In-Store Print-On-Demand, Eli James called it 3 years ago

I haven't blogged on this site for over a year.  However, something I read today has temporarily brought me out of retirement.  It looks like book publishers has finally come up with a good idea to improve service to their customer base.  The idea is to offer some of their books in print-on-demand kiosks.  That way a store can offer thousands more titles without taking up more shelf space.

Check out the WSJ article:

As bookstores disappear across America, some small operators are pursuing a novel survival strategy: The bookless bookshelf.

Their vision was aided Thursday by HarperCollins Publishers Inc. which said it would make about 5,000 current paperbacks available to bookstores through On Demand Books LLC's Espresso Book Machine. The desk-sized device can custom print a book in just a few minutes. That means even if a physical copy is not in stock, it's still available almost immediately.

 This is brilliant!  Imagine, a bookstore can be smaller, and yet offer more books.  Shelf space can be limited to special editions or brand new books.  Meanwhile an entire back listing can be made available on demand.  When I heard this though, I thought it sounded familiar.  Like perhaps it had already been done.  After thinking about it for a few minutes, I remembered.  It hadn't been done before, Eli James, of the blog Novelr, predicted this over 3 years ago!

Now apply this to your business model. What if readers can choose to have their books printed in store? See the opportunities this presents to you? You no longer have limited shelf space – you can have a virtually limitless number of books available to customers in your computer system – and besides that you don’t have to – ick! – plastic wrap the books on show! Your store can now be customized to encourage browsing, reading, and imagine how much smaller it’ll be! Death to the big bookstore – overhead costs will kill you on one of those! And think beyond the retail front: your backend will be much more streamlined. No more freight costs, no more surplus stock (wasting paper!), no more burning petrol as you cart books from factory to shopping mall – whenever a new book comes out you just download a shell of it from your publisher’s network! Cheaper! More effective! Do you see it yet?

So, how did Eli predict this so far in advanced?  Is he visionary, or are book publishers just stupid?  I think the answer is both.  As it turns out, the technology has been available since 2009, but big publishers hadn't gotten behind the project initially.  As it turns out, the demise of Borders may have been the slap in the face that they need to change to realize they need to change their business model.

Kudos to Eli James for his vision. Kudos, also, to HarperCollins for being the first major publisher to get with the program - 3 years late, and sans a major book retailer is better than never, I suppose.

KristenAC The Maniac: A Review

KristenAC the Maniac is the rhyming title for the personal blog of the fictional character Kristen Addison Craemer. True to the title, Kristen is maintaining her electronic journal at the behest of her therapist. 

Plot
The blog started in January so it is fairly new.  Therefore it's hard to summarize the plot without summarizing everything.  Here is what I can say.  Kristen is a woman who's life is in transition.  Her current spot in life is untenable, even if she doesn't realize it yet.  She's hasn't faced her demons from a childhood of abuse and neglect, she can't pay for the apartment she's in, she's single while her friends are all starting to marry, and the 2 relatives she's closest with is her uncle, who is getting older, and her half sister, who is enjoying a childhood that Kristen missed out on, oh... and a cat about to die of old age.  I have a feeling the rest of the story is how Kristen deals with all of these impending disasters.

Format
The story is presented as a standard blog fiction, that is, a single fictional character writing a blog.  The blog takes full advantage of it's format.  It has pictures with the posts, it has polls, it's got character & plot summaries, links to other sites, and a facebook fan page.  The only thing separating this from any other well put together blog is that the person writing it isn't real.

Posts are usually short to medium length.  Almost never exceeding 700+ words.  If a story or post exceeds that number of pages, it is usually broken up into several posts.  There is a post about every 3 to 4 days.

The posts are in real-time so one day for the reader is one day for the character.  However, sometimes it takes several posts to recall a past incident.

As far as age appropriateness, it's pretty clean so far.  I would say PG, even though the target audience is probably adults and older teenagers.

