Peculiar Blog Ficiton How-To Article

I found a peculiar how-to article on Blog Fiction. It gives 5 steps on how to start your own blog fiction. It wasn't peculiar in that there was anything wrong with each step. What was peculiar was the order it had those steps. Summarized, here are the steps:

1. Find yourself a blog-hosting site.
2. Choose a fictional world that will appeal to you and that you won't lose interest in.
3. Choose the right character.
   
4. Write out a story arc.
5. Find your market.
   

Do you see something wrong here? If not, let me rewrite the article as a how-to for writing a book.

1. Find yourself a publisher.
2. Choose a fictional world that will appeal to you and that you won't lose interest in.
3. Choose the right character(s).
   
4. Write out a story arc.
5. Find your market.

Or, how about if you're creating a broadway play.

1. Find yourself a stage.
2. Choose a fictional world that will appeal to you and that you won't lose interest in.
3. Choose the right character(s).
   
4. Write out a story arc.
5. Find your market.

Or how about, creating a movie.

1. Find yourself a video camera.
2. Choose a fictional world that will appeal to you and that you won't lose interest in.
3. Choose the right character(s).
   
4. Write out a story arc.
5. Find your market.

Do you see it yet? The first step listed is most certainly not your first step. Also, if you have any intention of attracting readers, the last step listed, is most certainly not the last thing you should consider. What would be the better order to start a blog fiction? How about this:

1. Choose a fictional world that will appeal to you and that you won't lose interest in.
2. Verify a market exists for it and Find it.
   
3. Choose the right character.
   
4. Write out a story arc.
5. Find yourself a blog-hosting site.

There are 2 advantages to using this order instead of the original. The first advantage is that if there is no market for your story you won't find out after it's too late. You won't invest countless hours in creating a blog fiction for the 'smoking man' from the X-Files to only find out that no one really cares about the X-Files anymore.

The second advantage is that it keeps you focused on the important part of writing blog fiction - the writing. You create the world, choose the characters, and write out a plot before doing anything on the internet. Then you can decide what tools you need to write the blog fiction and then figure out which blogging platform best provides those features.

When starting a blog fiction-or any blog for that matter-I can understand why someone would think that the first thing to do is create a blog. It's the first concrete visible step you take; however, if you do it that way your blog will likely fail from a lack of planning. If you don't plan ahead a zillion things can go wrong. You might pick the wrong blogging platform. You may start writing before you're ready. People might find your site before you're ready and ignore it due to lack of content and activity. All of these things you want to avoid.

It is like the ancient advice of SunTsu, "Victorious writers write first and then publish their blog fiction, while defeated writers publish first and then seek to write". Or at least I think he said something like that.

Now Offering Full-Text RSS Feed

For the past couple of weeks I have been trying hard to promote my rss feed. I've put the subscription link in the most visible part of my blog. I've added the instant email subscription widget. I also formatted the heck out of the link and text so that it can go at the top. My efforts were repaid by watching my feedburner subscription rate yo-yo up and down for the last week. I couldn't figure out why.

While looking for something else today, I happened upon an article that might explain why. It said to always offer a full text feed not a partial one. Meaning that your rss feed should include your entire content. At first, I just skipped over the advice mostly because I didn't want to hear it.

The reason I didn't want to hear it is because I've been so afraid of my content ending up on a splog. This is a very real and ever present danger for legitimate bloggers. If you never heard the term "splog" it means a "spam blog". These internet bottom feeders use people's feeds to automatically download content from legitimate sites, and then post it on their own. They create massive, fly-by-night websites, and collect the ad revenue from your content and 1000s of others' blogs. This hurts you because since their websites are so massive, their content may come up first in a google search. Worse still, google can then penalize your blog for not having "original" content. Therefore, to protect my blog's content I didn't publish the full text of my posts. I figured it wasn't that big of a deal for my subscribe's to click over to the website for the full text.

So like I said, I didn't listen to the advice even though the person said even he himself will not subscribe to blogs that offer partial post text. I figured I'd rather protect my content and search rank than cater to such lazy readers. The idea was then pushed to the back of my head. Well it festered for a while and eventually I did a google search to get other people's opinion on full vs. partial feeds. Well, the argument is pretty one sided and is in favor of full feeds. A small sample of what I found: here, here, and here.

