| Introduction | Conclusion |
Conclusion
24 hours with someone you know leaves a lot to be desired concerning the narrative tools. I liked a lot the the unfolding of the story and how it is written. As a text, it is worth reading and entertaining. But concerning the narrative tools, which is what I have analysed in this paper, this is a very primitive type of hypertext. Being the protagonist of the hypertext and deciding what to do, or rather, where to go, little more can be done with this hypertext.
It is full of "sub-paths", that are some kind of by-pass or alternative routes, but all of them converge in a point. There are no real alternatives or different endings. In fact, the first and major diversion of the story, which is YOU LEAVE, takes little time to join you back to the "main story". So there is no real difference in the development of the story. There are many converging pages that the reader will always land on, including the end. Although the fact that there is only one ending is rather due to the nature of the story, as there can only be one ending.
There was one thing, however, that I really liked: how the options were presented to the reader. Instead of the traditional menu-like distribution, which is also present in this hypertext in some pages, the options were inside the text itself, or the dialog so to speak.
Regarding the tools, this hypertext is very deficient and primitive. As analysed in the section tools, the author takes little interest in the way the text is presented to the reader. It uses the browser's default typeface, and aside from the links' colours, little more is customised. Whether it is due to the year it was written --when the internet was still in an early stage-- or not, this is no excuse. Web pages, although primitive by then, were already capable of doing much more; of being more customisable.
To sum up, although I can deduce that this hypertext was intended to be read on the internet, it could perfectly be distributed in print form, due to both its short length and the simple scheme of the hypertext. But this does not necessarily make it worse than other hypertexts (bigger does not always mean better). I liked the story and the (limited) options to go wherever I want. One thing which is very criticisable however is the formatting of the text.
Academic year 2009/2010
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Guillermo Chuliá Peris
guichupe@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de València Press