Blog Fiction and Blogrush

The concept of BlogRush is simple enough. Every time someone loads up a page on your blog, BlogRush will show 5 random blogposts from other bloggers. In exchange, someone looking at a different blog will see the title of your latest post. The more visitors to your blog, the more your posts show up on other's. There's other factors to determine how often your blog's posts are shown, but I won't get into that. You can read about it yourself.

As for driving traffic to your site it's decent. On this blog I get one or two visitors every other day. For Terran Resistance it's less. More like 1 or 2 a week. I have to assume I'll get more once the blogs themselves get more traffic. Considering the low traffic of this blog and even less for Terran Resistance it's worth my while considering it's a free service.

I'm still experimenting with it to see if I can get more or better traffic. And by "better", I mean letting people know what to expect when they click a post title. For instance, if I a post title is called "Engine Test" people might think it's about cars or search engines. When I have some time I'd like to see if I can somehow slip the word "story" or "blog fiction" into my blogrush feeds so that people know what they're clicking on. Right now the only targetting is that I put the Blog under the "writing and literature" category so it'll only show up on other "writing and literature" blog sites.

The best part of the service is if you're just starting out you'll get "bonus" credits which means that even though your blog is new with no traffic you'll get "free" views. Bottom Line: There's probably no downside to picking up this widget and putting on your Blog Fiction site.

Is Blogger Favored among Blog Fiction writers?

Wordpress, Blogger, TypePad, Nucleus. These are just a few of the many many different ways that you can blog. All of them are popular and have a lot of users. However, which of them is most favored by us Blog Fiction writers? Of all the Blog Fiction that I've found, here's the breakdown of the software that is used:

Blogger:
Anonymous Lawyer
Captain Picard's Journal
Ten-Sided
(Un)Dead Man Blogging
The Darth Side
Wilf's World
Atyllah the Hen - Chicken with Attitude
The Professional Pet
Confessions of a Blogger
Transplanted Life
Modern Vampire
The Astonishing Adventures of Lord Likely
Horton's Folly
Secret Blog of a TV Controller
Fleet Commander
The New Year's Resolution
Diary of a Killer
Fictional Blogs of Original Super Heros

WordPress:
The diary of dastardly deeds, space cowboy
Yanni's Block
Confessions of a CEO
Life in Bear Country
The Mexican Year
Up and Onward (Confessions of a Super Hero)

NucluesCMS:
Action Figure Diary
Unknown Ship, Unknown Planet
Terran Resistance

Square Space:
The User Pool

TypePad:
Peep This Diary

As you can see Blogger is the far and away favorite amongst blog fiction writers. WordPress is a distant second. Or is it? As I've documented (twice), google tends to favor blogs hosted on Blogger. So, I had the thought that the reason so much of the blog fiction I've found is hosted on Blogger is because that's what comes up in my google searches.

Therefore, I started trying to tailor my searches to find blog fiction not on Blogger. In my first try, I succeeded. After doing a search on typepad "blog fiction", I found a blog fiction called The Cranky Product Manager. I've added it to the Blog Fiction List, and, since it's active, I've added it to my feed.

Over the next few days I'll be trying to find some non-Blogger blog fiction to see if Blogger really is favored, or if it only seems favored because it's easier to find.

Site Changes

I've made some changes to my site that I want to mention.

I'll start with the most superficial. I changed the style of my headers on the side bars to make it more apparent that they are clickable links. I've also rearranged some information on the right to put the more relevant information towards the top. That is, the link to a list of all of the blog fiction that I've found so far.

Second, it saddens me, but I'm removing Random People, Random Ship from the feed list. It's been nearly 3 months since a new post on that blog so I have to declare it inactive. This will probably be temporary since the author says that he'll be back soon.

Finally, due to the overwhelming response of my reader(s). I've decided to include a list of "Fake" Blogs that I've found. I have a feeling that I'm going to continue to find a lot of them and their feeds would overflow my sidebar feed list. Therefore, I won't include their feeds on my site. However, they will be listed with a link to their respective homepages on the right.

Grammar Check!

Bad grammar or bad spelling can ruin even the best story. No matter how compelling the characters or how witty the writing style, no one is going to enjoy it if they have to take out the teacher's pen before they know that hell you're trying to say. If your writing has someone "sitting at the table and eating desert" or have a driver "cames to an complete stop", it's going to jar your reader out of the story. You don't want that to happen, and neither does your reader. That's why it's important to edit your writing before publishing.

Grammar rules apply for blog fiction as well. Last night I was reading the archives of a blog fiction and kept finding myself having to reread sentences because of bad spelling or grammar. It was really distracting. It slowed down my reading and I couldn't get through the posts as quickly as I'd like.

