Getting Harry & Olive organized
A place for everything. Everything in it's place.
(I think Sean Connery said that.)
Been thinking; thinking is dangerous!
Been thinking about how to organize the Harry & Olive adventures, when they go online. It'll be awhile yet, but it pays to plan ahead, right?
Ok, here goes!
Page Shock
When I publish Harry & Olive online, I want to avoid what I have decided to call ``page shock"; that is, a reader finds a web page so completely repulsive, s/he immediately leaves.
Page shock is a common reaction, among some people when they accidentally stumble upon porn. I think we have all experienced a sense of rage when web pages engulf our screen with incomprehensible words and images, doing unexpected things; grossly offending our sensibilities. When this happens, we just want to close the window, move on; get away!
I had this experience recently. The other evening I was sent links to three examples of online fiction. Much to my surprise, each example of online fiction suffered from some form of page shock.
- The first example was a very short humorous paragraph. Now this short paragraph was totally lost amongst all the ads cluttered all about. It took me a fair amount of time even to find what I was supposed to read, as I had to scroll down the page even to find the paragraph. If I hadn't felt a certain obligation to read the paragraph, I would definitely have skipped it. On this page, the fiction gets a C-, and the Page Shock gets a B+.
- I think the story on this page was supposed to be science-fiction satire. Whatever it was, it was very, very esoteric. Actually, it was more than esoteric, it was cryptic; in a bureaucratic string-cheese theory sort of way. At the end of the story, there were about 20 comments. I concluded those were the only 20 people on Earth who could understand this story. On this page, the fiction gets a WHAA???, and the Page Shock gets a B.
- On the last page I visited, the page shock was so great, I ran for my life. The person seemed to think the equivalent of a novel had to fit on a single sheet of paper. When I clicked on the link, up came a page full of words squished together so tightly, I couldn't read them (they were all a blurr). There was no space. Gosh, give me white space! On this page, the fiction gets a I didn't read it, FOOL!!!; and the Page Shock gets a Please return my Chonies!!!
(My apologies to the people I reviewed. Should you happen upon this posting, and believe you recognize yourself, I hope you will review me, when my time comes due. ;)
I thank the folks who sent the links to the pages above, although they initially caused a near endless amount of flusterbustering.
I digress, I guess: Back to H&O
Here are some features I'm considering for Harry & Olive. They are arranged in no particular order. Please, let me know what you think. Your comments, emails, etc are always welcome. Understand that everything is in flux, and therefore subject to massive amounts of change!!!!! :)
Pitch Page
As I've said before, H&O is designed to be flexible. H&O could be adapted to books, graphic novels, TV, radio, short film, movies, whatever. Folks looking for info on making a deal could go straight to the Pitch Page.
Character Chart
This would most likely be a listing of character biographies, vital statistics, and major events. Keeping this listing up-to-date could be a major, major contribute for H&O fans.(Anyone? Anyone?)
Oh, and ``Character Chart" is a sucko title, don't you think? There must be bunches of people out there with better ideas!
Epi Log
The ``Epi Log" title is an abbreviation for ``episode catalog". My thought is to have the Epi Log function very much like a Table of Contents for the H&O series. I'm thinking the Epi Log would include episode and Scene information plus links to all episodes and scenes. That way, if readers should ever lose the link to the scene they want to read, or they should want to reread a scene, or whatever, they can just go to the Epi Log, and find the link to the correct episode and scene that interests them.
Later, Later
Meet you at the meeting. Save me a seat with a door.
