10 Sided: Dissecting a Disaster Part VI (The Good Stuff)

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

I saved the best for last. Not everything in Ten Sided was a total disaster. This can be seen in the romance that developed between the writer of Smooth Blue, Toni , and the writer of J-Meister, Jez. Their stories are so intertwined that you can't talk about one without talking about the other.

At the beginning of the story, Jez starts out as the typical gliding through life bachelor who's looking for something more. Toni is also seems unsatisfied with life. Presumably that's what led her to her online gambling habit and eventual decision to runaway away with Jez - but I get ahead of myself.

The J-Meister blog starts out kind of funny. It definitely sets the tone that Jez does not understand blogging. He goes on to a couple posts that make it sound like he belongs with the house arrest blogs, with all his hallecunation of blue women (obviously, a reference to another Ten-Sided blog).

Meanwhile, Toni is introduced to us as a lonely, timed woman who uses the internet to reach out to get away from her life.

During the first 3 weeks both blogs stay pretty isolated with only fleeting references to the other people in Ten-Sided. However, April, the two blogs start getting intertwined into a story that's not only readable, but enjoyable.

Everything started with a seemingly through away comment by Jez back in mid-march.

Oh and another thing Tim. Next time you mention that nurse from Manchester I met at Martin's party and how I might have been married to her by now if I hadn't lost her phone number I really am going to hit you.

April 2nd things get interesting when Toni makes a direct reference to Jez.

Then I met this guy at a party. Jez his name. He was a right laugh and I thought we’d make a great couple. When he said he’d call me I believed him and, like a fool, I sat in waiting for the phone to ring. But it didn’t.

And again on the fourth:

Back home I thought I’d try ringing Jez to cheer me up. He was out but his mother was in. That woman certainly can talk. She went on and on and on about nothing in particular. Not only that, I forgot to leave my number and I’m definitely not going to risk calling again. Couldn’t face going through that again.

By the next day, Jez decided to respond.

she mentioned something about a lovely chat she'd had with a friend of mine on the phone, and why couldn't I be more like that - a bit more human (yawn yawn). I asked her who she meant ( I knew it couldn;t be Tim) and she said it was a nice sounding girl, who said she was a nurse or something. God, my stomach lurched then. What was her name? Did she leave her number? What did she say? Of course, my bloody mother couldn't tell my anything useful - no number, no name. She'd been too busy telling the poor girl about her latest trip.

From there, Brim took on the role of matchmaker. Each of the characters had already connected with Brim, so Brim "connected" the two of them together. This partially happened through comments and blog posts.

From there, the two of them go on to a long, complicated romance. If these two blogs were pulled out of Ten-Sided and stood alone, I'd call the project a delight. I won't give away the ending. Some of you may enjoy reading the rest (though to warn you, it does get a little weird for a couple weeks of posts).

To conclude the lesson here is how these two authors connected. One referenced the other to offer an opening for a connection(Jez talks about Mandy). The other then made a very strong attempt to connect with the other(Calls Jez's Mother). Jez and Brim take it. Jez and Mandy (AKA Toni) go on to tell the story of a romance from both viewpoints. That's definitely a lesson that a group blog fiction could learn from.

Ten-Sided: Dissecting a Disaster Part V (House Arrests)

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

In Ten-Sided there were two people that were either under house arrest or some kind of half-way house for loony people.

The first is a blog, aptly named, My House Arrest. In the first couple posts, the writer claims he doesn't know where his "house" is.

I live alone. And the state (or wherever it is I am)

Normally I don't think about where my house is. I'm under house arrest, so the outside, my municipality, nation-state, whatever is of little concern to me.

