Working with Collaborators
Writers of hypertexts must surrender much
of the control and authority The Author has traditionally enjoyed. Already
in composition studies, we have been breaking out from an age that sees the author in terms of the lone artist and into one that
fosters cooperation. Walter Ong noted that the technology of writing created
a new sense of the private ownership of words; (131) yet Landow writes
that hypertext is eclipsing that image by transforming and decentering our
notions of The Author (198). To a degree, this team approach resembles what
we will find in some areas of technical writing; however, in technical writing a
line still exists between the disciplines: the engineer creates the machine, and
the technical writer describes the operation of it.
In interactive media, that line disappears altogether,
and the collaborators become not just other writers but artists from a variety
of disciplines. All in-depth media projects are collaborative efforts of graphic
designers, writers, programmers, and musicians.
In her book Hamlet on the
Holodeck, Janet Murray outlines four essential properties for successful
digital environments. Two of those properties are that the environment be
spatial and encyclopedic. To accomplish either of these goals, a writer cannot
work alone they need artists, musicians, and experts in all kinds of
computer applications to help them capture and present an inhabitable space, and
they need help gathering the breadth of information required.
It is, of course,
possible that one individual has the talent to all these things by him or
herself, as one of my students will often protest; however, time is the factor
here. If an interactive CD-ROM/DVD about uncovering the likely identity of Jack
the Ripper takes a five-member team six months to develop from concept to
distribution, it would take one individual so long to create the product that it
would be obsolete long before it was finished.
In this collaborative process, the writers
vision is subject to constant revision and modification by other writers with
their own ideas, graphic and sound artists who are equally passionate about
their concepts, a programmer enamored with the quirks, capabilities and
limitations of the media, and (usually) a customer who must be pleased. Because
of the very nature of the media, a writers collaborative skills need as much
nurturing as their traditional communication skills.