Now, in the world of dead-tree publishing, fixing a grammar or spelling error is not a cheap thing. It requires printing a second edition and configuring a new press and distributing the new copies. In the digital world that blog fiction lives, it takes about 5 seconds to fix. (30 if you're using dial-up and god help you if you are!) That's why I think Blog fiction writer's should occasionally reread their older posts. If you see a grammar error, fix it. It won't change the story, just make it easier to read for new visitors. Don't abandon those old posts until you've reread them at least 2 or 3 times.

I once read a counter argument about editing a blog fiction post after hitting the "publish" button. It said that it lent "authenticity" because people make errors when posting to real blogs or diaries. That is total BS. When speaking in everyday conversation people will say "um...", "uh...", stammer, pause, etc... but it doesn't mean you should include those in your character's dialog.

In fact, dialog is a good analogy. When writing a novel authors only have their character's speak poorly to convey something. Like a 5 year old might mispronounce a word. The author does that to remind the reader that she's only 5. Another example might be someone stutters in their dialog because that person is nervous.

The same principle can be applied to Blog Fiction writing. The only reason to have bad grammar is if you're doing it on purpose for a plot point or character development. Maybe it's a joke that your character always misspells the same word and it gets him in trouble at work - or something. Otherwise, don't do it.

So, there. I'll quite channeling my 11th grade English teacher now.

Are "Fake" Blogs, Blog Fiction?

I've been wondering for a while if I should include "fake" blogs in my list of blog fiction. First though, some definitions on what I'm talking about.

First of all, I don't mean a hoax blog. That is a blog where it tries to fool you into thinking it's real. Something where somebody makes up a person and tries to make everything think it's real. Nor do I mean a fake blog or 'flog' that a multi-national company's marketing team creates to force fake stories and information.

What I am talking about is a fake blog of a famous person. Where somebody pretends to be a famous person, but is obviously a parody. Examples abound:
The Secret Diaries of Janice Combs
The Secret Diary of Steve Ballmer
and of course the most famous, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs

I don't even know what to call these fake blogs. They aren't really a fake or a hoax because you know they're fake. "Parody Blog" seems to broad. I'd like a good name for them because you can't say "fake" when talking about them.

I'm thinking of including them because the blogs are funny and popular; however, they don't really tell a story and are used exclusively for parody. If these blogs continue to explode in number and popularity, I may create a separate list for these "fake" blogs that's separate from the Grand List of Blog Fiction.

Anonymous Lawyer is BACK!

Anonymous Lawyer has always been somewhat of a light poster. Usually averaging only one a month; however, without explanation there hadn't been a post there for more than 2 months. I was getting ready to move it to "inactive", but today it sprung to life with an in-story explanation of his absence. Kudos to the author for that.

And yes, Anonymous Lawyer is important enough that this deserves it's own post!!!

SuperHero Blogs

Here is an awesome find for blog fiction readers. I found 5 fiction blogs written by "Super Heroes". They are written by original characters who have superpowers. It follows their struggle to get by in life.

The characters all exist in the same "world". Each of the blogs references the other 4. Sometimes the characters will even comment on each other's blog. All of the 5 characters have their own Blogger account. So I don't know if it's 5 people on each blog or if it's 1 person writing all of it on 5 accounts. I will say this, if it is just one person writing all 5 of the blogs that person is one busy person! The blogs all started a couple months ago and have a lot of posts already.

I'll be reading these. I'll be interested how entangled the lives of the characters get with each other. There's a lot of backlog for me to catch up on. Their lives may already be entangled and I just don't know it yet. Here's the links to each of the blogs:

Leroy J. Power
Terra Stone aka Elemental
Ean Iago
The Enigma Known As Brice
Mr. E. aka weird Wellington "Edwin" Mallard

One more thing. Just to give credit to originality, It looks like Up and Away served as the inspiration for these 5 blogs. Up and Away was the blog fiction that I found yesterday.

2 More Fictional Blogs

*[wipes forhead] Whew...
Trying to keep my list of known fictional blogs up-to-date is a tough job. I found 2 more today and posted them. Unfortunately, neither of them are active anymore. They've both been abandoned. For the next few days, I'm going to be concentrating on finding new fictional blogs. As I find them I'll post in the Grand List. If I find anything of note during my search, I'll be sure to let everyone here know.

I'd also like to take this moment again to ask you guys to help me out. If you run a blog fiction, or know of one that I haven't listed yet, please let me know. Either post it in the forum yourself, or put it in my comments and I'll get the info needed.