Introducing the Blog Fiction Widget

As you may have noticed my sidebar is different. Where I used to list every single blog fiction's individual feed, you will now notice there is only one.

My sidebar feeds were never meant to be used as a blogroll of every single blog fiction site that exists. That's how the links forum is meant to be used. Rather, it was meant to try and give some exposure to active Blog Fiction. The idea was two fold. First, a reader may notice a site name or blog title that would catch his eye and be clicked out of curiosity. The second reason I had them was so that readers might notice when their favorite blog fiction had been updated, they could check it out.

Google's blogger software allowed me to quickly list the feeds, however, this came at the cost of a very limited feature set. First of all, the Blog order was always static. If I put Yanni's Block above SpaceHaggis, it would always be like that. Second, the feed list would get crowded. So I would take down the feeds of blog fiction that wasn't updating. Which totally took away my second reason for posting the feeds. Or, I had to manually check every single feed myself - which would be a lot of work.

My initial solution was to aggregate all the feeds into a single rss feed, and then post that. However, google limited me to only listing the latest 5 posts from a feed. Plus, I then couldn't list which site the post was coming from. This led me to create the "Blog Fiction Widget" which you now see on your left. It allows me to list as many of the latest posts as I want, indicate which Blog Fiction it comes from, and when you hover over the text, it will, if available, give a brief description of the site or post. As I come up with new ideas on how to improve it(and the time to do it), it will change, but for now, it does everything that I originally wanted.

Having said all that I still consider the widget to be in Beta. So if you see any funky behavior from it, I would love to know about it. Especially if you are using any of the following web browsers: Intenet Explorer 6, Any version of Opera, or any version of Safari. I don't have access to those browsers so I could test it with them.

Now, the fact that I had to create my own feed leaves me with a positive consequence. I can give the widget to other people for their website or blog. So, what I'm asking is if there is any interest out there from you blog fiction writers for this widget?

Here's how it would work. I will soon post the code and tutorial on how to include the Blog Fiction Widget on your website. If you would like to use the widget for you site, you may take the code and use it at any time. However, if you run a blog fiction site and want your blog fiction to be included in the widget that everyone gets, you have to host the widget on your blog fiction as well.

This site's widget will always have everyone's feed, whether they choose to host the widget themselves or not. But, if you want to be included in the widget's feed that everyone else will have, you have to host the widget yourself. The whole goal is to try and connect the blog fiction community to each other- a problem Betsy Friedrich wrote about in her Blog Ficiton thesis(pdf).

If you are interested in hosting this widget and getting in it's feed, please let me know in the Widget Forum. As I stated, I still consider the software to be in beta. Therefore, I'll only be accepting 5 blog fiction sites at first(first come, first serve). Once I'm convinced that all the bugs have been worked out, I'll open it up to everyone. Once I have 5 responses, I will list the code and tutorial(mostly cut & paste) on how to include the widget on your website or blog.

Make Money with your Blog Fiction

For those of us with delusions of someday making money off of our blog fiction writings, there's a limited number of options for us.

Selling ad space on your blog is probably the most obvious, and easiest option. Just like any other blog or website it's easy to add Ad Sense or some other ad service. If you have enough readers you can make a few bucks this way.

The other way would be if you use your super duper awesome writing to attract a publisher. With a little luck, you can convince a publisher to swoop in and save you from the penniless internet writing and get you into the "respectable" dead tree publishing business. It worked for Cheeseburger Brown after all.

Another way is to try and sell to your readers. You can try and sell dead-tree versions of your blog. Wilf almost did this. Something else a lot of bloggers do is sell T-Shirts and other paraphernalia to make money. It's something I've yet to see a Blog Fiction writer do, but it's out there as an option.

For the longest time, I figured those were the only three ways a writer could make money off of a blog fiction. Well, that was until I found The Curly Situation. This enterpising author does something that never really occurred to me to try. He just asks for paypal donations. He even throws in a vague threat about not continuing without some coin.

It's a blog novel (or "blovel" if must blestroy the blingo). It's also an experiment. I write, you read, and we all get a laugh along the way. The story centres on Curly Gibson, an Aussie cricketer whose talent for accidental sporting success is surpassed only by his talent for getting shot at. I'll post twice a week, as long as I get nice comments and a few bucks in the tip jar. Puh-leeese. - JD

Now that I think about it, it seems like an obvious thing to try. I'll be curious if Jason gets any "tips" this way. I Hope he does.

