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