Let me ask all of you something. If you're writing as a character that 9 other people are supposed to relate... why would you make it a mystery as to where you live? This would just further hamper meeting and interacting with the other characters. Eventually, we get a hint as to why he might be under house arrest

Well I can't tell you the whole story. That wouldn't end well for either of us. But it did begin with killing cats. I was damn good at it. And people admired that. And that's how I came to love her, the girl that led to my house arrest. I met her at the municipal pool. We spent so much time in the water that I couldn't avoid the topic any longer. I told I could kill a cat quicker than any man she knew. She said she wanted me to teach her. So, I did, and she learned well. I liked that about her

He also talks about women visiting him. I'm pretty sure that all of them, except "Lucy" are either imaginary or dolls he thinks are alive.(there we go again with the dolls...)

Today the women arrived, and a few minutes later, another woman showed up. But she was different, I could tell from the looks on their faces, the faces that visit me every day. They’re all sent to me by the State, or whatever authority I’m living under at present. But this woman came to visit me on her own.

I asked my visitors to please excuse us. One of them began to disrobe, from the bottom up. I held up my hand. Would you please excuse us? They all left, in an orderly line. But I could see they weren’t happy about it. They knew that this new woman, this interloper, might discuss dangerous matters. Particularly, the customizable nature of transistor radios and their frequencies.

The woman’s name is Lucy and she’s still here. She knows little about transistors, but I do think she understands harmonies and their liberating powers.

In April, the guy meets "Aliss". In May things just get crazier. Lucy and Aliss start "sending" radio signals to the psycho doll maker. The softest person did acknowledge receiving them sometimes. The rest of may things just keep getting weirder... He finds his twin brother's shoe, (That's right, half way through the story we find out he has a twin.) He escapes his house arrest, and is being followed by a guerilla film crew. (apparently relating to a reality tv show mentioned by another blogger)

At the end, in June, mixed in with some mindless insanity we find out he meets up with the doll maker. It's not clear what happens after that.

Now, let's look at "between moments"(link is unaccessible, you can only view it's republished feed at the Ten-Sided homepage). For the entire month of March, Leo does nothing but rant, nearly incomprehensibly about his twin Lucy.

About half way through April, the author quits ranting and takes the 'daring' move of writing some actual facts and background about the character and what he's doing. It becomes obvious that he's staying in the same place as Old Uncle Charles from My House arrest. He mentions Lucy and Aliss \ Alicia

By May, it seems like you can almost make sense of the blog. If you look at it as, Leo is Uncle Charles' split personality(or vice versa), it makes sense. Unfortunately, the author doesn't seem to stick with that and instead launches into lengthy explanations of Picar. (that's the name of the "Lost" Island)

By June, It's back to madness. His penultimate post might be the closest we'll ever get to knowing exactly what the hell is going on in Picar.

I was born of a clear cold night on an island that doesn’t exist, to a man with no woman and a woman with no man, and before I was born my mind split in two and Lucy took the other half.

I was raised in the moonlight on the edge of the tide on an island that doesn’t exist, and everything I ever needed was ripped away from me. My other half was gone.

But she doesn’t exist and neither do I.

She’s a fucking doll, Tristan.

And so am I.

And so is Aliss, who yes, clearly, was always Alicia. Alicia trying to give me a second chance. Alicia kicking tango with dear Lucy, fencing nearly fearless with my soul.

And you, old Tristan, are also a fucking doll. Made of stuffing and sawdust and buttons and rope. Not that it matters; we could be marrow and flesh and hair and we’d still be what we are.

But you wanted to be a fucking Pinocchio, Tristan. You wanted it more than any of the rest of us. Cut the strings, cut the strings, cut the strings.

There are no fucking strings, Tristan!

The strings are inside us, wound around our little rubber hearts, threaded through our arteries. Web of subcutaneous fiberglass fat that rides beneath our cotton skins.

You can’t make those strings shrivel up and die by flooding the system with poison, Tristan. Biker Joe, A.P. – you’re not going to get anywhere with that. They don’t know what you think they know, and even if they did they would die before they told you.

They would die, Tristan, before they told you. Because their little doll hearts beat blacker than yours, and each and every one of them wants to be the man in the pink jumpsuit.

