Blog Fiction Gives Instant Literary Reaction to History

When I'm not parading around the internet as an amateur literary critic, I am parading around the internet as an amateur student of history. I love history. That shouldn't really be too much of a surprise for you. If you're a student of literature it's hard not to also be a student of history.

To truly appreciate classic novels, once must first appreciate the time period it was written and\or takes place in. After all, how can you appreciate Mark Twain's classic, The adventures of Huckleberry Finn, without understanding the history of slavery? How can one understand the underlying themes of "The Stranger" without knowing at least a little bit about existentialism and the effect WWII had on french existentialism. The same goes for other story telling mediums. How can one appreciate the conflict of "Fiddler on the Roof" without knowing about the ugly history of antisemitism throughout Europe? You have to know history to fully understand a story's underlying themes.

Here's another way literature and history combine. If you want to understand a culture at a particular point in time, one only has to look at the art that culture created in that time period. The same goes for literature. If you look at the popular literature you will also gain insight into a culture. For instance, Charles Dicken's novels give a lot of insight on England during the Industrial Revolution. Jane Austin's novel, Pride and Prejudice give us insight into England's Georgian Era.

While literature gives us insight into a culture's consciousness and thinking, it does not give instant reaction. Looking again at Pride and Prejudice is a perfect example of this. The original novel was written in 1796 in the middle of the Georgian Era. However it wasn't published until 1813 - the tale end of the Georgian Era and when the effects of the Industrial Revolution were just being felt. Therefore, despite being popular, it didn't fully reflect what England was going through in 1813. It gives no clue to people's responses to things like Napolionic Wars or the French Revolution because they hadn't happened, or were still unfolding at the time it was written.

This lag between history and literature exists still today. Unless you're an already an accomplished and famous writer(i.e. Stephen King or Tom Clancy) it can take years just to get a publisher to agree to publish your book. Even after agreeing to publish it, it will still be months to get all the editing, illustrating, and marketing in place before the book is ready to ship to book stores. Therefore, let's say a major event happens in the world such as a war, famine, or political scandal. It will be at least a year or more before any literature could possibly be published that references that event and by then, the attitudes of people toward that event may have changed.

This is where Blog Fiction comes in. If something major happens in the morning. I can have my fictional character react to it by late afternoon. It is an instant reaction that no other fiction medium can replicate. Not books, not plays, not tv shows(well... maybe South Park), and certainly not movies.

You might ask "why does it matter if the reaction is one day, one month, or even 1 year from the time of an event?" The reason it matters is that people's reactions can change over time. Here's a simple example. Let's say you're writing a novel. To help reveal something about your character you say that his hero is some political figure that is currently very well liked. Now let's say it's 6 months later and your book is going through the editing process. Suddenly that politician is embroiled in serious corruption scandal. You might make a last minute change to say that your character worships a different political figure. What is lost is the fact that, at one point, a political figure was famous and very well liked. From the point of literature that, that fact is now lost.

That doesn't happen with Blog Fiction. The time of writing and publishing tends to be so close in blog fiction that it will be too late for the author to change the name. Instead, the author would have to acknowledge that the character's hero has fallen from grace. In fact, it might dominate the story for sometime. Now, with the blog fiction, not only is the fact that a political figure was once well liked preserved, there is an instant reaction to his fall from grace. Despite being fiction, the blog fiction now becomes a source of history.

I think this idea of "instant literary reaction" fascinating. It is something that I will write more about in the near future.

Did Blog Fiction peak in 2005?

Lots of new things in popular culture follows a certain pattern. Somebody does something new and/or different. It becomes popular. Everyone talks about it. The genre is then copied repeatedly until every hack is trying to do the new thing. The novelty then peaks. People quit watching the crappy copies and only the best survives. People quit talking about it because it's no longer new and just becomes part of the culture.

Examples of this were variety shows on TV Variety shows gained popularity in the 60s, especially the Ed Sullivan show. Then in the 70s it really peaked. Any idiot that was famous got a variety show. Now, the closest thing to variety shows that we have are late night talk shows and SNL.

The same thing happened in the 80s with standup comedy. Every bar owner thought they could be the next Improv and every office "funny guy" thought he could be a comic. Well, the number of stand up clubs eventually declined, but stand up is still done in clubs that know how to run a comedy club.

With that in mind. It seems like interest in Blog Fiction peaked back in 2005. Considering that they only started in 2003 that's pretty quick. I know things go fast on the internet, but this is ridiculous.

I keep find articles and websites circa 2005(or earlier) about Blog Fiction and very little since. Don't get me wrong, people are still writing Blog Fiction, but nobody is really writing about it. Here's some of what I mean:
FictionBlogs is a list of Blog Fiction that hasn't been updated since January 2005.
Over on BloggersBlog all of their posts about Blog Fiction were in 2005 with one January 2006 exception.
Blog-fic.com used to be a gathering place for Blog Fiction writer's, but now the site is gone and has been replaced with a scum-sucking domain squatter. (Link not included so as to discourage people going to these sites.
Over at Grand Text Auto, an active blog "about computer narrative, games, poetry, and art", hasn't had an post about Blog Fiction since 2005 as well.
The yahoo group fictionalbloggers started and peaked in 2006. It hobbled along until the middle of 2007 and died (right about the time I found it, of course)
The most recently active site that was dedicated to Blog Fiction was Betsy's Phony Bologna blog. Unfortunately, shortly after finishing her thesis she had to stop writing about them to concentrate on her job.

I think you're starting to see the point. Based on all the searching I've done, Novelr and I are the only ones left still writing about Blog Fiction. And Novelr writes about the more broad topic, Blooks. Or, at least, we're the only English websites still talking about it. I don't think that's a good thing. If more people writing about them, I think it could help to increase the blog fiction audience. I think it's healthy to have multiple views and angles about a subject. I hope more people will pick up the subject.

If I do find a site, or a section of a site, that is dedicated to blog fiction I will link to it. So far though, there are none that I know of that are still active.