Most of the other sites I found were bloggers asking their reader's opinion on if they mind partial feeds. Those comments were usually about 2/3 hated partial feeds, 1/6 didn't care, and the other 1/6 don't use rss feeds. It was while reading those comments that I realized something. I'm making the same mistake that the RIAA (music industry) and MPAA (movie industry) are making right now. I'll explain.

The RIAA, MPAA, and myself we're punishing our customers(in my case, readers) for the crimes of others. The RIAA and MPAA are forcing all this anti-copyright technology on your cd\dvds and digital downloads. All it does is piss off customers who use the content for legitimate purposes, and at most provides a brief speedbump for those who want to use it illegally. Not providing full text feeds provides the same end result. A lot of pain for my readers, and nothing more than a speedbump for A-Hole sploggers.

That all being said. I am now offering a full text rss feed. For those who might miss this post I'm indicating it in the subscribe text that it's now a full feed. So if you like my site, be sure to subscribe. If you don't have an rss reader, you can alternatevely sign up for email notification.

As for protecting my content, I plan on using 2 different tools to try and monitor malicious use of my rss feed. Of course, there is Copyscape which lets you put in a webpage and will spit out any urls that appear to have the exact same content. Also, blogger Kate has an absolutely brilliant tactic to prevent scrapes of your rss fead. I'm not going to quote or summarize. Just go read the article. It's clever, and free.

BTW, This isn't just a meta post. The recommendation extends to anyone who runs a blog fiction site. There really are advantages to allowing the full text. Fans of your site can let recent posts build up and then read at their own leisure - even if not connected to the internet at the time. Hopefully, if your content is liked well enought that someone will subscribe to your blog, they'll also be willing to still visit your site and leave comments on posts that they really like.

One last thing, If anyone knows of anyway to increase my subscription number, I'd love to hear it. Now that I'm getting some traffic I really want to try and convert that to subscribers. Right now I don't know what else to do to promote my feed besides writing good content and making it easy to subscribe. Thanks!

8 Strategies to Avoid Abandoning Your Blog Fiction

Looking across my list of blog fiction sites, I see a lot of abandoned stories. To be clear, I don't mean stories that ended or that have taken a planned hiatus. I mean stories that without any given reason no longer update and never resolved the primary conflict. In my opinion this is the worst thing that can happen to a blog fiction site. If not careful, this can happen even to your brilliant blog fiction.

My best guess is that the authors of these sites experienced either burnout, became disinterested, or died. While I can't help with that last one, I have some ideas and observations on how to avoid the first 2. I've divided these tips into 3 sections. Things to do before starting a blog fiction, after starting, and after become well established.


Before Starting:

1. The first tip, Decide on a manageable posting schedule.
This should be a minimum of your best and worst weeks. If you can usually crank out 4 posts a week except when you're busy, but only 2 when you are busy, then you shouldn't decide on 4 posts a week. I would say only do 2. You'll thank yourself when you're busy.

2. Create a Nice stockpile of posts.
Whatever your posting schedule is, create about a months worth of posts. This buffer will serve you well when you get busy, or need to take a vacation form your blog.

3. Outline, or at least plan, some plots.
While you don't have to plot your entire blog, you should have a good idea of plots, sub-plots, and sub stories to introduce along the way. If it starts to drag, BOOM! drag in one of your sub-plots.

After Starting:
4. Don't post in real-time unless you mean it.
I'm a strong advocate against writing blog fiction in real-time. That means, 1 day in your character's world is the equivalent of a day in your reader's world. However, some people like the idea and thinks it provides a better response from the readers. While true, that means you have to consider one important thing. You can never take a break without explaining why your character hasn't posted in that time. So ask yourself, can you really provide a weeks worth of story all 52 weeks of the year and never take an unexpected break? If not, figure out how to separate your character's time from real-time.

