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Re: Non-linear / full-2d writing systems?

From:Sai Emrys <saizai@...>
Date:Monday, May 9, 2005, 22:36
> [...] These interconnected pieces are then treated as larger units that are > further interconnected, and so forth, until you reach the highest level where > the diagram has three parts linked together by the main event of the story, > the slaying of the beast by the hero.
It occurs to me that this could take the form either of a tree or a graph (CS terms). If it's a tree, then it's trivially serializable. If it's a map, that becomes a more complex question. And either way, you can 'dangle' or otherwise pop certain structures - viz. visual nets like the LJ Friends net or the Visual Thesaurus, where it profiles certain clusters / relationships above others, visually. Part of what you're saying is a bit implicit (though I agree heartily): there would be level of detail, perhaps in a very literal sense. "Fractal", though not in the self-replicating sense.
> I think I might try to attempt building a small-scale diagram over the > weekend to illustrate my hero-slays-beast example. I'll probably use a > rough, circled-English-words + lines notation for it, just to explore > the idea. A "true" writing designed for this type of notation will, of > course, employ symbols and styles of representing interconnections in > more idiomatic ways.
I think we've got almost the same idea for how this would look; I'd be very interested in collaborating with you on it. I'm also curious whether you can think of a way to do it that is *not* symbol-and-relation based. I can't really conceptualize it, but I suspect that it is possible - something that is even more meshed than this. The fusional equivalent, one could say. ;-) - Sai P.S, This is a delayed send - wrote it Friday, IIRC, but went overlimit on postings. :-P I'll catch up / respond to the stuff since then sometime at the end of the week or so, as this is finals week and I have a term paper and final tomorrow, and another final on Friday (oh joy oh joy!... eh.). But thanks for the response; it's quite interesting indeed.

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Sai Emrys <saizai@...>