(I know what your next question is, and no, I don't know who Tristan is or what his role here is)

I think the lesson here might be, "Don't have crazy people writing your blog fiction".
I know what you're going to say. Hortan's Folly does it. Yes, Yes it does. The difference there is that it's one author who planned out some of the madness. It's not 2 different people *who aren't allowed to coordinate* trying to improvise crazy people.

I think another lesson can be gleamed from "between moments". The author didn't start strong. It took him quite a few posts to get to something interesting. First he's ranting about his twin. Then he's just crazy. Then he seemed to be going for playing the alter ego of Uncle Charles. Then he went back to just being freaking crazy. The point I'm trying to make is that the author just seemed unsure of himself and it showed through. If you're going to be writing blog fiction, especially with other people, you need to get an idea in your head and stick with it.

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.

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.

Ten-Sided: Dissecting a Disaster Part II (Plot)

I already talked briefly about the characters of Ten-Sided. Let's take a look at the plot that developed over the 3 months. The plot of the different characters can be roughly grouped into 3 different sub-plots. Although, even those 3 different stories intertwine somewhat. *Warning, spoilers ahead.

The first, most straightforward plot, is the love story between Jez of J-Meister and Toni from Smooth Blue. This was actually a little fun. They had a little help from brim along the way. Through some weird stuff thrown a them by A.P., they eventually are re-united into a happy ending. They met up eventually on, what I'm calling, the "Lost" island.

The second sub-plot is a little less straightforward. There is one guy under house arrest, apparently for torturing cats in the aptly names, My House Arrest. Based on what he writes I have to assume that either he's in the twilight zone or, more likely, completely psychotic. Helped along with his psychosis is an equally crazy Lucy(Update: Typo) Leo of between moments. (link is unaccessible, you can only view it's republished feed at the Ten-Sided homepage). These house arrests are in houses on the "Lost" Island.

The Third sub-plot is well... about dolls. It started with this guy who makes, what I would describe as, designer dolls from hell. When I first read it, I thought that the reason I couldn't follow the plot was because I needed to know what was happening to the other people to get it. Then after reading the rest of the posts, I still don't get what's going on at the end. On the Lake by the Snacks, by the end is talking about dolls. He and brim from brims assemblage meet and find upon a village of doll like people. This village, as far as I can tell, is also located on the "Lost" Island.

Finally there were 2 blogs that didn't really do much of anything. First, there was Ezra Kire blog. All it is is some poems(perhaps song lyrics) posted. That's it. There might be some kind of concept album at work. Where he goes through depression, suicide, and afterlife, but to be honest, I'm not seeing it. The other blog that didn't do much was the Voidwalker's realm blog. Essentially, this character tried to write scifi. It sounded more like B rate erotica. He went on a date that turned out to be a setup for a reality tv show. Then he got in trouble for threatening someone in an MMORPG and quit posting. One post in the middle of may was his last post. He was supposed to keep going until June. He didn't really interact or relate to any of the characters and there wasn't really any "story" there.

So with that, I hope you'll see why I'm calling this thing a disaster. Looking at the disparate plots and sub-plots I think we have a second lesson. Make sure everyone is working within the same genre and tone. Don't have a couple people working on a romance, another couple writers writing as people descending into psychosis, and some more playing Dr. Livingston style explorers.

Next, I'm going to take some looks at the individual blogs inside Ten-Sided. We'll see what each person did that worked, and didn't work. We'll take a look at their interaction with others ss well as a more detailed plot for that specific character.

Ten-Sided: Dissecting a Disaster Part I

Ten-Sided was supposed to be a blog fiction written by 10 writers with 10 characters using a many to many format. It was commisioned by the New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. When I first found it I thought that it was just tedious. Now that I've forced myself to read all of it, I realize now that describing it as anything short of "total bloody clusterf***" would be an understatement. So, why did I force myself to read it? I wanted to see if I could figure out what went wrong. Sometimes figuring out what doesn't work can be as important as figuring out what does work.

