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Metz makes a strong argument for recognising that the major narrative units in cinema are not shots and their immediate relations (edits) but the series that are formed through collections of shots. These series, Metz's autonomous segments, form the major narrating blocks within cinema. This would indicate that it is not the content of an individual shot, nor the relation established between two fragments, that provides what might be characterised as minimal narrative units. Hence, if there is no intrinsic order required between parts then any principle of organisation or coherence will apply at a higher level.
This also appears to be the case in much hypertext fiction, where it is not the content of individual fragments (nodes), nor their immediate relation, that constitutes a narrative sequence. Metz's argument suggests that it is the syntagmatic series formed by a hypertextual episode (what Bernstein has described as a 'pattern' or Rosenberg as an 'episode', and what Landow (1999) is alluding to in his conception of "collage writing"), and what is significant is that Metz's approach provides not only a terminology but a history of application that can be appropriated by hypertext.
This is not particularly suprising as it is apparent that hypertextual fragments (nodes) can, like cinematic shots, be arranged in numerous sequences and that there is no intrinsic and necessary grammar to this (Miles, 1999).
An earlier emphasis on the cinematic nature of the connection between hypertext nodes (Miles, 1999), while important, does not provide an adequate account of the production of narrative (fiction or nonfiction) sequences in hypertext. Like the cinema, it is apparent that hypertext requires a minimal unit constituted by the set of nodes conjoined. That this has been the case in much extant hypertext fiction is clear. Such a process has been much less common in what has been routinely described as hypertext nonfiction.
Clearly there are substantial differences between the cinema and hypertext, all duly noted by commentators, and this author in no way wishes to disregard or ignore these differences. These differences involve complex questions of determining hypertextual autonomous syntagma where sequences are able to be determined (to some extent) by readers or systems. Furthermore, the multilinear nature of hypertext presents numerous possibilities of variable syntagmatic segments that contain repeated nodes. These are issues that Rosenberg has thoroughly explored.
However, an important implication of this, as Metz notes, is that if it is the development or articulation of autonomous segments that are fundamental to narration in cinema, then the meaning that accrues to these segments is highly contextual and not inherent within the connections themselves.
Adrian Miles: Hypertext syntagmas: cinematic narration with links
A performative hypertext presented by Journal of Digital Information