Pros
The best thing about this Blog Fiction is that Kristen, despite having a seemingly "normal" life, is an interesting character.  I can tell there is going to be a lot of conflict between Kristen and the people in her life.  This is because Kristen bottles up a lot of negative emotions.  She's Angry at her mother, she resents her younger  half-sister, she's guarded against threats at work, and seems a bit jealous of her friend that is getting married.  Best of all she's yet to acknowledge any of these negative emotions to anyone, let alone herself.

Some might slough off this blog as a blog fiction form of chick lit. To those that say that, I would first say, there's nothing wrong with Chick lit.  Second, I would say the themes and obstacles are slightly darker than what is normally seen in so called "Chick lit".

One thing that I really like is that it is like a real blog.  It's not just a book published on a blog, it's a blog.  The story is very interactive.  There have already been 2 polls that have had bearing on the story.  Also, the author has allowed commenters to affect the story.  Based on a comment, the author actually eliminated an option on one of her polls.  Also, the posts are written like a blogger would write: complete with entertaining rants and side notes.  Like this one:

"You can ride with us," said Jenna, grabbing on to the leftover with an irritating avidity. [Avidity, btw, means eagerness or greed:  great eagerness or enthusiasm for something.  You may have already known this, but I didn't.  I found the word in my thesarus today, and I fell in love with it.  OK, so back to my story.]

The author is also talented and dynamic enough to include references to (unexpected) recent events.

The blog fiction also incorporates all the traditional elements of good storytelling.  It didn't take long to immediately get Kristen into a problem.  The characters have some subtle characterization, for instance:  "Danielle keeps an earthquake kit in her car", Kristen has a gun, and Alana owns and knows how to install tire chains.

Finally, I have to say that I really like the prose.  It is well written with fun description sprinkled in.  Lines like this, "The climate surrounding this woman is arid, and twenty degrees cooler than the rest of the planet" are just fun to read.


Cons
The only think I don't like is that so often too much detail is given.  This usually happens whenever there are multiple posts about an event.  Kristen ends up going into excruciating detail about insignificant things.  I can find entire paragraphs that could be removed without affecting the story at all. 

For instance, the whole Easter Egg post was a bit much.  Nothing that happened really affected the story and could have been summarized with "we painted Easter eggs" and the plot wouldn't have suffered one iota. 

Another example was from the L.A.Fashion District series of posts.  In the first post there is a long description of everything that she's putting on to wear, but no where does anything she wear actually affect the story.  It is very annoying to read about something in great detail, only to find out that it has no bearing on the story.

Conclusion
I really like this blogfic.  I plan on continuing to read it until it's abandoned or the writer brings it to a sensible conclusion.  You'll notice that I listed very few cons about the story.  It's true, I can't find much wrong with it and it does a lot of thing really well.  However, the "too many details" sprinkled throughout the posts is real drag on an otherwise great blog fiction.  If it wasn't for that, I would've easily given this a 9.  Unfortunately, the extraneous details weigh it down so much that it starts distracting from the fun parts.

Being that I caught this blogfic when it was fairly new, I'm going to do something I haven't done before.  I'm going to give it '7' overall, but then circle back in a few months and maybe bump it up.  It'll depend entirely on whether or not if the author continues to inundate her readers with meaningless details.
Overall 7 out of 10

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.

Charlotte: A Review

Charlotte [a fictional college blog] is, as you may have guessed, is a blog about the fictional person, Charlotte Faulkner and her first year in college.  I had read some good reviews and was really looking forward to reading it despite the fact that it was currently on hold.  Here is what I found.

Plot
The plot is fairly simplistic.  Charlotte just got out of high school and is going to college. She has a crush on a guy from her high school who is continually stringing her along.  The blog concentrates more on introspection, (late) teenage angst, and coming-of-age.

Format
The story is presented as a standard blog fiction, that is, a single fictional character writing a blog.  The blog makes some use of it's format.  Relevant pictures are occasionally included.  Also, it will link to things that the character is talking about or interested in.  Also there is a character and plot summary pages to let people catch up quickly.

