Ten-Sided: Dissecting a Disaster Part III (Keeping up with A.P.)

I already talked briefly about the characters of Ten-Sided and the plot as a whole. Let's take a look at the some of the individual blogs.

Keeping up with A.P. can be broken in half. In the first month and a half it reads like a business man who is growing weary of traveling for his job. It is realistic to a fault. What I mean is, it really does read like someone's personal blog - boring. Talks about trivial events. Here's some choice excerpts:
March 23

Anyways. Work was busy this week, but good, there are some big things brewing and it's fun and challenging ... after a few years of doing this it feels good to really know my way around, so to speak. Also waiting for Spring, I mean really really waiting for it. I'm getting ready to open the patio up, imagining all the cookouts that Bill and I will be hosting. Even more than last year if I have my way. One thing is, though, we're going to have to setup some policy for the iPod DJ'ing. 50 Asians with iPods + 1 stereo system = the wrong kind of "jockeying". Last year things totally got out of hand.

April 4th

At Stern I had to take a class on business ethics, which at the time I thought was pretty boring. Of course everybody knows right from wrong, so what? I guess that was me a few years ago, when it didn't occur to me that actually if you're unlucky you can fall into a position at work where you're asked to compromise your ethics all the time. I mean, all the time. And you're all hustling to get ahead, right, so it's hard to always make the right decision. This doesn't happen to me, I've made choices to avoid this situation. But I've seen it in action, sometimes it's not pretty. This doesn't happen to me, though.

April 18th

Traveling more, getting on a plane on Friday and I'll be away 'til next week. Not to Las Vegas this time, as if the location even matters at this point. Well, one bright spot is that Bill and I have picked the date for our first spring cookout: Sunday, April 30. Sent out the Evites this morning. If you didn't get one it's 'cause I've decided you're lame. No j/k I just probably forgot to add your email address. Send me an email and I'll add you to the evite.

That's the first half. Then half way through it's finally revealed that this guy works for some kind of intelligence agency. From there, the plot really starts to takes an unexpected turn. On May 10th he stays at a B&B that some of the other characters were staying at. The B&B is, as far as I can tell, on the "Lost" island. He unsuccessfully "recruits" Toni for a mission. By my count there were only 11 posts after the post revealing the character to be a member of an intelligence agency.

In the end, A.P. is somehow poisoned and is dying. Apparently he betrayed who he was working for. What he did, why he did it, and how he was poisoned is not very clear at all.

I think there are 2 lessons to draw here. One lesson of this isn't a blog fiction specific lesson. It applies to most story telling. Don't wait until the book is half over to reveal the interesting part of the plot or characters. The second lesson is don't be realistic to a fault. Nobody wants to spend a month reading about cookouts and plane flights.