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Introduction to Patchwork Girl
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The Story
If you read the articles before you start exploring you should be clear
on the concept of the book, and the story of which it is a reworking,
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. A number of 'I's inhabit this book at different
times: the I of the writer of the hypertext, the I of the maker of the
female Frankenstein, the I of the monster itself writing and speaking.
In addition, each of the body parts from which the monster is made narrates
its own story. You need to work out all the time you are reading exactly
who is speaking (or you will definitely lose track of the stories that
make up the story).
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You could say that all bodies are written bodies,
all lives pieces of writing.
all written, Patchwork Girl
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Charting the Text
There are two primary ways to navigate the text: by picture maps and
by text spaces (or lexias). You can move between the two at will, but
for those who like to know where they are going and what will happen when
they are en route here are some basic directions.
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- Bring the storyspace map version of the text to the front. You will
see a number of titled boxes. hercut through hercut4 and
phrenology are picture maps: you click on different parts of
the picture to bring up separate sections of the story.
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- journal, body of text, story, crazy quilt, and
graveyard are primarily sequences of text boxes. Sometimes you will
find a default link simply by clicking on the page. At other points
you can link by 'choosing' to click on a particular word. Michael Joyce,
a hypertext pioneer, calls words that lead to other screens 'words that
yeild.'
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- Use the History button (which produces a list of all the text
spaces you have visited) to go back to the picture to explore additional
links. Use the history button, too, if you want to revisit a text box.
If you click the Links button, you will see all the links available
from each space.
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- In the main storyspace menu line (at the top of the page) you will
find under Edit the copy command which will allow you to copy
text blocks. Hit F9 and you will open an alphabetical list of
textblocks. Ctrl-F opens the 'keywords' box, which allows you
to search for lexias (or text spaces) which share common language (and
perhaps then common themes?)
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We live in the expectation of traditional narrative
progression...
and a kind of vertigo besets us when we witness plot developments that
had no foreshadowing.
lives, Patchwork Girl
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Explore…….Learn…….Ask Us Questions as Soon as You are
Lost!
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