Assessment Three, Creative and Professional Writing 393-8 "Writing and New Technologies" is now complete and to be found here: http://members.westnet.com.au/rboyd/index.html

It was an interesting and enjoyable task, the aim being to utilise non-linear hyperlinking techniques to improve the classic interactive role-playing game/novel that once took place in a paperback book. What the internet and html allowed is quick access to the disparate options of the role-play, whereas in the old hard copy scenario, the reader had to turn to page 123 or whatever to pursue the option of their choice. But with an online exercise, one click and you're there. One click and you're back.

It might not be considered enormously non-linear, not in the way that some students have used hyperlinks to produce such a multiplicity of directions as to be virtually anarchic. Which works fine for their projects, I hasten to add. But because mine was at heart a traditional narrative, while some of the options could be interchanged chronologically without affecting the narrative flow; others depended on being viewed in the correct sequence and in that regard its non-linearity was limited.

The downside of the project was that the scope of the exercise really exceded the size required for the assessment. I think that the semi-completed work I submitted on Thursday would have satisfied the requirements, but it didn't satisfy me, and I continued and finished the complete work by the weekend. Unfortunately that had now blown out to over 5000 words, and that's considering just one narrative stream (which, arguably, is what should be considered) and not the whole project which must be double if not triple that, although a lot of that is simple duplication.

Anyway, it's all done and was a lot of fun, as well as being a lot of hard work that required several charts and diagrams and a few pages of notes. I've done a lot of work on the internet so I don't know that I pushed my boundaries very hard with this one, but doing fiction on the internet and using online technologies in a new and innovative way (for me anyway) was enjoyable and interesting.

A writer never stops learning so in that sense this was another worthwhile educational exercise to hone the craft, although I can't pinpoint any actual writing improvements from the unit -- after all, I have been writing professionally for much of my 30 plus years of employment, so if I don't have a decent handle on the skill by now, I probably never will. But the unit did present a few different ways of thinking about and viewing writing and publishing, and maintained an awareness of the possibilities of new technologies, so it's all good.