5. Watch out for the "groove" trap.
I know this probably sounds like a weird warning, but it's an important one. What I'm talking about is when you get a sudden burst of creativity. Let's say you usually only do 2 posts a week. In one month though you really get in a "groove", and you start cranking out 5 posts a week creating a HUGE backlog. Now you're tempted to up the number of posts you do. Should you do it? Probably not. Remember, there's a reason you chose the posting schedule you're on. Take the extra time instead to do some editing, promote the site, or heck! even take a break! Bursts of creativity can be followed by bursts of apathy.

6. Take planned breaks
I seriously doubt anyone can do something as fun and "optional" as a blog fiction 365 days a year. Take a planned break. Announce it ahead of time so your readers aren't shocked. Also announce when you'll be back - and make sure that you do come back! Even if you're writing in real-time, try to make up excuses why posting would be cut off for a week or 2. For example, every year for 2 weeks your character visits Aunt what's-her-face who doesn't have an internet connection.

After Well Established:
7. Don't be afraid of unplanned breaks
I mean it. Don't be afraid to just say ENOUGH! It's perfectly acceptable to say.

My brother is missing, my spouse has explosive diaria, my kids have lice, and the dog keeps running away. I don't have any more time to spend on this stupid blog, or to waste time reading comments from my whiny readers about how my posts never go up on time! GO. TO. HELL!!!! ... I'll be back in 1 month, see you all then.

Well, except for that last sentence, maybe it isn't acceptable to say all that, but you get the point. Give a reason why you're taking a sudden break, apologize, and announce when you'll be back - and make sure to be back.

8. End it
Yes, you heard me. You never know, it could just be time to end your masterpiece. If you've been writing as a character for a while, most of the plot points you outlined have been used up, and no new ones are coming to mind, face it, the story is over, it's time to end it.

Now, I'm not saying you should end your story Farscape style by vaporizing your main characters. Rather, tie up some loose ends and have your character announce they will no longer write a diary. You could always come back and do a "sequel" - different blog, same character.

So there are my 8 tips to keep prevent burnout. Does anyone have any other tips that I might have missed?

I'm dumping BlogRush

Back in February I did a review of Blog Rush. I said that it probably won't get you much traffic, but couldn't hurt. Well, today I take it back. I can't even get blog rush to give traffic to this blog. Since March 14th, I've only managed to get 13 visitors via BlogRush. The bounce rate of those visitors is 85%. 13 visitors in 6 months is not worth the screen real-estate or additional quarter second load time that it adds.

I'm not the only one dumping blogrush either. A quick google search reveals a lot of dissatisfaction with the widget:
http://www.qualitynonsense.com/82/blogrush-sucks/
http://www.chrisguthrie.net/win-1-of-2-free-ads-that-replace-my-blog-rush-widget/
http://optempo.com/2008/01/14/blogrush-blogflush-a-blogrush-sucks-update/

If you want a contrast of how dismal of a statistic that is, I've gotten 23 clicks from the blog fiction widget just since July. That's when it was still mostly in beta. I've replaced it with another widget scheme that's supposed to bring in additional traffic. That scheme is Entrecard. I've only had for a short time, but I can already tell that it's a lot more promising. I think it could really work for a blog fiction site as well. I'll give a fuller review when I have more experience with it.

Mobile Friendly Websites

About a month ago I talked about the need for an alternative to a laptop that can be used to read blog fiction sites. One thing that I started using is my cell phone. It's something that I always have and is usually in an area that offers "mobile" internet access. What's neat about it is that if I find some down time I can always whip it out read the latest posts from my favorite sites. That's the advantage to using a cell phone to read blog fiction.

However, there are also disadvantages. Text is really small on a cell phone. Depending on your location and service, "Mobile internet" isn't necessarily available. The biggest problem is the small screen can really screw up the layout of a blog. It is that last disadvantage that brings me to the point of this post.

Using my phone, the EnV VX9900 from LG,, I went through the entire blog fiction list and rated how easy each site is to use on my cell phone. I have 3 categories.