Posts are usually pretty long at 1200+ words.  But since posts are only updated weekly, it's an expected length.  Unfortunately, the author usually responds to comments instead of the character.  Starting in 2009 the author tried to change that with some mixed success.

The posts are in real-time so one day for the reader is one day for the character.  However, there are a lot of flashbacks in the beginning.  The story is currently on hold with no known date of return.

As far as age appropriateness, there are allusions to sex, but nothing graphic.  Also, a couple f-bombs, but nothing gratuitous.  Other than that, it's pretty clean.

Pros
There are a lot of things I like about this blog.  I don't know how else to put this, but the writing is beautiful.  I don't just mean "good imagery" - even though there is - I just thoroughly enjoy the way the author puts words together.  Example:

Maybe if I was to confront the cold, to challenge it, instead of hiding, then I could walk with confidence.  If I were to strip off my layers and run outside and let the icy air whip at my body, feel the cold seep into my skin, and raise my arms and embrace it, even, and scream this doesn’t hurt, you’re not hurting me, I’m okay, -- then maybe I would smile at the weather report, spend the winter shrugging instead of cringing.  Maybe.

A great thing about the blog is that Charlotte seems real.  She is a complicated, conflicted person.  The character is get my initial interesting because she is such a paradox.  She is smart and intellectual, but can still acts dumb.  She respects authority, but is willing to rebel at injustice.  Charlotte isn't a contrived person she is someone that I feel I could meet, have drinks with, and befriend...well... my wife might have a problem with that... but at least be Facebook friends with her.

Something else the writer does well is create the feeling of the first year of college.  As I was reading about her experiences they felt real because they were so close to my experiences my first year.  It made me feel nostalgic to want to go back to that period.  Whether it was signing up for classes, or taking that first shower in the dorms.  She does a really good job of capturing the experience.  Some things were different, of course, but overall I felt like she really captured what it would be like to go to college in 2008.

Finally, my favorite part of this blog is the way current events are incorporated into the character's life.  She mentions small things like Facebook losing scrabble, and big things like the American Presidential election.  It's a perfect example of my Instant Literary Reaction observation.

Cons
Because there are so many good things about this Blog Fiction, it took me a long time to figure out why I didn't enjoy reading it.  The realization came when I tried to summarize the plot.

Nothing Interesting Ever Happens!

Now, someone who has read the blog might disagree.  They might say "What about when Paul got a girlfriend? What about when Riley tried to sleep with Charlotte?"  Bah!  I said, "interesting".  None of those events are interesting because none of them are brought about as a consequence of Charlotte's actions.  Instead what happens is one random event after another.  Those things would've been interesting if Charlotte was a real person and was my friend, but she's not, she's a fictional character.

For a Character in a story to be remain interesting, they need 2 important things.  A desire and a will to go after that desire.  The story begins when said character decides to go after that desire allowing them to demonstrate their will to get it.  Charlotte has desire, but we never see her will to go after her desire because she never decides to go after her desires.  In fact, I am completely convinced that Charlotte is completely unable to make a meaningful decision.  She never even decides NOT to go after something.  She just worries about it until the decision is made for her.

The main object of Charlotte's desire is a boy from her High School named Paul.  Paul and Charlotte are officially friends.  Unofficially, they are slightly closer than that.  Charlotte wants her and Paul to be an official couple, but Charlotte never does anything about it.  She never tells Paul about her feelings.  She never does something to get him to notice her.  All she ever does is react when Paul gets a real girlfriend.

Even after Paul breaks her heart, she never decides to try and ignore him.  Her friend, in fact, has to be the one that deletes his phone number from her cell phone.  She then goes on to still respond to his occasional texts.  Charlotte does the same thing with other would-be boyfriends, Justin and Riley.  She never decides to push them away or let them chase her.  She just ponders what to do until the next random thing happens in the story that gives her something else to ponder.

