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Hypertext syntagmas: cinematic narration with links
8.ordinary.sequence

The ordinary sequence is a continuous, autonomous segment, that narrates a continuous story episode, but elides some parts of the story time. This is extremely common in all narratives, not only the cinema, and is where some part of the story time (the time of the narrated events as opposed to the time of their narration) is skipped, for whatever reason. For example where a character may enter a building and then appear in their office, so that the time taken to move from the entry to the office is elided, and as importantly the narration of this event is elided but implied.

There is another variety of the simple sequence where the organisation of those moments that are elided are actually crucial to the significance of the sequence. That this is not the case in the ordinary sequence is generally due to the 'trivial' nature of how we regard what is elided.

As in cinema this occurs frequently in hypertext (as with most fiction). It is common in parts of Moulthrop's Victory Garden, Joyce's Afternoon: a Story, and parts of Malloy's Its Name was Penelope.

Adrian Miles: Hypertext syntagmas: cinematic narration with links
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