1. Navigable: This is the most favorable rating. This means that not only can you read the latest posts, but you can easily navigate through old posts or even start back at the beginning and read the whole thing on your phone.
2. Readable: This is a "satisfactory" rating. It's easy to read the latest posts. Good for catching up on a blog that you haven't read for a bit. However, it's not easy or maybe not even possible to navigate to older posts. Therefore you can only catch up with the sites you're already reading.
3. Unusable: The worse rating. There are 2 ways that a blog fiction site can get on this list. The first way is if the text is hard or impossible to get to and read. An example would be sifting through 200 lines of links and ads before getting to any content. The other way to end up on this list is if a blog is "readable", but is no longer updating. If a blog is finished and you can only read the latest posts than really, it's not going to be very readable at all.
   

Obviously, not everyone's phone is going to be like mine. That means this list isn't the final say. It's only a survey of these sites according to what my phone can view. I would love to know how some of these sites look on other people's phones.

One other thing before I get to the results. If you're a blog fiction author and your blog is on the "unusable" list, don't over react. Don't start optimizing your site for cell phone traffic yet. Especially not if it's going to harm the layout and functionality of site for normal visitors. Right now, I consider this list for readers who might be stuck somewhere boring (an opening music act, nephew's T-Ball game, or niece's dance recital) and need some entertainment. Know that your entertainment could be only a cell phone away. I'll be issuing updates to this list as needed.

Navigable
Action Figure Diary*
Yanni's Block
The Adventures of Daniel Walters
Curly Gibson

Readable
Anonymous Lawyer
Captain's Log
Undead Man Blogging
The Professional Pet
Peep This Diary
Mexican Year
Renal Failure
Fate's Acquittal
Space Haggis
Giant Girl Rampages
Charlotte
Fake Steve Ballmer
Death's Blog

Unusable
Ten-Sided
Wilf's World
Atyllah The Hen
Confessions of a Blogger
Transplanted Life
Lord Likely
Fleet Commander
Diary of a Killer
Up and Onward: Confessions of a Super Hero
The Cranky Product Manager
Horton's Folly
The User Pool
Under Odysseus
The Star Islanders
The Darth Side
Blog Paige

*Action Figure Diary was easy to read and navigate. However, the comic pictures were condensed to a point where I couldn't make it out. I suspect that not everyone will have that problem with their phone.

Ways to Get Your Readers Caught Up

My post about a "Catch Up" button got a few comments suggesting other ways new readers of a blog fiction to catch up on past story. I thought that the ideas were important enough to pull out of the comments and into a blog post.

Catch Up label
This was already discussed.

Character Guides
One way of getting your readers up to speed is to have a page of character descriptions. That way, with every scene readers can click over to learn about a character mentioned in the latest post. That way someone new to the story can jump right in and know who everyone is.
See Melly Mills, or The User Pool for examples.

Plot Summary in sidebar
A lot of people will put a summary of what's going on in the sidebar. The description would be something akin to the back cover of a book. Just a little intro so that reader's aren't completely lost.
Just a few examples: Wilf's World, Horton's Folly, Charlotte.

Plot Summary in separate page.
This is something that I haven't seen used in practice. I'm not sure why. It would seem to be very effective. Every time something significant happens a writer could just add a line to the summary page so that a reader can get up to speed quickly and directly.

Constant Link Back to previous events
This strategy of keeping your readers up to speed is something unique to the blog format. A mention of a story or character could have a link back to an old post about that story or introduction of that character. For readers who are constantly up to date, they can just read right over the text. For those who haven't read every word you've ever written still have a chance to get up to speed with the plot. A log of different sites use this, just a few examples are:
The User Pool, Terran Resistance, and Death's Blog used it.

Change Your writing style
This is something that Odin Soli pointed out when talking about the "catch up" button. When you're writing a serial, you must always keep that in mind and your writing should reflect it.

Episodic scriptwriting is full of tricks for mid-streaming viewers, since TV shows and other serials deal with this problem all the time. Something we did in a journalism class once -- watch a soap opera episode, then write down as much backstory as we could. It was amazing to discover how much we'd learned about the setting, characters, conflicts, etc. from a single episode.

The point is, if you write something correctly your reader's won't have to spend much time catching up.