Her roommate is another decision she never makes.  Her roommate is cheating on her boyfriend, but Charlotte sits around trying to decide what to do until the roommate breaks up with the boyfriend and the problem is solved for her.  Also, her roommate might be anorexic. Does Charlotte ever decide to confront her?  Purposely ignore it?  Nope, she just wonders how to bring it up, but never does.

I think she only made one major decision in the course of a year which is when she decides to study abroad in Spain.  The problem is, she only did that to avoid making the decision about how to react to Paul kissing her.  Yikes!

Another thing that makes it hard to read is the constant flashbacks.  They are so completely unnecessary.  Every flashback could be eliminated by just stating "Charlotte has a serious crush on Paul.  Paul leads her on, but never commits".  In fact, you could parachute into just about any point of the story with only that factoid and you will not have missed much.

In the end I have to conclude that Charlotte's inability to make a decision is supposed to be a major theme of the story.  However, it also makes the story very boring.  Witty observations and good writing skills can only carry a fictional person so far in holding my interest.

Conclusion
My final conclusion is going to be as paradoxical as the Charlotte character.

The writer does a lot of things right that I wish other and future blog fiction writers study and consider emulating.  I think the good descriptions and the beautiful way she writes should be emulated.  The author had good knowledge of the subject matter she was writing about.  Also, the way real events were incorporated into the story was brilliant.

However, despite all this, in the end, I was left bored. The Plot - or lack thereof - didn't hold my interest.  I guess Charlotte's inability to make a decision was supposed to be a major theme of the story.  If that is the case, the author succeeded at that, but it's a Pyrrhic victory at best because it just wasn't that interesting to read about.  That's why I cannot recommend this to a reader.  Overall I give it a 4 out of 10.

Converting "Blog Fiction" into a Political Blog

I have a secret.  I am a closet political junkie.  I love politics.  I love debating issues with friends, and letting elected officials know my opinion.  My participation in democracy doesn't stop there.  I also love to read and comment on political blogs.  I love debating with strangers online, and I also like typing in all CAPS when chatting with idiots.

Therefore, I am excited to let everyone know that I will no longer be talking about Blog Fiction on this site.  Instead I will be discussing American politics.  I am sad that I will no longer be reading or commenting on the Blog Fiction niche, but it's a small price to pay to start a political blog that already has over a hundred subscribers.

Before starting with my first political post, I wanted to ask everyone want kind of political blog I should have?  Should it be a liberal blog, or a conservative blog?  Also, how intense should I be?  For instance if I do a liberal blog should I be well reasoned and advocate for reducing the power of irresponsible corporations or  should I go all "9/11 truther"?  Or, If I go conservative, should I be well reasoned and advocate for pro-growth tax policies or should I go full on "Show me the Birth Certificate"?

So let me know what kind of political blog you would be most likely to read by leaving a comment.  I want to make sure the transition appeases as many of my current readers as possible.

Finally, if you're wondering why I've chosen now to make this announcement, just look at today's date and you'll know why this is the only day I would make an announcement like this.  :)

Don't Worry About Writing Crap

Don't ever storp writing because you think what you're writing is crap because no matter how bad your writing is, chances are, you'll never have to publicly apologize for how bad your writing is...  That is, unless your name is J.D. Shapiro and you wrote the original rough draft for Battlefield Earth.

Battlefield Earth, one of the worst hollywood movies in recent memory won a Razzie for "Worse Movie of the Decade".  Shapiro offered an apology for being a part of it's making as well as tried to explain what happened.  An Excerpt:

It wasn't as I intended -- promise. No one sets out to make a train wreck. Actually, comparing it to a train wreck isn't really fair to train wrecks, because people actually want to watch those.

It's a pretty funny article and gives you some insight on how hollywood works.

Blog Fiction Widget Back in Working Order

I haven't done too much to maintain my site lately.  I almost let the Blog Fiction Widget atrophy into nothingness.  I just revamped it so that it should be back to working as expected.

