Who Is Going to Read the Slush Pile?

As the dead-tree publishers continue their descent into oblivion who is going to filter out the crap?  This is one of many points that author, Yuk Onna, was trying to make in a recent post explaining why she does not think a demise of the modern publishing industry is a good thing.  As much as I and others like to make fun of publishers for foisting the same old thing on us, they do have their uses.  Their use is that they maintain a minimum standard of quality for books that make it to the bookstore.  In other words, they filter out the crap.

By 'Crap', I don't mean stories that are trite or have characters that aren't "real".  By Crap I mean major, awful, blunders.  Things like:

• The Story isn't finished and stops either mid chapter or even mid-sentence
• Spelling and Grammar is so atrocious that it's hard to understand
• Blatant Plagiarism(word-for-word) or even more suble versions like(same story with changed names & dates)
• Doesn't match the story or description
• Huge logic or story blunders, like a character's name gets changed half way through the story.
• The story is missing either a beginning, middle, or end

We never see stories like this because they never make it out of the publishers' slush piles.  However, with things like Print-On-Demand(POD) and online publishing, you don't have that guarantee.  Nothing can stop a writer from pushing any old thing out via POD or online. 

So how can readers avoid the crap?  Readers can depend on publishers to filter out this crap because publishers have a financial incentive to do so.  Publishers only want to print good books that sell so they can make money off of them.  Books that misspell every other word and doesn't have an ending, aren't going to sell well.  If the major publishers go away, who is going to read the slush pile in their absence?

Do we need someone to read the slush pile?  Well, yes.  Readers don't want to sift through piles of crap to find something that is finished, legible, and resembles a story.  If readers have to sift through a pile of crap just to find a mediocre book, they're going to get frustrated and stop looking for good books altogether.

One thing a reader could do is check review sites.   My favorite is probably, WebFictionGuide.  However, WebFictionGuide can't possibly be expected to read every piece of crap that's produced and review it, can they?  Publishers do this because they have a financial incentive for finding the good stuff because they can profit off of it.  WebFictionGuide doesn't make money hardly any ad money for verifying that something isn't complete crap.  Also, online reviewers have it harder than a traditional book reviewer.  A traditional book reviewer only has to read books that have already met some minimum standards of the publisher.  In other words, the crap has already been eliminated and they only have to determine if it's a mediocre book or an instant classic.  Online reviewers have to do it all on their own.

So if we need something to filter out the crap, and online Review sites aren't the answer?  What is the answer?  Unfortunately, I don't have the answer.  In fact, I don't think anyone has the answer.  However it's something all web fiction authors should be thinking about.  Oh... and we need an answer before the publishers sue themselves out of existence.

Option A, A Stunning Lack of Creativity

I saw the movie "Clash of the Titans" this weekend.  It was okay, but it's one of the previews I saw before the movie that inspired this blog post.  I saw a preview for a movie where a pair of scientists try to create a human clone.  That's a story with a lot of possibilities.  Unfortunately, all it does is turn into the back story for a huge monster movie.  Really Hollywood?  Somebody tells you they have the ability to clone humans and unlock the secrets of life and genetic disease and all you can think to make is another generic horror-monster movie?  Really?  That's ALL you could think to do with that kind of premise?  It's what I call an "Option A" story.

In Improv, a group takes a suggestion(emotion, location, occupation, etc...) from the audience and immediately turns it into a scene.  One of my favorite Improv instructors once told me that there are 3 types of options for every suggestion.  Option 'A' is the obvious one - something so obvious that anybody could come up with.  Then there's option 'B' that provides enough of a twist that everyone will think you're clever.  Then, there's option 'C', something that's so creative that nobody but yourself could come up with it.  A good example would be, let's say someone shouts out "Gay Bar".  Option 'A' would be a scene in a gay bar where some dude is trying to pick up another dude.  You might get some laughs from the audience, but any idiot could come up with that scene.  Option 'B' might be something with a little bit of a twist.  Somebody who is just realizing they are gay goes to a gay bar for the first time.  Note that Option 'B' is just like option 'A', but has enough of a twist to be good.  Finally, option 'C' could be several barely related things.  For instance, what about a scene where a gay bar has just been burned down by a homophobic arsonist, and worse still, the police have little intention of investigating the crime?  As you can imagine, the instructor told us to "never choose option 'A', always try to come up with an option 'C', and only fall back on option 'B' if you have to".

I always remembered that because I thought that the same principal could be applied to fiction.  Movies and books that are trite are option 'A' stories.  A story that's been done so many times that an audience or reader can already guess the ending.  A good story has an option 'B' story.  It's enough of a hook that it can surprise, and yet satisfy the reader.  Then of course, a great movie or book would follow and option 'C' story.

