Hypertext fiction

Hypertext fiction is "a genre of electronic literature characterized by the use of hypertext links," which bring non-linearity and reader interaction into literature. The reader moves between linked passages the article calls lexias and so "arrange[s] a story from a deeper pool of potential stories," each path through the web a different telling. The first works appeared before the World Wide Web, built in tools such as Storyspace and HyperCard, with Judy Malloy and Michael Joyce named as pioneers; the early web then took the form up, from Olia Lialina's My Boyfriend Came Back from the War (1996) to Robert Arellano's Sunshine 69, the first novel-length hypertext fiction.

For web writers this is the lineage in which the link, not the chapter, is the unit of story. Twine fiction is "cited as being a direct descendant of hypertext fiction," the printed ancestor of the same branching shape is the gamebook, and the straight-line descendant is web fiction itself.