Technologies of Writing

Volume 1, Issue 2

Spring, 2004

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 I Can Do Too Much With This "Internet" --
I Want To Do It All
-Corey Murdoch-


Over the past five years, I have taken many writing classes and have done much writing on my own time.  While much of this writing has been academic writing, as in writing essays explicating some literary work or working on a paper for history class about the colonization of America, I have had time both in and out of classes for creative writing.  I love writing, basically.  Creative writing is something that I feel comes natural to me.  I can create a scene, make up a character, and have words that sound well together in a poem without too much difficulty.  This style of writing is and always will be in the forefront of whatever I end up doing for a living.  I will never stop my creative energy from coming forth on paper.

So, I have taken many writing classes, both in my senior year of high school and throughout my college career.  I took both lower level, required English classes, in which I was lucky to have teachers who encouraged creativity in our assignments.  I excelled in these classes and signed up for more writing classes.  I took a creative writing class about two years ago, which I enjoyed thoroughly and excelled in as well.  So, on to more writing classes.  A selected topics writing course called “The Prose Poem” was offered in the Fall of 2003 and I quickly registered for that.  Again, I excelled in this class, getting another A.  This boosted my confidence in my own writing abilities, which only led me to sign up for two more writing classes for the Spring 2004 semester, a poetry writing and a class called “Technologies of Writing.”  I knew what to expect from the poetry writing class, but the “Technologies of Writing” class boggled my mind as to what we would do in there, back when all I knew was the course name.  I knew the professor from the previous semester in a course called “Writing In the Workplace,” so I figured I would enjoy it based solely on that.  The “Technologies of Writing” course was designed to educate students about the different technologies associated with writing, from the primitive (yet not so primitive) pencil and paper to the Internet.  We were assigned a term-long project that could be about almost anything, restricted to the limits that it had to incorporate the ideas of writing and technology.



My goal for this project
was pushed right in my
face at this point: to create
an online choose-your-
own-adventure story that
 is interactive to all readers, ...
Since I am so enthralled by creative writing, I tried to find some topic that would incorporate my own interests.  With help and suggestions from my professor, I was led to Web sites that dealt with hypertext fiction.  These sites helped me in that I became aware of the possibilities of creating my own hypertext fiction.  I was still puzzled as to how I would, or could, construct something like what I had found.  An idea finally came to me, I don’t remember exactly how, to come up with my own Web-based choose-your-own-adventure story.  This seemed manageable for me and my technological abilities, so I decided to give it a go.  I looked on the Internet for other choose-your-own adventure types of Web sites, but was disappointed by what I came across.  Although every choose-your-own-adventure story that I read in my childhood was similar in the way that they were only words on a page, I didn’t like the fact that every one was text-based.  There were no images, no animations, and no interactivity in these stories, which surprised me because of the endless possibilities of the Internet and Web site authoring.  My goal for this project was pushed right in my face at this point: to create an online choose-your-own-adventure story that is interactive to all readers, where the only restrictions on how interactive I could make it lay in how much I could do with a simple, Netscape Composer Web site.
My goal set, all I had to do was figure out exactly what I could do to make this story as interactive as possible.  I wanted to find images and animations that could be looked at and watched and be a part of the story I was going to write.  Thanks to my professor, once again, I was able to download and install two helpful programs.  The first one I got was software to make image maps.  The idea for this stemmed from the fact that every other choose-your-own-adventure story I found was in the same format of having a short paragraph to read with two shorter options written below it, and you then click which option you would like.  I wanted to change that format completely by adding images which would contain the links to the next part of the story, and the image mapping software made this possible.  The idea to use animations in my story came from my want and need for this project to be the most interactive one on the Internet.  I knew that making animations was difficult, but I also knew that in my experiences of searching the web, sites with either simple or flash animations were enjoyable to go to.  It’s always fun to use what you have to your advantage, and that’s how I feel about this in that making such an interactive website uses the technology provided by a computer and an internet connection to the best of the users ability.  It just surprised me to find that none of the Web sites with choose-your-own-adventure stories were interactive in any way at all.  The most interactive, attractive website had a colored background.  That was it, though.

It seemed as though I had a lot of work to do, and it was definitely work that I thought would be difficult and tedious.  It actually proved to be easier than that.  Drawing pictures on the MS Paint program has always been something that I have enjoyed doing, no matter how simple or untalented my pictures looked.  Since that program was the one that I would use to draw each frame for the animations and to draw out pictures to be “image-mapped,” I was a bit more confident about the project.  At that point, I wasn’t so concerned with what the pictures and animations would look like, I was more concerned with accomplishing my goal.

I started making myself more acquainted with the programs, testing them out, but not wasting too much time in doing this because the free downloads that my professor gave to me were also trial versions with limited uses.  I decided to try making an animation, one that would last longer than a few seconds, and after two seemingly quick hours I had it done.  It was very simple (and can be found on my website), but I was happy with it (you can check it out here, but this animation has an R-rating, for violence and language, so beware).