I think all great movies and books are option 'C' type stories.  An example would be, let's say you want to make a movie about so called "Pro" Wrestling.  A couple ideas that I might call Option 'A' would be a movie following a new wrestler\actor that goes from new guy to "champ", but the new fame causes chaos in his personal life, and the older wrestlers resent the new guys popularity.  This is an old story that's been done to death, just change the job\sport\club.  An option 'B' might be story that starts with someone training to become a wrestler because it's their dream, but when they arrive they end up having to always play "the villain" and it's about his struggle to be rewritten as a "good guy".  Finally, an option 'C' story about a Wrestler might be... well... it's been done, and it was fantastic.  For those who never saw The Wrestler, it was a powerful movie about a wrestler well past his prime that must now face all the mistakes he made in his life.

Let's look at another example.  You have 2 scientists experimenting with the ability to create and manipulate life.  Option 'A' is to just do what Hollywood did and make it a typical horror-monster movie.  Option 'B' might be a small twist.  Something like they create a lab creature they become emotional attached to, but then they have to put it down because they screwed up the cloning and it's dying painfully.  Option 'C' might be well... Mary Shelly's Frankenstein.  They create a 'Monster' that's even more human than they are.  There's a reason Frankenstein is such a classic that's still read today.  It's an Option 'C' story that no one will ever be able to replicate.

So, if you're going to write a book, movie, or blog fiction, don't be like Hollywood.  Try to be like Mary Shelly and choose Option 'C', .  It could mean the difference between writing a forgettable story and a classic that's still read hundreds of years after you're gone.

From Blog to Blog Fiction

One of the problems of doing Blog Fiction is that inevitably, your blog starts with zero readers.  Why wouldn't after all?  If you create a fresh blog, naturally there's going to be no audience yet.  For most blogs to get popular they have to be around for a long time.  If you are writing a Blog Fiction with a planned ending, you may very well get very few readers until shortly before it ends - and what fun is that when you only get an audience at the end?  But what can you do, besides mass ad and marketing campaign when you first launch?

Well a blogger named Scott Carpenter over at Moving to Freedom came up with a brilliant solution.  He took his existing non-fiction blog and has (at least temporarily) turned it into a blog fiction.  That way he already has a built in readership.  So how did he do it?  Well, first of all, he announced a "guest" blogger would be joining soon.  Then he started posting as the fictional blogger.  His readers responded immediately.  They even started addressing their comments to the spider.  A brilliant, flawless transition.

The only problem with doing Blog Fiction this way, is that people may not realize right away that the new blogger is fictional.  Scott solved that problem by making the guest blogger a murderous spider.  An effective solution, but one not that's not necessarily repeatable for most writers.  I'm sure though that other writers can come up with some equally creative ways.

Bravo to Scott, and I hope he has a popular Blog Fiction run.

Getting Interactive with Your Readers

As I've probably said a hundred times, the coolest part of Blog Fiction is the interaction between reader and characters.  However, sometimes internet readers can be shy.  Sometimes they might read your blog, but they never leave a comment - even when you end your post with an open ended question.  Now, who knows why they don't leave a comment.  Maybe they don't want to bother getting a new account.  Maybe they really are shy.  Who knows?  So how would a writer try and ease them into leaving comments?

One thing many shy commenters are willing to do is express their opinion in a poll.  It's great, their easy to make(There are dozens - if not hundreds - of sites that offer to create custom polling widgets for you.), and easy to answer.  Do enough polling and maybe your shy readers will make the jump from poll answering to commenter.

So what kind of polls can you do of a Blog Fiction site?  Well, I would say there are plenty.  You can do polls of the site layout, polls of reader demographics, or do what the author of KristenAC the Maniac did.  Have your character do a poll and have the winning answer incorporated into your story.

When the character first started blogging, One of the first things KristenAC did was run a poll asking readers to vote on what kind of wedding dress Kristen's friend should wear on her upcoming wedding.  Kristen picked out a few with her friend, and then uploaded a picture of each to the website, created a poll, and then asked readers to vote.  I talked to the author and she told me that she really did have different paths planned depending on how the vote ended up.

I think the approach KristenAC's author took is a really great idea to get your readers feeling like they are actually part of the story.  I think other Blog Fiction writers should consider trying it.

Why announce your influences?

This is something I've seen a couple of times.  I'll find a new fiction site, and on the sidebar or in an "about" page it'll say something like "this story is about blah.  My writing is influenced by the early\late writings of some dude I really like and also a little bit of the early\late writings of some guy I also like."

What I don't get is why announce this sort of thing?  What piece of info is trying to be conveyed by this?  Just tell me what genre you're writing because chances are I probably haven't read whoever influences you and if I have it's probably only 1 example.  So, I'm really just asking, why announce your influences?

Another Blog Fiction Thesis in the Works

Once upon a time in 2005, a smart, forward-thinking individual known as Betsy Friedrich decided to write a term paper about Blog Fiction.  A year later she got approval to expand that term paper into a thesis.  She read numerous amounts of blog fiction and interviewed lots of writers.  A year later she delivered to the blogosophere the Torah of Blog Fiction, a pdf version of her thesis.  It described in detail trends, commonality, and the challenges of Blog Fiction.  The thesis had a big influence on my thinking of Blog Fiction.  Her "contained story" category of Blog Fiction is what I call a Blog Novel.

