Ten-Sided: Dissecting a Disaster Part IV (Dolls, Dolls, and more Dolls!)

This is now my fourth post in the Dissecting a Disaster series. Follow the link for the beginning.

The Softest Person, On the Lake by the Snacks, and Brims Assemblage I grouped together because they follow a similar pattern. The characters remain relatively isolated from each other for much of the story. Then, around the end of May, the suddenly skew into each other and meet in bizzaro world the village of doll people.

The Softest Person, in a nutshell, is about a doll maker slowly descending into madness. At the last minute it's implied that he ends up on the "Lost" island amongst the doll village. Throughout the story he describes many of the crazy dolls he makes. After he makes reference to "Alicia things get really crazy for him. Eventually, somehow, at the end he's in a "doll house". That pretty much is it.

On the Lake by the Snacks starts out as a story about a man who lost his daughter, "Aliss". I'm fairly certain that Aliss is the "Alicia" that is torturing the doll maker. The whole thing is fairly mundane when all of a sudden there is a post that, after reading, just makes me go WTF?! After that, I don't know how, but essentially, this guy is now on the "Lost" island. I believe that he is the former husband of Jemima. She's the person who runs the B&B that A.P. stays at. This is based on the fact that he's using her computer(more on that in the future post). By that point however, the story and character relationships have gotten so convoluted that I can't be certain.

Then there's Brim. His character doesn't have a lot of arc. It is instead through comments and allusions that he interacts with the other characters. I think his impact on the overall narrative is felt more through the comments he leaves on other people's blogs than in the posts on his own blog. His character doesn't have anything extraordinary happen to him until he goes scuba diving and ends up on the "Lost" island and follows Pal to the doll village.

Now, if you're thoroughly confused, join the crowd. I think what happened with all 3 of these blogs is that the authors had something in mind that they wanted to do. Then, all of a sudden, the end date for the experiment was coming to a close so they suddenly viewed off in an unexpected direction. I think that's where the lesson is. Just like other fiction, whatever you want to do with your story, do it quickly and as close to the beginning as possible. Otherwise, you risk your blog fiction just being a character blog - and probably a boring one at that.