There was a serious bug that was preventing new items from displaying.  Turns out my wonderful ISP decided to delete a deprecated php library I was explicitly using.  I fixed that.

Also, I noticed that a couple blogs that are listed decided to publish to future dates.  I had to insert a hack so that they wouldn't be at the top for the next month or year.

Finally, I went back through the forums and added a bunch of new Blog Fiction sites.

So, the Blog Fiction widget is back, if you'd like some free traffic, please, consider putting it on your site.  If it's up, shoot me an email(DustinM (at) blogfiction (dot) org) to let me know.

A site way better than mine

I'd like to direct your attention to the write.blog.fiction site. It is dedicated entirely to blog fiction. It has some great features. It has a list of current blog fiction sites. Allows readers to rate them. Once a month it features a new blog fiction site. It even lists the most recent posts from each of the blogs BY CATEGORY(take THAT Blog Fiction Widget).

It's a great site and someone put a lot of time into it. If they ever get a blog section, you'll have no reason left to visit me.

The Apocalypse Blog: A Review

The Apocalypse Blog is a blog written by the fictional character Faith MacIntyre. The blog is her account of the end of the world as we know it. The blog posts in real time almost everyday and is still running. Because of how much text there is in the story, I have decided to do a review without reading the entire thing. I believe though, that I have read more than enough to give an accurate review.

Plot:
The Apocalypse Blog is exactly what it's name implies. It is written by a character who is living through what seems to be an apocalypse. The story opens with a women, Faith MacIntyre, diarying the apocalypse of her personal life -Lost friends, and boyfriend. In the middle of her trying to piece herself back together, the actual apocalypse happens.

When I say the Apocalypse, I mean it. Giant bomb, blotched out sky, no government, killer rain, violent roving gangs, and the list goes on and on. Faith, and a haphazard group of survivers she travels with strive to stay alive and find their loved ones from their pre-apocalypse lives. The story is written by Faith as she and her group faces each new and terrible obstacle.

The group involves fire fighters, doctors, kids, and future odd assortments of people. Faith's moral strength and her spirit's fortitude make her the unlikely leader of the group.

Unfortunately, external threats are not the only thing they must face. The differing personalities and prejudices are all things the threaten to tear the group apart from the inside. As you can imagine, drug addicts and fire fighters don't get along great. Faith's delicate negotiations just barely keeps the group together.

Format
It is a Standard Blog Fiction-that is- a single blog with a single fictional author. It relies entirely on text, so no pictures or videos. A post is usually between 750 and 1200 words. Their is a new post almost every day(including weekends!). The blog also posts in realtime, so a day for us is a day for the characters. The only peculiar thing about the site is that comments are turned off.

The content is definitely R-rated. There are many violence and horrific scenes as well as limited sexual content.

Pros
There is a lot to like about this blog fiction. Obviously, the best part is the story. The story presents an ever present ever escalating sets of danger. Whenever Faith thinks she can relax, something awful happens. Either their goal turned out to be fool hardy or someone she depended on dies. Speaking of dieing, there is a lot of that in this story. People are constantly dieing - even people you may not expect. The constant danger adds a great sense of suspense for the reader.

Another great thing is that the characters are flawed. While everyone has their strengths, they also have weaknesses or characteristics that are less than admirable. As a reader, I felt that I was reading about a random selection of real, actual people.

Another great thing is the mood setting descriptions. It works to create a sense of despair when one reads about broken buildings and hollowed out stores. It makes the reader feel like they are walking around in this terrible world.

The sheer amount of writing cannot be ignored. The fact that there is a new post everyday is quite the accomplishment. The volume and consistency is to be applauded.

Finally, they broke the mold when they made this site. The layout of the site is about as flawless as they come. Posts have dates and times, archives are easy to reach, and the text is easy to read. I like the dates and times at the top of the posts. When there are more than 1 post per day, the times of each post are important. Although, I would've liked better if the times were below the post titles. For some reason my eyes keep wanting to skip over the date and time of the post. In the future, I will be directing people to this site as an example of how to put together a Blog Fiction site.

