InFragments – Experiments In Fragmented Storytelling

That may have been the same day she dragged him to that club called The Fringe. He remembered the driving bassline carrying a woman’s voice that reverberated off industrial cement walls. Large projector screens displayed a video of a jet black haired Tibetan woman, backed by a black gnarled tree whose upper branches formed a kind of antler rack silhouetted by an enormous pale pocked moon. The cavernous room flashed with blue, green and white laser lights over a pulsating mass of human bodies, arms waving like so many tiny worms over a decaying carcass. Isabella led him through a series of side rooms.Man and Country - Computer Screen

Check out the fragments in the gallery below.

Man and Country - Computer Screen"Things quickly turned curious, whatever wasn’t already. If one intention behind developing what he referred to as, The Hera System, or sometimes endearingly, Hera, was to overcome his natural state of astral floating, another motivation was his budding relationship with Isabella."

Man and Country - Task the System"She was such a good conversationalist that Tristan failed to decipher what it meant, she wanted him, or wanted him to want her, or meant nothing, an authentically dynamic, passionate, brilliant woman."

Man and Country - Human Code"Hong Kong sits off the southern coast of mainland China. Like Macau, it integrated with the PRC as a Special Administrative Zone in the late nineties preserving cultural and political autonomy, while yielding to the PRA for national defense, a model China hopes Taiwan and other islands controlled by the anti-Communist ROC will follow."

Man and Country - Imperceptible Thaw"As the holiday season floated by, Tristan was to have all manner of epiphanies. Unable to make sense of his role with the CIA in China, unwilling to breach certain firewalls he’d equipped in the emotional regions of his brain, his revelations were centered on the residue of days forgotten."Photo via amritach

First Choice"Sometime's believeSix thingsBefore breakfast.Shadow sized,Their shape.Mingling cones of night."

Scarecrow"Tristan knew he didn't have rabies. He swore it. At the top of his lungs he professed that his skin had remained covered! Those cowards. They screamed like little girls – little babies throwing a tantrum about who gets the green lollipop."

Man and Country - Company Man"Tristan’s work day was coming to a close. It was nearly seven p.m.. The fourth floor office was filled with the chatter of keyboards, soft conversations and the occasional mechanical sounds of a copy machine."

Skipper"George W. ushered in the Oligarchic era of American history. While at his vacation home in Kennebunkport, ME he was told of the young sage, Siegfried Johann Gundersmach, who stayed in the nearby city of Portland."via Corey Templeton: http://www.portlanddailyphoto.com/2013_09_01_archive.html

Freedom Through Fingers"Tristan and Siegi lived together for a year after they graduated high school. For a few winter months they got hooked on binge video gaming."

Man and Country - Shoe Shopping"Tristan’s apartment was on the ground floor of a duplex. The front door opened into a dingy stairwell that smelled of mold, motor oil, cardamom."

Man and Country - Shell Game"On a leaden winter dawn Tristan arrived at an Amtrack terminal from a briefing with seven C.I.A. employees, two of whom spoke while the others watched, scribbling notes in what had to be Pitman, where he, Tristan, was designated a Language Officer under Elliot Posner, the Hong Kong Chief Plans Officer, whom, Lyddell had informed him, once lost contact with seven of his OO’s for three months only to discover them, after much international hullabaloo, holed up in a mainland KTV hotel suite as official guests of The Party, wasted on cocaine, copulation and booze, claiming to be very close to landing some ‘top notch game changing intelligence,’ but was still made PO with his rat’s nest of assets and dubious intelligence vast enough to make his, Tristan’s, posting less of the opportunity he was led to believe and more like a protracted method of laying in front of an oncoming bus."

Man and Country - Passport"Tristan walked through the Marriott’s marble walled lobby and passed the front desk to the restaurant bar. There were only a few open tables."

Great Accomplishments"When they were children back yards were expansive as the west. They drew pictures of pillows to rest their minds. To dance."

Baby Mind"Mommy is normally home when the Baby-Tristan wakes from his afternoon nap, but on this day he was alone. The breeze blew an occasional thin cloud over the sun."

Imagination"Tristan’s rural village was full of empty space. Vast forests opened into yawning blueberry fields connecting dusty logging roads leading to abandoned excavators. The miles of coastline numbered greater than the miles of state road."

Familiar Education"Tristan was home schooled. In the mornings he would help his father in the garage, or out on the driveway. He fetched tools and held lamps while his father repaired old boat engines, green from oxidation."

Meal Worm"An eight year old tow-headed boy was sitting at an old sun-grayed picnic table, flanked by two brothers with hair like wavy chestnut-brown mops."

One Possible Destiny"Side by side at the truck stop urinals a fellow hobo said, “Great minds,” raising his eyebrows with a strange wide grin, as if he and Tristan were members of some exclusive fellowship-of-pissers."

Man and Country - Silent Goodbyes“Dude, you’re fine.” Geoff reassured Tristan between sips of lager.

Latest from Man and Country

About

A work in progress

InFragments is currently in the early stages of an experimental story telling project aiming to employ fragmented narrative to lead the reader through an interactive life cycle.

The immersive experience is not yet active, but please sample some fragments and check out the Man and Country thread for a more linear example of one possible destiny, to which I will endeavor to add a new fragment each month.

Literary choose your own adventure

The idea harkens back to the choose-your-own-adventure books made for ‘tweens by Bantam Books in the 80′s and 90′s. I remember them from my elementary school library. Go here for, a brief history of the form.

This conceit has more contemporary adaptations in computer programming languages, such as Twine and Inform7. However, unlike these “game-books” or “text games” which focus on puzzles, and immediate causes and effects, the aim of InFragments is to fall more on the side of literary fiction, utilizing interactivity as a to further the power of the novel form to illuminate the gravity of the seemingly banal, quotidian choices as they aggregate toward the huge decisions that can change the trajectory of our big-picture lives.

I envision the final product being something of a login platform where there is a singular starting point that diverges with each succeeding fragment based on how the reader answers questions certain questions. There will also be side stories that can be accessed through hyperlinked side-characters. The reader will always be able to go back and re-read past fragments, but will not be able to change the answers to the questions or look ahead. Progress will be saved to each username and when the thread is completed, the user will have the option of purchasing a hardcopy of the final narrative as they chose it.

Help Wanted: Words and Images.

As I am attempting to create numerous threads for myriad divergent characters, any input is much appreciated. Interesting anecdotes, poignant character studies, general plot outlines and even fully fleshed out short stories can be submitted for possible use in the final product.

I am always looking for good photos and artwork to add as companions to my fragments. The final project will arrange thumbnails as a dynamic map of the reader’s chosen path and possible destinies. If you read a fragment and think, ‘whoa I have the perfect photo or piece of art to go with that’, and you want to contribute, please don’t hesitate to drop me a comment or email. Contributing authors will be given credit at the bottom of each fragment, and those who contribute a lot will be mentioned in the acknowledgments section with a link to their portfolio or personal website. Feedback can be left in the comments sections, or sent directly to me by email.

A long and winding road

The final project will require many fragments. Assuming one completed narrative requires a bare minimum of one hundred pages (a page equaling approximately 700 words), and a satisfying host of outcomes requires, at the very least, ten threads, then the minimum output required before InFragments can be made fully operational as an interactive interface will be one thousand pages. My hope is that it will grow much more than that, with content and story lines added indefinitely, but this is the arbitrary minimum I’ve decided I need before going live with the web-design side of things. Until then this page will suffice.

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoy!

Show less

Your first choice (Beta)