The idea for my project's format came to me as I was reading through The Norman Conquests -- why not give a reader the ability to juxtapose simultaneous actions and allow him or her to jump quickly and easily between them? That is, it always annoyed me when I had to flip back and forth between plays to figure out what was going on elsewhere. Or, to put it into visual terms, allow the reader to insert their own "cinematic" cuts into the text whenever they felt like following a character into another room. However, by always having the text to all the action available, I don't limit the reader to choosing only one path through the story. If the reader wishes, he can absorb everything that is happening at a certain time before moving on in the story.The structure of the project is fairly simple -- I have a time navigation bar at the top of the page that allows the reader to move linearly forwards or backwards in time. The rest of the page is divided into thirds, with each third representing a place/play (from left to right -- the garden, the living room, the dining room) with an appropriate background graphic. Within each play, links exist at each concrete crossover between plays -- when characters enter or exit. These links, when clicked, jump to an anchor in the concurrent play, placing the reader at the correct spot to follow that character into the next room, while keeping his place in the current room. (Due to time limitations, I haven't been able to add a whole lot of the text of the play, and so the anchors may not be able to scroll the frames to the exact correct insertion point. In an ideal world, all the text would be there, and it would work as described.)
The ideas in this project could be expanded further. For example, links could be added that cross time, or occur at more abstract events (such as at comments characters make which refer to actions that happened earlier or in different plays). The project could even be switched to a visual, rather than a text-based format, with videos running side-by-side that allow viewers to switch between them at crossover times. Regardless of the changes, I believe that the strength of this approach is the freedom given to the reader once he is allowed to view simultaneous actions in a side-by-side format.
(Note: Due to time constraints, only part of Saturday's actions are represented on this site. But, I hope it's enough to illustrate the points I discussed above.)