Blog Fiction I'd Like to See: Patriot 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. I think Historical Blog Fiction could be promising. I think it would be interesting if someone blogged as an historical figure. Whether or not the blog acted like it existed in the past, or acted like the historical figure blogging in today's world, it would have a lot of potential. So here are some examples of what I always thought would be cool to do. In honor(note the American Spelling of honour) of the holiday, I thought I'd concentrate on American Revolution Blog Fiction ideas.

Thomas Jefferson runs for president.
A satirical blog about what would happen if Thomas Jefferson were to run for president in 2008. The satire could attack the Mythos of our founding fathers as well as the sad state of our media. I think a historian whose also plugged into modern politics could make really make us think and laugh at the same time.

Example Post:
This morning I revealed the details of my plan for energy independence. I called it my second revolution. I was asked 10 questions by the attending reporters. 8 of them had to do with internet fueled rumors that I had a slave mistress and the other 2 were questions had to do with, "What was George Washington Like?"
This afternoon I saw one of my opponents attack ads against me. It had a bunch of schmucks whom I'd never met questioning my commitment to the war. They called themselves the "Musketmen veterans for truth". I doubt this attack will go anywhere.

Luckiest General Ever
George Washington is so often portrayed as an heroic and stoic figure. Widely regarded as principled and a military genius. Well what if he wasn't? What if he was completely inept, but really freaking lucky.

Example Post:
I hate winter. I can't believe I'm going to be stuck in the north for the next 3 months. My army and I were supposed to be to Valley Forge by now. Unfortunately, we got lost. Now, here it is Christmas Eve and we're still not to our winter quarters. Tonight we'll be marching on. I think I'm going to take a short cut across the Delaware River. I sure hope we don't run into any Hessians.
Ben and me
When you were young, did you ever think it would be cool to meet someone you were reading about in your history books? (Okay... probably not, but bear with me...) What if one of them showed up as a kid in your fifth grade class. As it turns out, he's come to organize a revolution from your overbearing teacher Mr. King. This would be like an after school special in blog format. It could be fun to make it as allegorical as possible to the American Revolution.

Example Posts:
The check mark heard around the school.
Mr. King gave us an extra math assignment on top of our normal 40 problems. My friends Lex and Connie stood up and said "no", it's too much of a burden for one fifth grader. He put a check mark next to each of their names (thus resulting in loss of recess doing manual labor instead). At recess, Ben had me send two kids from each reading group to meet him at the monkey bars. I didn't go and Ben wouldn't tell me what they discussed afterwards.

Getting help.
We wanted to egg Mr. Kings house. The problem is he lives way out on the other side of the freeway and we don't have enough bikes and skateboards to get there. Ben was talking to the kids in the other fifth grade class, Mr. Paris's kids. They have plenty of bicycles. They agreed to help us egg Mr. King's house. Apparently, they don't like Mr. King either. Ben called the agreement the Treaty of Paris.

Some of the suggestions might seem cheesy to you, but damn it, I would read those blogs. Happy Fourth of July!

Meta Posts in Blog Fiction

Almost all fictional blogs need some way to convey non-story elements. Things like a short introduction, a short summary of the story so far, a note from the author are all examples of this. The problem is, where to put that information. Some people put it all in their sidebars. Others put the info in header links. Still others put the info in "Author's notes" posts, and still others maintain a separate non fiction blog. Some of course, might do a combination of all of these.

Of all the methods, the one I like least is what In My Daydreams does. It has entire meta posts here and there, and then some of the story posts have author notes embedded in them. Having all that non story text is a huge distraction. It prevents me from immersing myself in the blog. It also serves as a constant reminder that it's fiction. For me, reading is the most entertaining when I can almost forget that what I'm reading is a work of fiction. Looking at Fleet Commander, I must say that even one "author's note" can be jolting. If I'm reading to catch up, I don't need to read an author's note from 3 months ago. Especially since it probably no longer contains relevant information.

