece, in which (part of) the story of my life is told through the various injuries I have suffered over the years. The reader starts at a picture of myself, then clicks on a part of my body which tells the story of the injury sustained in that area. Then they can follow other links to yet more dialogue, all combined to form one great big spider's web.
Yes, I exceeded the expected word limit by a long way, but it was a credit. I removed it from this website because it really did need a serious overhaul, that and I've added an extra scar or two since I wrote it. Naturally, it is on the long list of things that I would like to add to this website.
2 April, 2018