Interacting with a blog fiction

Okay, I think it's time to discuss the concept of "suspension of belief", and, how it relates to Blog Fiction. If you've never heard of the term, I'll direct you to this media glossary article.

In the world of fiction you are often required to believe a premise which you would never accept in the real world. Especially in genres such as fantasy and science fiction, things happen in the story which you would not believe if they were presented in a newspaper as fact. Even in more real-world genres such as action movies, the action routinely goes beyond the boundaries of what you think could really happen.

In order to enjoy such stories, the audience engages in a phenomenon known as "suspension of disbelief". This is a semi-conscious decision in which you put aside your disbelief and accept the premise as being real for the duration of the story.

When it comes to Blog Fiction, the reader must also suspend their disbelief and accept that they are reading the blog of a fictional person. If the writer of a blog fiction wants the reader to believe that they are reading a blog of a fictional person, that illusion needs to be maintained as much as is practical.

So why do I see so many blog fiction sites where the *Author* is the one responding to comments? When this happens it completely breaks the illusion of reading a blog. It is a reminder that you are reading a blog written by a writer not a character. It jars the reader out of the illusion - and that is not good if you want to keep your readers interested. Evangeline's ride is a good example of how jarring it is. Almost every entry I am thrown out of the illusion when I read about how the Author has been busy, or how she's improving her writer, etc...

Some sites, like Fate's Acquittal, started out leaving comments as the Author, but transition to responding "in character" as the story unfolds. I think it got better when this happened as it allowed the writer a second tool to reveal what the character was thinking. It also gave some foreshadowing for the thorough reader.

To those who are reading blog fiction, this article is for you too. If you're reading a blog, be sure that your comments are left for the character as well. If you want to talk to the author directly try looking for an email somewhere on the site. Please don't be like Ian over at Flyover City. In this case you, the reader, are ruining the illusion for other readers.

Fate's Acquittal: A Review

Fate's Acquittal is a blog written by the fictional character Tom Evans. It has had daily postings for more than a year already and just ended this past weekend. Very recently I finally took the time to read the entire blog from start to finish. I was very entertained by the story and am very impressed by the talent of the author.

Plot Summary
On the surface, the plot of Fate's Acquittal is deceptively simple. Tom Evans, a mild mannered barrister(To my American readers, The best comparison to a barrister would be a trial lawyer) on the road to the perfect upper-middle class life, gets dumped by his long time girl friend, Annabell Steele. In his desperation and depression he ends up turning to his free-spirited friend, Ed Donavon, for solace. Together they form a "plan" to have adventures inspired by the lyrics of songs that they hear. Each adventure brings either humor or drama and sometimes both.

On the surface, that is what is going on, but like any good piece of literature there is a lot more going on once you scratch away the surface. There is the constant back and forth of the absurdly conforming Tom against the equally absurd non-confirming Ed. Love triangles abound between the characters. Although an infrequent character, the relationship between Tom and his mother is also full of conflict.

An underlying theme of the story is the concept of "free will". What is the role of free will in a society that demands conformity? Is there such a thing as fate, and if so can it coexist with free will? Tom, as the main character, is constantly dealing with these questions. Sometimes consciously and sometimes unconsciously. Tom is on a constant character arc deciding between conformity and nonconformity.

Format
The story is presented as a standard blog fiction, that is, a single fictional character writing a blog. No multimedia, this is a text only blog. The story progresses in real time and the posting schedule is daily - including weekends! As far as interaction, at first the author interacts with commenters, however, as the story slowly progresses it is the character that responds to the blog's commenters.

There is some limited use of graphic language sexual content. So while the majority of the writing is PG-13 there is an occasional R-rated scene. So this is not for children or adolescents.

Pros
The story and prose are both well written and make it a joy to read. The overall story line is tried and true. Someone recovering from a devastating breakup. The hook provides enough of a twist to make the story interesting - they do adventures inspired by song lyrics. However, if that's all that was going on it wouldn't be the gripping read that it is. There is a lot more going on. The conflict between the characters, as with most great reads, is what makes it a great story.

All the character's have their flaws and insecurities that drives the tension to exciting conclusions. In spite of their friendship Ed and Tom have their tension. More than once, Ed's craziness drives Tom to the breaking point. While Tom's indecisiveness and natch for conformity irk Ed's desire for adventure. The girls that come in and out of their lives all have their flaws even while the men fall heads over heals for them. The flaws always drive to a climax so great you can hardly wait for your browser to finish loading the next day's entry.