Now that I was familiar with the program and how it works, I had to begin thinking of how I could incorporate them into a choose-your-own-adventure story.  My idea was to have text written out, like plot to the story, and then when you click your choice, an animation would come up, showing you what you just chose.  I needed an idea for a story, though.  I juggled ideas in my mind and couldn’t come up with anything substantial.  Then came the pivotal week of Spring break.  Little did I know that this week would be crucial in this assignment.
Over the week of Spring break, I found myself at the local movie theater three times.  My girlfriend and her mom were going to watch “The Passion of the Christ” and I was invited to go along.  After the two-hour torture of Jesus, he was shown on the cross, dead, and shortly thereafter, his resurrection was depicted for a minute or so, with him in the cave all cleaned up and the light shining into where he stood.  The following night, my friend Nick and I went to the movie theater to see the remake of “The Dawn of the Dead.”  This movie was highly entertaining and hilarious.  Not one part of it was scary, and the zombies in this movie were so wild and aggressive that watching them was great.  Later that night, I was with Nick and my brother Jeremy and we were discussing the movie, telling my brother about how funny it was.  During this conversation, we thought about the fact that I saw the Jesus movie followed by the zombie movie, and how completely different they were.  We thought about what it would be like if, when Jesus was resurrected, he came back to life as a zombie instead.  This sounds crazy, but it sparked my interest enough to declare right then that the idea of a Jesus-zombie would be the basis for my project. We thought about what it would be like if, when Jesus was resurrected, he came back to life as a zombie instead


I began making an animation as an introduction to the whole story, depicting Jesus emerging as a zombie.  My ideas of exactly how I wanted to do it changed frequently, too.  I was curious as to whether or not I could add music to my Web site or animation, so the next time our class met, I asked my professor.  By then end of that class period, I had website links to the information regarding HTML tags and music files as well as links to sites where I could download music editing programs.  I downloaded the program and began messing with songs, cutting them up into smaller parts and such.  I wanted to synch up a song with an animation, but decided that it would take forever to animate a four-minute song, so I took a forty-five second sample and began making the introduction animation to go along with it.  The animation was planned perfectly in my mind to synch up with the song.  I knew exactly what I was going to draw for each part of the song, so my plan was underway.

It seems that through all of this experimenting with these programs and the possibilities I have within them and making a Web site, my original goal was shifting further and further away.  My choose-your-own-adventure story quickly became an animation with sound, but I didn’t want to completely throw away that idea.  I figured out that making all of this for my website to be the most interactive possible (with my skills and free programs) was going to take much longer than originally expected.  I never planned on coming to the idea of Jesus-zombie.  I never planned on trying to add sound to my Web site.  I never planned on focusing so much on making animations.  But all of that doesn’t matter.  I know I have learned a great deal through this project and through the assistance of my professor and peers in this class.  Everything I have done in working on this project has been fun.  I know school isn’t supposed to be “fun,” but there is no denying that this project was just that.

At the beginning of this semester, I had no idea as to what I could do with a Web site made in Netscape Composer.  I have been able to make a simple Web site (completed in the “Writing In the Workplace” class), but I wanted to learn more, to do more, and that is exactly what I did this semester.  It is not so much that I feared trying to complicate my Web site, I actually wanted to do this.  I was willing to do anything to learn these new things, and I have done that.  Now I can help somebody in building a more interactive Web site.

I think everyone can do it, it is just a matter of patience and persistence...                       
That brings me to the point that nobody should ever fear the Internet or creating Web sites.  If you have a creative mind, it should be a breeze.  All of the programs I learned to use throughout this semester are very simple, easy for just about anybody to use.  I think everyone can do it, it is just a matter of patience and persistence, both of which I possessed along the way to completing this semester.  I think that all classes may actually benefit from some sort of Internet-based writing.  Every student would not only learn how to make a Web site, but also be able to use as much creativity in doing so, making the process a more enjoyable one.
As of right now, I have not completed a choose-your-own-adventure story.  I have not completed a string of animations making up a story.  But, both of these are in development right now.  I didn’t expect doing this to be such a difficult and time-consuming task, but it is exactly that.  What I do have is a sample of the kind of things I have been working with this semester, portions of a whole story that will one day be completed.  It took a lot of time to accomplish what I have, so don’t assume that I have been slacking off on it this whole semester.  Once you start learning one thing, you want to learn more, and it just keeps moving to newer, better things.  I hope you enjoy what you see, and I would love any comments or suggestions.

-Corey Murdoch       spiok@hotmail.com

(to see what I have accomplished through all of this, click here ... scroll to the bottom, the work is clearly labelled here)