Storyspace was the first software program specifically developed for creating, editing, and reading hypertext fiction

Hypertext fiction

Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature, characterized by the use of hypertext links which provides a new context for non-linearity in "literature" and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text to the next, and in this fashion arranges a...

. It was developed in the 1980s by Jay David Bolter

Jay David Bolter

Jay David Bolter is the Wesley Chair of New Media and a professor in the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Some of his main points of study include the evolution of media, the usage of technology in education, and the role of computers in the...

 and Michael Joyce, who presented it to the first international meeting on Hypertext at Chapel Hill in October 1987
. It was developed to support hypertext fiction in particular, although it can also be used for organizing and writing fiction and non-fiction intended for print. Storyspace is sold by the software company Eastgate Systems

Eastgate Systems

Eastgate Systems is a publisher and software company headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts, which publishes hypertexts by established authors with careers in print as well as by talented new authors...

, and is available both for Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 and Mac

Macintosh

The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...

.

Artistic and educational use

Several early classics of hypertext literature were created using Storyspace, such as Afternoon, a story

Afternoon, a story

Afternoon, a story is a work of electronic literature written in 1987 by American author Michael Joyce. It was published by Eastgate Systems in 1990 and is known as the first hypertext fiction....

by Michael Joyce, Victory Garden by Stuart Moulthrop

Stuart Moulthrop

Stuart Moulthrop is an innovator of electronic literature and hypertext fiction, both as a theoretician and as a writer. He is author of the hypertext fiction works Victory Garden , which was on the front-page of the New York Times Book Review in 1993, Reagan Library , and Hegirascope , amongst...

 and Patchwork Girl

Patchwork Girl

The Patchwork Girl is a character from the fantasy Oz Book series by L. Frank Baum. She first appeared in The Patchwork Girl of Oz....

by Shelley Jackson

Shelley Jackson

Shelley Jackson is a writer and artist known for her cross-genre experiments, including her groundbreaking work of hyperfiction, Patchwork Girl...

.

Storyspace has also been used extensively in tertiary and secondary education for teaching general writing skills and critical thinking and for teaching creative writing in particular, and was especially popular in the early years of the web when hypertext linking was less fluid and web pages had to be hand-coded in HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

. Proponents argue that Storyspace's visual maps of how hypertext nodes or lexia are connected allow students to focus on writing in hypertext rather than on technical issues, and that linking and/or visually juxtaposing ideas allows students to develop a visual logic.