I've listed all the methods I've seen and can think of for getting reader's of a blog fiction "caught up", but which way is the best? I don't know the answer to that. I don't even know if there is an answer to that. I think that they all work. I haven't seen enough examples of any of them to say that one is better than the other. Also, there is no reason a writer can't use more than one or all of these strategies to get new readers up to speed. For now, I would say use whichever strategy makes sense to you to get your new readers up to speed. Just make sure that you have a strategy.

Blog Fiction Terms

I've already done several posts defining the term blog fiction - including my final definition. I also explained why I call it Blog Fiction instead of fictional blogs. Those are just a couple of terms that may sound foreign to someone who is new to online fiction. I thought that I would use this post to go over some words and phrases related to online fiction that haven't quite made it into Webster's.

Blog Fiction
Serialized literature published to a blog that is written in a diary format. Often, but not necessarily, the fictional writer of the blog will interact with it's readers. See my previous post, Blog Fiction Defined.

Fictional Blog
Blog Fiction is often, incorrectly, referred to as a "fictional blog". See my post, Blog Fiction Vs. Fictional Blog for more details.

Fictional Blogger
An Imaginary Blogger. The imaginary characters who "write" Blog Fiction.

Blogfic
Short for Blog Fiction.

Internet Fiction
Any and all fiction published on the internet. This includes all blog fiction, fiction blogs, and any other website publishing literature to the internet.

Fiction Blog
Blog that contains fiction. This includes short stories, serials, or any other type of fiction prose.

Blog Novel
A term that, while not coined by, but redefined by the people at Making Melly Mills. We agree that the term makes sense as a synonym for a narrative blog fiction. Some people use it to refer to any novel written or published to a blog.

Blovel
Short for Blog Novel

Blook
The LuLu Blooker prize committee defines a blook as:

blook (bluk), n. A printed and bound book, based on a blog (cf. web log) or web site;

Blog Fiction Vs. Fictional Blog

A lot of the time, people will use the terms "blog fiction" and "fictional blog" interchangeably. I admit that I've been guilty of doing this on several occasions. The problem is that referring to a blog fiction site as a "fictional blog" is a misnomer. To make my point, let's look at the definition for fictional given by the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

Entry Word:
fictional
Function:
adjective

Text: not real and existing only in the imagination - the events in the horror movie seemed so real to some fans that they could not believe that the whole thing was fictional

Something that's "fictional" means that it is not real. As in a fictional character, a fictional actor, or a fictional tv show. Using the phrase "fictional blog" would imply that the blog you are talking about isn't real. With the blogs I read, that couldn't be further from actuality. When I read Leroy Power's blog, I load it, read it, leave comments, and even link to it. It is just like any other blog that I read. That blog is real. Leroy might be a fictional character, but his blog most certainly is not fictional.

I liken the blog in a blog fiction to the stage of a live theater production. In a play, the characters and setting are fictional, but you wouldn't call the stage they stand on fictional. A blog is like the stage of blog fiction writers. Each one is different, but it's real.

Even though "fictional blog" is a misnomer, it seems more natural to say than "blog fiction" or "blog fiction site" and I think that's why some people use that phrase instead. I am going to try to no longer use the phrase when referring to a blog fiction site. The only time I'll use it is if I'm reading a story that refers to a blog that doesn't exist. That would be a fictional blog.

I know that this vocabulary might put me at odds with some people and websites. For instance, The first two words of Betsy Friedrich's thesis on Blog Fiction was "Fictional Blogs:". Also, Jilliane Hamilton's flocalicious directory uses the phrase fictional blog to describe blog fiction sites. It even coins the word "flog" for short.

Now, I'm not going to start crusading through the internet and demand people change their webpage and urls from fictional blog to blog fiction. However, I will pledge to use the terms correctly from this point on and just hope that others will eventually follow my lead.

Chaos Reigns in World of Online Fiction

I really hope that I'm over reacting, but where the heck is everybody?! I'm not just talking about the dearth of activity on the Blog Fiction Forums. I'm also talking about the lack of forum activity everywhere in the online fiction world. I had a different post planned for today, but I can't ignore something really eerie going on right now. It affects not just Blog Fiction, but all online fiction.