The pacing is also perfect. The author is extremely good at slowly building up tension and then having everything explode in Tom's face. Then right after a climax the author skillfully let's the tension draw down, but still keeping some it unresolved. This is done by having shorter posts where not much happens. This is in contrast to the longer posts that are used when building towards a climax.

After the initial novelty of zany song inspired adventures wares on, you might think that the story would begins to drag. Not so. New twists abound as the story goes on. The story never "drags on". Just when you think it might, suddenly Tom has to deal with a blackmailer, a fraudster, and eventually, his own sanity.

As great as a story it is, it wouldn't matter if it was near impossible to read the text of the site. Fortunately, that is not the case for this blog. The formatting of the site makes the text pretty easy to read: Black text on mostly white background. The paragraphs are broken up just like you would expect in a fiction book. New Dialogue is always it's own paragraph. Also for your reading pleasure the paragraphs are double spaced.

The writer also takes some limited advantage of his publishing format. Not only is there the primary blog for you to follow, but many of the characters also have a facebook and\or mySpace page.

Cons
There are a few minor squabbles I have that I'd like to have seen differently. The background used is not solid and the colors will strain your eyes when the text is on top of a picture instead of the plain white background.

The writer doesn't do a lot with his available medium. Sure, the characters have their own facebook and myspace pages, but they are never updated. Also, it is a text only story. Never a picture or video to liven things up.

Catching up can be daunting. References to other characters and previous plot points are almost never backlinked. Instead, there is a 'CatchUp' label for posts that have important information. While the CatchUp label is a good idea, after a years worth of daily posting nearly 30% of the posts are needed to "Catch Up". That's a lot of reading to do just to "catch up".

Also having to do with the blog format is that the date of with each post is shown but not the time. Unless mentioned in the text you can never be sure when Tom is "posting". Granted it's a very minor point, but I like the idea of knowing what time a character "wrote" something.

All of the previous points have to do with format. My only criticism of the story is that a couple of the characters seem a little "over the top". For instance, the villainy of Tom's Mother and Annabelle seem too straight forward. You would think women of their social standing would show more finesse - even in private matters. Characters that say exactly what they mean with absolutely no subtext just aren't very believable to me.

Conclusion
To anyone who questions the quality of online writing, Fate's Acquittal is the best rebuttal I could ever hope for. The writing is professional. The story is entertaining. Despite some minor squabbles, this is a story I would recommend to any avid reader. Overall I give it a rating of

8 out of 10

Introducing the "catch up" button

In a recent post I put forth one of the challenges of attracting readers with a blog fiction site.

You could read a blog fiction just like any other. Subscribe to the feed and when there's a new entry go read it. One entry by itself is easy to read once in a while. The problem is that once we've written a lot of posts, people will want to read our fictional blogs from the start. That can be a lot of on screen text to read "for fun".

The assumption I'm currently working on is that, once a reader is caught up with a story and likes it, they'll subscribe to a feed and read it when updated. So the question is, how do we get readers up to speed on our blog fictions?

Well, one way of dealing with this problem is the way that Tom Evans does it in his blog Fate's Acquittal. He uses a tag (or "label" in blogspot speak) called "Catchup". Each post that has a something important that you need to know about the story is labeled "CatchUp". Of the total 32 posts, I read only the 9 with the "CatchUp" label. It reminds me of those short clip compilations that begin episodes of 24.

So the question is, how well does it work. Well, based only on the one example I've seen so far, pretty well. As you might expect, a lot of the earliest posts are labeled "CatchUp". As the story went on, the posts labeled "CatchUp" became more spread out. After reading only the CatchUp posts, I then read the most recent 2 posts and was able to follow them both pretty darn well. Although, don't take my word for it, go try it yourself. (One thing to note though, if you do read it yourself, use the Catchup Link in the label list, not the one in his welcome message. His link in the welcome message is broken\uses the wrong case.)

So here's a hat tip to Tom Evans for using a common blogging tool to solve a common problem. I think each blog fiction author may want to consider if it would help the readers of their own blog. I'm not saying it'll work for every blog fiction I've read -or even needed-, but I'm willing to bet it could help attract new readers for some.