Cons
The Author has done just about everything right except for one thing: the writing. The problem is that it reads like I'm reading a real life diary. That probably sounds like a strange criticism since my definition of Blog Fiction reads in part "diary fiction" so I try to elaborate.

The story doesn't read in a way that I feel like I am experiencing it. While reading the story, I never once thought, "don't go in there!" or "why did she do that?". The reason is that it felt more like somebody was telling me what happened which, any editor worth his salt will tell, is a cardinal sin in fiction(show, don't tell!). In the case of this story it hurt it in three major ways. It takes away a lot of suspense, it adds a cloud of unbelievability, and makes it difficult to relate to the characters.

Uncountable are the number of scenes that could have been exciting if they had been shown instead of told. I'll just give a few examples. The first example is when the group tries to cross a broken bridge by car. The bridge starts falling and they have to reverse all the way back to the bank before the falling steel catches up to them.

There was a moment when all four wheels were off the ground. My stomach was left in midair as the bridge fell at least a foot, leaving our tyres to catch up. We kept going, as fast as we could, swerving recklessly towards the bank.

This is exciting stuff, but that paragraph is the only thing the describes how they made it back to the bridge. Imagine if it was a longer and gave a play-by-play of the action. Something like:
The tires were squealing as they went into reverse. I was slammed forward in my seat. I turned around in my seat. We were careening toward an abandoned car. I pointed at the car, "Look out!". Ben swerved the wheel to the left. I was shoved into my seat and my head slammed against the window. I looked up and saw the bridge fall directly in front of us. The front of the car started tipping forward. My stomach dropped. I heard the back wheels spinning in the air. This is it, I thought. Then the car slammed onto something solid and we continued rolling backwards onto the bank.
If this was the only action scene that was told it could be ignored, but almost every action scene is like that.

It's not just suspense that's sucked out of the story by summary writing technique. Humor is too. There is an august post that had a potentially humorous passage.

So off we went. Sneaking through the streets, creeping up towards the depot, we were like ninja in cracked boots and rainbow scarves. We were less ninja-like when we fumbled around inside a warehouse, trying to find somewhere to watch the depot from without being seen. It was more like a comedy of shushes and thumps and muttered swearing.

This could've been a lot funnier if we had experienced the comedy of shushes and thumps as they happened. Instead we just get a passage about how funny it was. Which is about as funny as your roommate telling you something funny that happened at work. There's a reason those stories end with "you had to've been there".

Other strange scenes are skipped over with a short summary. Check out this excerpt.

When we settled down for the night, I checked on Ben’s injuries. The poor guy had been holding onto Thorpe and then had all of us jumping on him so that he didn’t slip away too. He kept telling me that he was okay; I had to threaten to get the doctor to look at him before he’d let me make sure.

I think he was telling the truth. I didn’t get the chance to check thoroughly – it was dark and Ben was very distracting. I’d never dared to hug him before, because I didn’t want to hurt him, but we did a lot more than that last night. Hurt was the last thing on our minds, lips or bodies.

Here he comes with breakfast. I can’t stop smiling.

Wait a second! What is this Seinfeld? I think she just yada-yada'd over sex. Maybe she didn't want to be graphic, but even the leadup was skipped over. No passionate kiss, or light touch on the leg, nothing. We're expected to just accept that Faith examining Ben's wounds lead to sex.

That leads to the other problem. Believability. I read a post about Faith's group fighting off a gang.

I’ve heard that higher ground was an advantage, but I didn’t realise how much until I saw the fight across the mall. It was so frustrating – I wanted to be over there helping, not wincing in sympathy from such a distance. I caught myself shouting out directions – look out, over there – as that was all I could do. The sharks definitely came off worst this time around – the others drove them off without too many problems.