That was 3 years ago last month.  Considering that the thesis was probably finished before that, that means that the thesis is now going to 3.5 years old.  In Internet years, that's ancient.  Three and a half years might not sound ancient, but think this.  When the thesis was released, twitter was still in it's infancy and facebook had just started letting non-college students sign up for their site.  In other words, the thesis is starting to get old.  It references several sites that either no longer exist or have been abandoned.

Fortunately, another smart, forward-thinking individual has come to our rescue.  Emma Pooka is now doing research into Blog Fiction for her Doctorate.  She's even been kind enough to make her Research Proposal available.  I'll be looking forward to reading her thought and a promised Blog Fiction of her own.  You can read her blog now and hear her early thoughts now.

Don't write Blog Fiction like a Blog, Cheat!

When you talk to someone in real life, chances are you turn and face them when talking.  However, when performing for a live audience, stage actors do not.  Instead of imitating real life conversation, stage actors when talking to each other in a scene, they will often turn themselves to face, or partially face, the audience instead of directly facing each other.  This makes them more visible to the audience and more audible.  They sacrifice a little bit of realism to create a better experience for their audience.  This technique is knowing as cheating.  Acting coaches or directors will say things like "Cheat to the audience".  If you watch old movies, when directors were still using stage techniques, you'll see many of the actors do the same thing.

Stage actors aren't the only group who cheat real life for the sake of entertainment.  Novelists and Playwrights do the same thing when they write dialogue.  Listen to a normal conversation, or read a transcript from a normal conversation.  You'll find that it's full of long pauses, "um"s, "uh"s, and non sequiturs.  However, you don't read those in a novel, and you don't see it in movies.  Why not?  Because that would be terribly painful to listen to.  Therefore writers take them out thus sacrificing realism for the sake of the audience.

Blog Fiction writers should also adopt this "cheating" technique.  When writing a blog fiction you might be tempted to try and make it emulate a real blog.  However, there are many things a real blog does that your readers will not find entertaining.  Unless you have a good reason to do so, you should cut these out.

Some examples might be posts that are completely superfluous.  A real person's blog might mention a cool video game they played and go into agonizing detail about it.  A blog fiction shouldn't do that.  Just like when writing a novel, a writer should leave out writing that doesn't affect the story or demonstrate the quality of the character.  It would be painful to a reader to read about what the character had for lunch everyday.

Test posts.  This is something I've talked about before.  It's been done, and only distracts from what's important.

A character deliberately lying about their situation.  A real blogger might try and deliberately lie about something they saw or did in order to make themselves look better.  I wouldn't do this in your writing.  Mostly because the reader has no way of knowing that the fictional character is lying.

A character leaving out details because they're afraid of who might be reading.  A personal, online journal will probably be full of omissions in their life.  For instance a cheating husband isn't going to blog about his mistress.  He never knows when his wife might be reading his blog after all.  However, in blog fiction, you don't want to leave that stuff out and hope the audience can infer what's going on.  It's best to just pretend that your character is blogging in a world where he has no fear of someone they know finding them out in real life.  A great example of this is Fly Over City.  A super hero isn't going to blog about their secret identify, but Fly Over City just kind of cheats and pretends that they would.

Summarizing everything.  Don't be afraid to have some or all of your posts to read like a novel.  Have a play-by-play with dialogue quotes and character direction.  It's a good way to build a suspenseful scene.  One might argue that people don't write blogs that way, but I say CHEAT! and entertain your audience by pretending that they do.

These aren't all hard and fast rules.  There are times where you might want to break them.  That's okay, just make sure that you break them for a purpose.  For instance, if you have a multi-character blog fiction, you might have a character purposely lie about a detail only to have another person "find" their blog and reveal the truth.

Also, this isn't a comprehensive list.  This is just things I've seen that annoy me as a reader.  Anything that might bore or confuse your audience should be left out whether or not "real" bloggers do it.  You don't have to be "just" like a real blog to add a sense of realism.  Your plot and characters (i.e. your writing) should be able to make it seem real without gimmicks.

Be like those stage actors: CHEAT... and your audience will thank you.

iPad & Blog Fiction

I have long been skeptical that ebook readers would do anything for Blog Fiction or any online serial fiction writing.  The eReaders that come out that become popular do nothing but provide an additional distribution channel for the existing novel format.  For instance, if you wanted to publish to the Nook or Sony Reader, you had to first turn your fiction serial into a static eBook.  This meant that your "online serial" would no longer be online or serial.  If you truly wanted people to experience your writing as a serial on their eReader, the best you could do is sign up for Amazon Kindle's Blog Publishing service that takes 70% of all sales and has minimum pricing requirements.  Of course, none of these allowed viewing or leaving comments.

Well, here comes the iPad.  The iPad has a limited Browser - something like a smart phone might use.  The difference is that it's on a bigger screen; however, it's much closer to a hand held device than any netbook.  This seems like the first mobile device that presents a practical, handheld way to read online serials without having to change the nature of online serials.

Of course, the iPad isn't perfect.  It apparently has a glare problem and I don't think it's the perfect eBook reader either.  However, it is a device that should excite Blog Fiction and other online fiction writers.  Here's to hoping.