As you know, Pages Unbound closed... and then reopened. Even after reopening though, I haven't seen any new activity on their forums. I don't know if people have started reviewing again (no dates on reviews or any way to list reviews by date published). Over at the Web Fiction Guide forums the only activity for the last 5 days has been a thread for new people to introduce themselves. The editors are still editing, but the visible users seem to be gone. Over at the Novelr forums, the only activity there in 2 weeks has been the mention that Pages Unbound has reopened.

So, I come back to my original question. Where the heck is everybody? I had a couple theories. My first thought was that the holiday weekend distracted everyone(Labor day in U.S.). That theory didn't hold, not every writer is from the United States after all - I would still be seeing participants from the rest of the world. My next theory was that maybe the chaos of people and their kids going back to school was to blame. Again, this theory doesn't hold up. Every school in the world doesn't start their school year around the 1st of September. I then formed a third theory that scared me. "Omigod, did we lose critical mass?" - That hard to define, but easy to recognize property that allows online communities to thrive.

Here's how the theory goes. When pages unbound closed, Web Fiction Guide became the immediate beneficiary. It allowed community reviewing and rating in addition to editor reviews. They added a forum. All of it was easier to use than Pages Unbound too. Pages Unbound even gave a banner ad advertising Web Fiction Guide. With all the activity at Web Fiction Guide I noticed that my forum activity grinded to a halt (Presumably, going to the more active and just as easy to use Web Fiction Guide). As far as I can tell, the same thing might have happened to the NovLounge. Then, web fiction guide forums slowed down a little. Why, I don't know. Maybe it did slow down because of theories 1 and 2. Then, something strange happened. Pages Unbound came back. Now, people don't know where they want their home to be. Now people have to choose which great review site they want to participate in. Internet traffic being the finicky beast it is, chooses neither. Now, the longer both forums remain inactive, the more people that are going to give up and not participate in either. Where as "critical mass" describes a virtuous circle of people creating content, which attracts more users, who create more forum content, which attracts more users... etc. What I'm describing is a vicious circle. People who would be willing to participate are leaving due to inactivity, which leads to more inactivity...

Alexandra Erin used Pages Unbound to create a critical mass of online writers and readers. She created a hub for the 2 groups to connect to each other. I hope that my theory is wrong and there is another explanation for the disappearance of forum traffic - that the critical mass held together during the chaos of the last month. It would be a devastating blow to online fiction to have to try and rebuild that critical mass.

In the end, only time will tell. Maybe everyone went to a different site that I don't know about and is having a hell of a good time. That would be good. If not and the forum traffic doesn't come roaring back, and is instead sparse, then my "chaos reigns" theory would be proven correct, and all will mourn our loss...

Blog Fiction Widget Release

The Blog Fiction Widget is a widget that is meant to help promote blog fiction and bring together the blog fiction community. The widget lists the most recent posts from blog fiction sites. The widget allows a blogger to customize how many posts it lists, it's width, background color, foreground color, and 'family' option. The widget has been tested and verified to work with the firefox webbrowser versions 2 and 3 as well as internet explorer 6 and 7.

If you would like to use the widget for you site, you may take the code and use it at any time. The code is listed in the blog fiction forum (here). It includes a tutorial on how to customize the widget.

If you run a blog fiction site and want your blog fiction to be included in the widget that everyone gets, you have to host the widget on your blog fiction as well. It must be in the sidebar or other prominated spot on your blog to count-no burying it in the footer. Note that your site must be a blog fiction to be included in the widget feed. (See this post for the definition used to determine if your site is a blog fiction)

Once you have the code on your site, send an email to widgetlist (at) blogfiction (dot) org with the subject line "Blog Fiction Widget" and the url to your website in the body. Once it's verified that your site is Blog Fiction it will be added to the feed. After that your site will get the added exposure on all the other blog fiction sites that host the widget. If you run into any trouble with the widget go to the forums for technical support.

As an aside, this blog has 2 versions of the blog fiction widget. It has the version that everybody has at the top. It also has a "full" version that lists all blog fiction sites whether or not they have the widget on their site.