Mark's Pages

September 6, 2003:

Introduction.

People dislike reading online. "Best practices" for Web authors suggest cutting word counts by at least half.

This constraint poses challenges for authors of online fiction, who have neither time to unfold "stories", nor wide canvases on which to paint "scenes". Flash! The audience has moved on.

These pieces are experiments mindful of these circumstances.

Several use formal relationships to try to evoke resonances that aren't explicitly present. By bringing two or more independent narratives into collision, the result is something like cubism, in which the whole is greater than the sum of its proverbials. This is a form of parallax, where texts put into relationship provide independent point of view.

Others imply backstory. All struggle for compression. Some are as short as one sentence. Flash!

I'm surprised that so many have appeared in online literary zines. I'd expected a battle to convince editors that this experimentation is worth doing. Delighted to be wrong.

[Concluding with references to the published pieces; see the publication history.]