One thing I wanted to point out. I really wanted to see if I could point to an alternative opinion on the piece. I wanted to end the whole series with:

But don't listen to me. I'm just a white collar worker with delusions of being a literary critic who thinks Moby Dick sucks. The whole thing could've been the deepest, and genius work of art since Hamlet. After all this person(s) thought it was great.(insert link here)

The reason I can't end with that is because I couldn't find anyone who wrote something favorable about the project. In fact, I couldn't find anyone who had written anything about the project after it started. I found tons of articles announcing the beginning of the project(see here, here, here, here, and here) and one announcing the related fictohedran project, but not a single article written about the project once it completed. I'm forced to conclude that either A.) Everyone learned from their mom that, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" or B.) I'm the first human being that forced myself to read all of it. Based on my experience with most internet forums, I'm leaning towards option 'B'.

Moving along now... let's get to the dissection of this thing. Let's start with the rules the writers were to abide by in creating their blog fiction:

Ten-sided explores a new form of creative practice that comments on and employs the decentralized nature of creation through blogs. Ten fiction writers collaborate with one another using a simple set of rules:

• Each author creates a fictional character for use during the project. There are no limitations as to what these characters might be.
• Each author is responsible for creating and maintaining a blog in the voice of that fictional character, and is required to employ RSS or Atom or both, so it will be easy for readers and the other authors to follow along. This blog will last for three months, from March 18, 2006, to June 18, 2006.
• All ten fictional characters are somehow connected, but the nature of those connections cannot be decided beforehand, they can only be discovered, or perhaps asserted, during the process of writing.
• Any sort of pre-planned coordination regarding the narrative is forbidden. Authors are supposed to only take their cues from the public writings of others.

The website also tried to predict the end result.

The resulting improvisation resembles a jazz performance or a session of exquisite corpse, but in a new form of creative practice that comments on and employs the multivocal nature of blogging communities.

Personally, I think the jazz performance was a bad analogy. At a Jazz performance everyone agrees ahead of time that they are playing jazz. Ten-Sided was more like a punk rocker, pep-band drummer, country banjoist, and Broadway singer trying to improvise. No matter how good they are, they have very different styles and interests.

One rule was that all of the characters had to somehow relate to the other characters. The problem is, how do you get the following characters all to relate to one another?
A member of Mi6,
A Homeless New York Musician,
A Depressed Gambling Addict,
A Cat Killer under house arrest,
A doll maker,
A nerdy scifi author,
A guy who lives with his mother that can't tell the difference between dreams and reality,
A bi-polar pack rat,
A father who's daughter is missing, and
A psychotic under house arrest.

I don't care if you're Henry David Thoreau, you're going to be hard pressed to force all of these characters into a relationship. So did the writers of Ten-Sided. Many of the relationships were very light and just barely mentioning each other. One of the characters pretended to be a singer. Poof, everyone's character "connected" by listening to his music. Problem was, that wasn't really interacting with that character - and not that interesting. No one even used going to an Ezra Kire concert as a method of meeting someone.

So let that be the first goal of a multi-character blog fiction. Find someway for the characters to quickly establish a relationship.

The problem with Ten-Sided was the rules were the perfect blend off being, at the same time, too harsh and not harsh enough. The rule saying they couldn't collaborate outside of the narrative meant that they couldn't plan any meetings between their characters. Therefore, no one knew how to get their characters to meet one another. Nobody could say, "hey, my character plays online video games. If your character does the same, they could meet online". Or "My character is going to an Ezra Kire concert, if your character goes they can meet and... who knows!". One way to fix it is that they could've eliminated the no outside interaction rule.

Another way they could've fixed the problem was they could've been more restrictive and added a rule. A rule could've been that each character must already know at least 1 or 2 of the other characters. That way 10 writers don't have to worry about how they're going to connect with all of these different people.

That's enough for now. In my next post, I'm going to try and tackle the "plot", of Ten-Sided. I think you'll be amused. If you're a fan of the TV show Lost, you might even like it.