Because hypertext reading requires so much reader interaction, the reader becomes much more aware of a hypertext as a work with an author and a piece of language to be grappled with, worked around, consumed and deconstructed. Some hypertexts, like this one, use maps and charts to allow readers the ability to jump anywhere in a text. One of the first lexias in Stuart Moulthrop's Victory Garden displays several entryways into the text, laid out in a maze-like (though simple) map, though it is only accessible in the beginning of the text. Shelley Jackson's Patchwork Girl does Moulthrop one better and provides a map accessible at any time showing links between lexias, the physical space (on the screen) between lexias, lexias within categories, and colored versus black-and-white areas of text. Most Storyspace texts after Jackson use this model of sitemapping.

Early hypertexts are not overtly about navigation, however. Although much of Victory Garden is about disorientation and multilinearity, the text does not guide the reader's reflections on his or her navigation. It only aims to reproduce the confusing effect of alternativities. Jackson, too, is more interested in the reader's sense of the text as a whole or in parts rather than their movement through it.

Several more recent hypertexts are not out to get their reader lost. By making their choices or alternate paths blatant instead of subtle, these texts narrate their reader's navigation. Richard Holeton's Figurski at Findhorn on Acid goes so far as to parody the mathematical feat it is to follow some hypertexts.