Really? How did the group (which at that point only had a few healthy adults) fight off a large group of healthy young men. I could believe it, if I was shown how it was done, but instead I'm just told that it happens. This is just an example of nearly a half dozen scenes where we're told that the group somehow fights off another group. Call me a pessimist, but I don't buy it.

The final way the telling hurts the story is that it's very hard to relate to characters when we are only told their actions instead of seeing them. There is a scene where the characters must decide what to do next.

Thorpe asked if we should forget about trying to get across the river and move on to the next marker on our map. I think that’s the first time I ever saw the big fella and the doctor agree about something (Masterson is usually of the ‘why bother?’ attitude).

I asked which one of them was going to tell Dillon that we weren’t going to look for his family because it was a bit difficult. Neither of them had an answer for me; even Masterson didn’t want to break the kid’s hopes like that. If we can face Stripers and fight off sharks, then we can cross a stupid river. That was the end of that idea.

This seems like a conversation worthy of seeing and not summarized. While we do get a sense of how the 3 people approach life, we could've seen more if we could've witnessed the conversation. I'd like to have seen Faith get upset at the suggestion of abandoning Dillon's destination. I would've liked to have seen the two men cowering at the thought of breaking Dillon's heart. I would've liked to see Faith's moral fortitude rubbing off on the group. Instead, we're just told that it happens. We're not allowed to see the conflict between the three, which means that we, the readers, never have a chance to ask ourselves, "whose side would I be on"?


Conclusion
The Apocalypse does a lot of things right. It has great characters, the story is horrific, and the site layout is just perfect. Unfortunately, the writing fails to capitalize on all those great things. When I first started reading my attention was held. However, after dozens of summarized action sequences and arguments, my interest waned and I had to force myself to keep reading. That's why I would only recommend this site if you're really into horror or post-apocalyptic stories. Overall I give it a:
5 out of 10

Entrecard User Script updated

For those of you who were using my entrecard script, if you upgraded to firefox 3.5 you probably noticed that the Move Back link was missing. I've fixed the problem and now works just fine with firefox 3.5 I didn't add a new link, I just updated the old one so my original post links to the latest script.

The updated script is here.

What should I do with lost Blog Fiction

As most of you probably know, I have a forum dedicated only to listing all of the blog fiction available on the internet. I've had it up for a couple years now. Over the last few years some of the Blog Fiction listed has been taken down. That means I have a lot of broken links and etc...

I was getting ready to just outright delete these entries, but something stopped me. Right now I have probably the largest collection of Blog Fiction both past and present. I asked myself, Would I and the internet be losing something if I deleted the last piece of evidence of some of this early blog fiction?

So I wanted to ask you all. Is it worth preserving these links and brief descriptions? Should I move them all to a broken link section? Or maybe I should sync up all the broken links into one topic. Or, maybe I'm being silly, and just need to delete them. I'd love to hear your opinions. The Forums\ is getting pretty clogged up, so I'm setting a deadline for myself. In one week the broken links will be dealt with one way or another.

Writing your first Post: Get on with it!

When writing a book, the first page of a book is the most important because it is going to be the most read page when it's sitting on the shelf at the bookstore. It better be good, or the other pages aren't getting read. The same thing goes for Blog Fiction. If the first post isn't interesting, you may not hold your audience.

So how do you write an interesting first post? Well, first of all, don't write one that reads like an online dating profile. e.g.

My name is Mary Nextdoor. I am 33 years old and live in Manhattan. I'm 5' 6'', blonde(natural), brown eyes, and have curves. I love my pets, hate my parents, and only go to church on Christmas eve.

Luckily, most people haven't written anything quite that boring, but I do see a tendency to always want to introduce themselves. Here's some real examples.

