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.

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.

How to Use Hyperlinks in Blog Fiction

It seems that blog fiction writers just can't win when it comes to the editorial reviews at Web Fiction Guide. Check out these two reviews. First, this little excerpt from a Gavin Williams's review of Charlotte.

The Charlotte character mentions a website where she collects photos; a real blog would link to it and display them. Blog fiction should use the web just as well, if not better, than your average person’s real blog.

A good point that Gavin makes. Now let's take a look at an excerpt from another review. This time Morgan O'Friel's review of FlyOver City.

Another problem with this story is the liberal use of the ever-controversial hyperlinks through-out the blog. I found myself feeling as though I had to click on the hyperlinks to understand the references (or else why would the author put them in there), but once I did, I got so distracted by the other sites that it threw me right out of the story.

Well this creates quite the conundrum, doesn't it? Whether or not you use hyperlinks in your blog fiction, you lose. So what do you do? Well, I think that Blog Fiction is a little young to say that things should or should not be one way or the other. There is no "convention" to follow. I think ultimately you should do what you think is best for your particular story. Maybe someday, after a lot of experimentation, "conventions" and "best practices" will develop for Blog Fiction. That day is not today.

That being said, I'm not going to let it stop me from offering my opinion on the matter. As of right now, my opinion is closer to Gavin Williams's than to Morgan O'Freil's. I say, link away. It's one of the built-in advantages blog fiction has over dead-tree publishing. People read blogs all the time that have links in them. I think they'll figure out how to read fiction with links as well. I don't think they'll get distracted by too many of them.

I can think of 3 instances where you would want to use links in your story. They are:

1. Referring back to previous events and characters
2. Normal Blog linking and esoteric references
3. Leaving "Bread Crumbs" for your careful and savvy readers.
   

Referring back to previous events and characters
The first case where you might want to use links is when referring to a past event or character in the story. Imagine if you're reading a book and a character disappears on page 50, and then reappears page 150. By then you may have forgotten who he is. How convenient would it be to be able to go back to the first page he appears to remind yourself who that person is. The ability to refer people back becomes more important for Blog Fiction, because now imagine instead of reading something 100 pages later imagine it's 100 days later. Links solve this inherent drawbacks to serialized fiction - people forgetting what happened since the last entry. Also, it's a great way to get new readers caught up without having to reread the whole story. The User Pool uses this linking strategy a lot.

Normal Blog linking and esoteric references
Another way to use links on your blog fiction site is to use them exactly the way you would on a non-fiction blog. That is, you would link to stuff that your character might find interesting. Videos, news events, and other sites they find. Links like that could either give comic relief to your story or offer insight into what that character finds interesting . You might also use links to reference something your readers may not be familiar with. For instance, the Cranky Product Manager is all about creating software. Not everyone understands software development. So, when the writer mentions the "Agile" development method, she provided a link to a Wikipedia article about it. Those who know what it is (or don't care) can skip over it while others can click the link for more information. The story is not ruined for readers who aren't "in the know" because they can find out, and the story is not interrupted for readers who are "in the know".

Leaving "Bread Crumbs" for your careful and savvy readers.
The third way of using links is to reward careful and savvy readers by leaving "bread crumbs" (additional information in the story) on other websites. This is not something that I've seen done a lot, but if used, can be really fun for readers to find. Lord Likely is the only fictional blogger I've met that stays "in character" on other web sites.

The bread crumb idea is something I thought of while reading Fate's Acquittal. One of the entries makes reference to the website Don't Date Him Girl. The website is meant for women who get treated like crap by an ex-boyfriend. They can tell all the horrible things he did to her as a warning to other women that they shouldn't date the guy. In the story, one of the characters get listed there by another character. The blog quotes word for word what is written about the male character. I thought to myself, wouldn't it instead have been a lot more fun if the writer would've created an account under the name of the female character "writing" the bad stuff and then actually have an entry on the website that is bad mouthing the male character. Then, in the blog entry it could list the general "gist" of the post, but actually link to the full listing on the site. Wouldn't that have been a lot more fun? Careful and savvy readers would've checked the link and found the article(rewarded), while careless or hurried readers would've missed it.

Another example from fate's acquittal is the use of myspace and facebook. Sure the characters have a facebook and myspace account but they really aren't updated that often. In the story there are numerous references to myspace and facebook where the author could've created and linked to fictional characters' profiles.