I'm not trying to pick on In My Daydreams or Fleet Commander, lots of fictional blogs do this. Transplanted Life does it, I did it, Anonymous Lawyer did it, etc... I think as a writer it just made sense to once in a while slip in a meta post the same way as a fictional post. However, now that I'm evaluating this practice as a reader, and in spite of the fact that everyone seems to do it, It's a practice I now discourage.

Instead of doing Meta posts, consider these other ways to convey meta information:

• Put an announcement at the title level
• Maintain a separate "meta" blog.
• Consider if you really need a meta post
  

If you're late in your scheduled posting or you're taking a brief hiatus, why not putting it at the top of your blog, instead of a post. That way you can still convey the announcement to your readers, but don't have to permanently embed the info into your blog. You can just take down the announcement later on.

If you're going to be posting a lot of meta information like Entia did, you should definitely consider having a separate blog for the non-fiction posts. It makes for a clean separation.

Do you really need that author's note? If your post is a little late, your readers will get it, you don't have to tell us in a post. Also, instead of responding to comments as a post, You can respond to your readers in the comments as well. There's no law against leaving a comment on your own blog.

Of all the ways to convey what I call "meta" information. That is, information that isn't part of the story, I have to say my favorite method is what was done by (the now defunct) Entia and Big Melly. They use a separate blog. That way the story posts are completely separate from the author's notes.

I like the idea of using a separate blog because it really lets the story blog sit out, uninterrupted. A reader can really immerse themselves in the reading. If I'm catching up on a story, I won't be jolted out of my reading by an "author's note" from 3 months ago that's no longer relevant.

While I don't expect everyone to start maintaining 2 blogs, I hope everyone will consider getting rid of meta posts using the strategies above. If you really really have to have one, consider eventually deleting it when it's no longer relevant. That way it won't distract readers when looking through your archives.

Giant Girl Ruined my Vacation

Now you all are going to think I'm crazy. Too be honest, if I hadn't seen it myself, I'd think I was crazy too. In fact I'd still be questioning my own sanity if my fiance` hadn't been with me and seen it too. I was driving through a quiet town in the middle of farm country one day, when all of a sudden I saw a girl who must've been at least 18 feet tall strolling through town. That's right, I said "girl", not a woman. Despite being 18 feet tall, she still looked just a kid. Maybe not a little (probably the wrong word) kid, more like a teen-aged kid.

I was in my little car gawking at her not paying attention and ended up hitting a telephone poll. We ran for cover as she terrorized the town. Eventually the police showed up along with animal control and the national guard. I was shuffled away behind police barricades, but not before I saw the poor girl collapse from all the tranquilizer darts. The last thing I saw before being pushed away by the authorities was her being tied down.

Later, a local doctor treated my fiance` and I for some bumps and bruises from the car accident and a particularly pushy police officer. He was a nice fella, Dr. Crisp, I think was his name. When I talked to him about the girl he seemed more concerned for the girl than frightened.

With the exception of the local newspaper, The Daily World, no paper treats the story seriously. Waiting for my car to be repaired I ended up staying in the small town for a few days. No one I talked to really seemed to know what happened to her. Everyone was content just to know that she was gone. My guess is that she's somewhere in a room being studied.

I know, I know, you don't believe me, and that's fine. Before you dismiss my fantastical story, just think of this. Do you really think someone could actually make this up?

Promoting your Blog Fiction: Get a "Feed"

Let me make myself clear. Setup and turn on a feed for your blog and promote the heck out of it. I know that many people reading this post will file this advice under "d" for "duh". However, I can't help but notice that not every blog fiction site does a very good job of promoting their feed. Or worse, they don't even have one.

If you know what a feed is, you can skip the rest of this post. For those who don't know, a feed is just a way for people to get the latest sampling of your blog. It's uses are nearly limitless. For instance I use the feeds to create my left sidebar. BlogRush uses it to promote feeds. People use it to be notified when their favorite blogs have a new post. I put some of them on my yahoo homepage. Others put them on their google homepage.

There are 2 types of "feeds". An RSS feed, and an ATOM feed. Blogger does ATOM feeds. Others default to using an RSS feed. In the end, which type your blog supports is not an issue. Any program that reads feeds can read both types. Any program that's worth using, that is.