The Professional Pet's first paragraph

Lets start with the basics, my name is Fluffy and I live with a family in England. Yes, I'm a pet and I'm still pretty much a baby as you can see from my picture. Most people comment on my name because, well, I'm quite clearly the least fluffy thing you are ever likely to see. Lets be honest, a mouldy carrot has more fluff than me! Why am I called Fluffy then? My owner thought it would be funny... I didn't agree. I wiped the smile off his face when I left a little present on his bed though, hehe.

Wilf's World's First Paragraph

My name is Wilf and I am eight, very nearly nine years old. I would really like to be called 'Buzz' like, Buzz Aldrin but my parents wouldn't talk to me when I tried to change my name. I mean whoever heard of an astronaut called 'Wilfred'? I live with my parents who are extremely old and like to visit garden centres and stare at things. My favourite place (apart from The Science Museum of course!) is my bedroom or inventroom, as I like to call it. I have a computer in my inventroom and its name is Dexter. I named it after my best friend, Dexter. I am sad to say that Dexter is a bit slow and so is the computer-ha! Anyway, I want to tell you about my world because I can. The first bit of my story has to do with Christmas. Mum says this is always a difficult time. Too right. I'll start you off tomorrow as I have to go to bed now.

Great Swan Alley first post

I was born on Great Swan Alley in the April of 1725. Or rather I should say, I was left in a doorway on Great Swan Alley in the April of 1725. I do not know where I was born, or of what parentage, but I am on a quest to discover.

In all 3 examples, the character introduce themselves. Granted they all find little ways to make sure it's not boring, but the goal shouldn't be "not boring", it should be "so interesting a reader just HAS to read the next post".

When reading a Blog Fiction, I like the ones that form the first post, just "Get On With it!" There is no introduction, the writer just jumps into a story where the fictional blogger already has a problem. I love blogfic that starts that way, and I'm willing to bet your readers will too. I'm not sure what the formula is for writing a great beginning post. So the best I can do is post some examples that work.

Here's from the first post of The Voice of the Living

We’ve been running all night, and the sun is about to rise. I hope and pray that we are not the only ones who’ve made it out alive, but from what we saw back there, I find it unlikely. With me are Dr. Graham York and Pte. Hannah Johnson, and right now we consider ourselves the only survivors after the outbreak of infection in the state of New York.
Due to the aggressiveness of the virus, there’s a good chance it has spread even further by now. That would explain why no help was sent for us.
Right now, our main priority is getting in touch with any other survivors out there. I will continue documenting everything, so that if we do not survive, our story will.

Reading this really makes me want to continue reading it. It makes me want to find out several things. "Where did they make it out of?" "What kind of virus was this?" "Were these 3 involved in making it?" "Are there other survivors?" I want to keep reading because I want those questions answered.

From the first post of Alone on Earth

I awoke this morning to a slight humming noise. I thought it was coming from the communications center. But, I turned it down low in case of any incoming calls or email. I went outside and just as it started, it stopped. Ralph was whining the entire time. The humming lasted only about 2 or 3 minutes. A few years ago I would have said it was coming from power lines. Except there are no power lines any longer. I need to take Ralph in to town for a checkup. He’s been acting funny for the past few days.

This is another great example of a story just starting. It too makes me want to keep reading. I want to know "what was that humming that woke up the blogger?", "Who or what is Ralph and why has he been acting funny?", and "where is he that there are no power lines?" In both cases the stories above did eventually introduce the characters, but they did so either a little at a time, or well enough after the first post that the reader should already be hooked.

One more piece of advice on your first post. I've noticed that several blog fiction writers try to be clever by making their first post be a "test" post. That is, they right a post that just has the word "test" or "test post" in it. I do get that they're trying to emulate real bloggers that might have done this. Unfortunately, this is being done so much that it can no longer be considered clever. (see I woke Up in Pittsburgh, Modern Vampire, Ten-Sided) Just... GET ON WITH IT!!!

Forum Problems Fixed

I know I haven't been around a lot.

fortunately, the problems with registering in the forums has been fixed. So at least you can post in the forums. I do watch the forums for new postings as well as comments.

Thanks for visiting