How do resolutions affect our enjoyment of stories? Can we be satisfied with stories with no end? These thoughts are explored in J. Yellowlees Douglas’ “How Do I stop This Thing?“. This text explores how breaks in linearity in hypertext media can allow for stories without end, or even stories with ends that users may never navigate to.
This discussion of endings within hypertext brings my mind to stories with multiple endings. This concept is very difficult to do within linear media, and the different endings must still be presented in a linear fashion. However, with hypertext, we can create stories that spiderweb out from themselves and have branches leading to different endings. This allows for re-readability, as users may want to go back through a hypertext work in order to find all of the endings. This also means that all of the endings might not be found by all users. Thus, users will each have their own unique experiences and interpretations of hypertext works depending on how they navigate the work.
In print media, we know where the end of a story is. It’s very easy to reach for a book and flip to the last page to see how the story ends. Some people even do this regularly to see if they will like the book before they begin. However, digital hypertext works only allow users to see an ending when the author wants them to. There is no way to navigate to the end, because it isn’t a tangible point in the story, rather just data stored on a computer. This, while hypertext gives the users more control over the flow of the story, it does ultimately give more power to the author, as they are in control of what gets showcased when.
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