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Abstract
New digital technologies are being invented and refined at a rapid pace making available new tools for writing narrative fiction; these new tools open possibilities, provide opportunities, and create challenges for the authors using them. This study uses poststructuralism, Bakhtinian (1981, 1986) theories, Urbans (2001) accelerative culture, and Deleuze and Guattaris (1987) concept of the rhizome to theorize writing narrative fiction in a hypertext medium. The study uses three data sources: library and Internet research, an interview study with authors of hypertext fiction, and a self-study of a novice hypertext writer. The library and Internet research provided a theoretical explanation of the changes that occurred in the move from writing print fiction to writing hypertext fiction. The participants in the author interview study and self study described (1) the importance of the use of visual structures, (2) a shift in how they perceived their final products, (3) a change in how they used traditional story elements, and (4) a resistance to linearity in their hypertext fiction. I examined the data gathered in library and Internet research, interviews, and writing journals looking for common themes, disjunctures, and similar terminology. The data gathered for this study were collected and analyzed in a hypertext that allowed for cross-linking between the library research, field notes, interviews, and writing journals. Both the library research and the participant data depicted multiple ways in which writing fiction changed as the medium changed. Both sources of data described the disruption of the linear text with the use of internal and external linking and branching, non-sequential and multisequential plotlines, resistance to closure, incorporation of image, sound, and movement, as well as explicit reader choice. The results of this studythe writing of narrative fiction does change as it shifts mediums from print to screenhave implications for classroom teaching. This research project produced a different view of writing narrative fiction than is currently present in traditional school classrooms.