Another good example that I can think of comes from the first entry of FlyOver City. In it he references (and even links!) to a yahoo page about "Taki's" restaurant. A really fun "bread crumb" could've been the fictional character leaving a review of the restaurant on the yahoo page. Again- this would've rewarded careful readers who clicked through and may have noticed it.

So there are my suggestions for when and how to use links in a blog fiction. When, if ever, I attempt to write my own blog fiction, I would use links for all 3 purposes I've laid out. However, if you're a writer and don't use all or any of my suggestions I wouldn't be upset. As long as whatever you're doing works for your story. Experiment and use what works for you.

Blog Fiction I'd Like to See: Halloween Edition

I think Blog Fiction has a lot of potential. Most of it is still untapped. This post is going to be a little self indulgent while I list Blog Fiction that I would like to see and read. There are several attempts at vampire based blog fiction. Here are some other Halloween inspired Blog Fiction ideas. Feel free to steal and modify as you wish.

Ghoul Respect.
What's a ghoul? Ask yourself. What is a ghoul. I know what a ghost is. I know what a vampire is. I know that a zombie is. What about a "ghoul". They aren't portrayed uniformly across our literature and pop culture - if they're portrayed at all. Zombies get tons of movie deals. Vampires had their own TV series and spinoffs. Ghouls? Nothing. Does that affect the self esteem of ghouls? I'm thinking a blog where a ghoul laments the lack of respect and recognition for ghouls, and tries to raise their profile so kids are just as scared of ghouls as they are the "boogeyman". Unfortunately, plans always go awry.

Sample Post
I've given up on selling my screenplay, "Nation of Ghouls". If I hear one more hollywood guy tell me that "audiences are grossed out by ghouls eating dead bodies", I'll kill him and eat his body.

So, Today I decided that if I'm going to scare kids, I should take a more direct approach. With the help of a friend I constructed a large sign that read, "Beware of recent Ghoul sightings." We put it up next to a graveyard that was actually near a school. The plan was to hide behind a tombstone then pop out and scare small children.

Things didn't go as planned...

My first victim was a 6th grade boy. I jumped right in front of him so he could see my hideous face and yelled, "I'm going to eat you little boy."

He stared at me for a second and said, "nice costume, perv".

"What? Hey, I'm freaking scary man."

"Whatev-" he said and continued walking.

I shrugged it off and saw my next victim. A little girl. Couldn't have been more than 7. When she got near, I jumped behind her and yelled out loud in my scariest deep voice. She turned around, screamed, sprayed me with mace, and shouted, "I need an adult!"

At that point the 6th grader from earlier came around the corner and said, "leave my sister alone, you perv", and kicked me in the nuts. He proceeded to kick me repeatedly. I tried to defend myself, but I couldn't see through the mace spray. I think he busted a rib. I may not be able to die again, but I sure can still feel pain.

Witches
How about a blog about modern day witches? No, I don't mean Wiccans. I mean real witches - the kind flying around on broomsticks and brewing potions using "eye of newt" witches. After all the burnings they decided to lay low and not use their powers overtly. The thing turns out though, there are different covenants of witches who are always fighting covert wars with each other. Kind of like a cross between gangs and the mob, but with magic. Although, the blog doesn't concentrate just on those wars.

I have no sample posts for this. But come on. Witches, spying, wars, surely there's enough material there for a good story.

Living with Zombies
Ok, this is pure comedy satire, inspired by Shawn of the Dead. There is a worldwide Zombie attack, but it was manageable. As it turns out, Zombies walk incredibly slowly so they aren't hard to take down. So we follow the blog of a typical person living in a city that is dealing with constant zombie attacks.

Sample Post
Today on the way to work a guy holding a can got really close to me. I didn't know if he was a zombie or a homeless guy asking for change. The PSAs on TV say I shouldn't take a chance so I hit him with the baseball bat I carry around for just such an emergency.

When I got to work I found out that my office mate had gotten infected at the mass zombie gathering the previous night. Sweet! I got an office all to myself. Go Zombies! Unfortunately, I was told I now have to do his job as well as mine... Fucking Zombies!

Well, that's a few of my halloween inspired ideas. Yeah, they could use some fleshing out, but damn it, I'd read those that blog fiction. Happy Halloween everyone.