If you're a blogger, fictional or otherwise, you want to make "subscribing" to your feed as easy and quickly as possible. It should always be a click away. Most bloggers will also use something like feedburner so that readers can sign up to be notified via email when there's a new post. Look at my sidebar to the right. Towards the top is the international gigantic orange symbol for a feed. Under it is a link to subscribe via email. Some people will put the email signup form into their webpage so that people can sign up with the click of a button(example here).

Does promoting a feed help? Let me answer with an emphatic YES!!! Everytime I have a new post on this blog, I can't help but notice that the number of unique visitors for the day spikes. I can only conclude that those are my loyal subscribers checking out my latest post. I know it's my feed that prompts their visit. If they were manually checking, my traffic wouldn't spike.

I won't make this another tutorial on setting up a feed. There are plenty that do a better job than I ever could. I just want to make sure that you get one and promote the heck out of it. With the exception of creating an engrossing and entertaining story, it's the most important thing you can do to increase readership. This reminds me, subscribe to this blog's feed!!!

Subscribe to my feed



Subscribe to Blog Fiction by Email

Internet Bottom Feeders

I rarely hold back when talking about the scum of the internet. Spammers and scum sucking domain squatters are all at the top of my list of people who deserve a scarlet letter. Well, add to the list useless bloggers.

What do I mean by a useless blogger? Like a domain squatter, it is someone that adds nothing good, fun, or useful to the internet and yet takes up an inordinate amount of space. For instance, a blog that is optimized for adsense, but has no content that is human readable. The purpose is to get a good pagerank which drives traffic to their site, and hope that some poor sot clicks an ad. The whole purpose is to make money without offering a service. Just do a search for Viagra if you want to see many many examples.

So why do I bring this up? Well, it seems some guy, Michael Wong, visited me asking to exchange links with his useless blog. I checked out his site, and it was empty. EMPTY! Why the hell would I blogroll an empty site that has a single post that said

Even though there's no content now, there will be-once I build up enough incoming links.

Hello! I think you've got that backwards! I visited it again today and people are actually exchanging links. I'm not sure why. He also did add some content that had a lot of words, but didn't say anything. Oh, he also has some ad links, the most important part of a useless blog.

Having said all of that. You might think that I'm not going to link to his site. Well, you would be wrong. In the end, I did decide to give him his precious link:
Asshole

Blog Fiction Forums

I have two problems. First of all, I'm sure that everyone has seen the Grand List of Blog Fiction. For those who have seen it, the first thing you'll notice is that I reused the forum from my, now defunct, own Blog Fiction. I originally did this because I didn't really expect to find that much. Today, however, I'm at 38 and counting.

There is another problem. There is no active forum for blog fiction writers. In fact, with the exception of Novelr's very recent forum addition, there aren't even any forums for online writers. Sure, there's plenty of writer's forums, but they all concentrate on dead tree publishing. Or they are dedicated to some type of fan fiction.

As I'm sure you've guessed by now. I am now introducing the Blog Fiction forum(http://forum.blogfiction.org). If you signed up for my Terran Resistance forum, you'll find that your old username and password have already been transferred. I've also transferred over all of the old posts that are relevant.

Something that you'll notice right away is that I still have the Blog Fiction "link forum". That will be my new grand list of Blog Fiction. I also have a separate "link forum" for general online fiction. A lot people have put links to their online writing in my forum that wasn't really a Blog Fiction. I don't like to leave any one out. Especially when there are so few places for online writers to gather. Therefore, I've put in the "link forum" and a general online fiction discussion. Blog Fiction being a subset of online fiction it really does make sense to allow those discussions as well. While this blog will remain focused on Blog Fiction, I will also participate in the forum at least as much as I do this blog

To promote the forums I'll be adding a feed of the latest topics to the right. If you subscribe to my blog feed, I would also encourage you to subscribe to the forum feed(http://forum.blogfiction.org/rss.php). Since things will probably be slow going at first, you can be notified when there are new topics started. Once a topic is started, if you're interested in it, the forum software will let you "subscribe" to that topic and send you an email when a reply is posted.

I hope the forums will be useful and fun for readers and authors alike. If you have any ideas on how to improve the forums let me know by leaving me a comment posting it in the forums :)