In class, and in writing, students itemized the burdens hypertext placed on them. The inability to reliably 'look back' over all the text spaces one had read spurred writing as reading: "The screen set up forced the reader to make an abstract for herself and to take a lot of notes." (RA) The problem of constructing a coherent narrative from a multitude of text spaces heightened intellectual involvement from processing to remembering: "These links require the reader to memorize steps along with the story. This way the author in a subliminal way forces the reader to memorize the links…and the story." (J)

Then came the burden of judging: "because the narration changes so quickly through the links that even though the theme of this hypertext book is under our nose, it's hard to distinguish it from what is not important." (J) Finally, the issue of commitment arose: "a completely new experience, had to invest my own time in it." (S)

A. summed up the class consensus. "In a clearly written text, such as a bound book, the reader is usually served everything they need to make sense of the story…Whereas the reader of the conventional book pretty much goes through the motions of reading [my italics], in hypertext the reader does a lot more of the work."

The coercive quality of the medium jumps out from the comments above: forces, required, had to. Reading hypertext thus dramatized the text's construction and left the reader no option but to participate in that theatrical event. The text became its own heuristic, teaching students to read it as they did so.