I’ve mentioned in several posts that I’m interested in the idea of character blogs. It’s also clear from the fossil record that character blogs have been investigated by a number of writers and marketing departments over the past five or six years, yet there are no consensus successes to point to despite the effort and hype.
The attempts (so far) seem to fall into several categories. [ Read more ]
By Mark 9 Comments
After three weeks of blogging and Site Seeing I definitely have a better handle on what’s happening out there, but I’ve also come to grips with the fact that I simply can’t keep track of it all. And that’s true even if I avail myself of all the latest tech, tech filters and social networks — which I would also have to spend a great deal of time reading about in order to achieve cutting-edge productivity.
(There’s a reason they call it the ‘cutting’ edge.)
In the end there’s too much to see and digest, let alone comment on, let alone act on. So it’s time to tighten the focus a bit, in anticipation of tightening it more in the future. Although this is an exclusionary process in some respects, I tend to think of it as irising in on something in the distance and pulling it into sharper focus. Simplification as zoom lens. Or sniper scope.
Traditional Publishing
I can’t really say the industry is dead, because it’s not dead. What I can say is that it’s broken, and I think everybody gets that. But I don’t think it’s simply broken relative to some newfangled process or advance (the internet), but rather that it’s inherently broken in ways that the internet is only now revealing. [ Read more ]
By Mark 2 Comments
I’m not even sure how I landed on this BBC page, but as someone who’s been telling stories for twenty years, I can say with some confidence that I’ve never seen anything like this anywhere else:
Send us your script»
Send us your work. We read all unsolicited scripts for BBC Films,TV Drama, Children’s Drama,TV Comedy, Radio Entertainment and Radio Drama. We accept unsolicited scripts written for film, television, radio or stage.
I mean, even the scammers and con artists who are actively trying to sucker would-be writers don’t just throw the door wide open and say, “Come on in!” (They charge you for the privilege of being fleeced.)
Is this BBC invite a good thing? A bad thing? I have no idea.
But it reminds me that while I’ve been looking for good blog fiction on the web, I keep ending up on UK and European sites. I don’t know what that means, either, but it keeps happening. Is the U.S. badly lagging in blog fiction? Is there an EU government subsidy that’s giving them an edge? How do we close the blogfic gap?
— Mark Barrett
Here are a few quotes from an excited article about blog fiction:
The weblog has justifiably been celebrated as a new publishing platform. But writers are beginning to see that it also has the potential to be a new fictional form.
Now, the blog breathlessly referenced in the article had two things going for it. First, the blog’s author was a mystery at the time, giving people something to speculate about. Second, the blog was about sex, giving people something to salivate about. Put the two together in any medium and you’ve got enough juice to get yourself on Oprah, so it’s not surprising that it caught this writer’s attention. [ Read more ]
I spent a good bit of time last night by myself, holed up in a well-concealed blind just off the blog fiction trail. Despite remaining perfectly still, however, and keeping my surgically-implanted iPod’s volume at a very low level, no blog fiction passed by.
Back at camp, after treating my mosquito bites and refreshing myself with two energy drinks, I doubled back to where my search began: the Wikipedia entry for ‘blog fiction.’ At the bottom of the Wikipedia page I once again began to click my way through the Reference and External links, looking for fresh sign. (No, not like that, like this.)
Unfortunately, the first link — enticingly titled, “Blog Fiction…Where the Story Begins,” and pointing to an equally-enticing URL: blog-fiction.com — proved to be a wild text chase, ending as it did at the battered remains of the aforementioned site, which was apparently being consumed by a ravenous MediaWiki landing page.
Undeterred, I poised my field mouse to click on the next link, at which point the two energy drinks I’d consumed reached critical mass and my heart rate shot to 180 beats per minute for over an hour and a half. Fortunately, sleep was deep on the backside of this ballistic chemical experience, and I am now ready to take up the chase again — as soon as my laptop fully recharges from the feeble outlet here at the infirmary. More soon.
— Mark Barrett
Following up on the previous post, I followed one of the ‘best blogfic’ search hits back to a 2008 post on BlogFiction.org, titled: Did Blog Fiction Peak In 2005?
An interesting question. If true, however, I would think it had less to do with the potential of the medium than it did with the various attempts during that time. So maybe it’s time to try something new.
— Mark Barrett
By Mark 2 Comments
Can you point me to the best blog fiction on the internet? Not just the best web fiction — although I guess I wouldn’t mind a few pointers there as well — but specifically blog fiction, however you define it?
The reason I ask is that I’ve been rooting around for a few weeks now, clicking links and following threads, and I’m seeing a lot of fiction on the internet. And I’m really glad that so many people are publishing to the web. It can only make them better writers, and it can only speed the process of networking which is so important to any writer’s ability to develop. (All writers need to find good readers. It’s a nightmare for all involved.)
On some level, however, I’m still not connecting with a lot of what I’m reading, and I keep feeling like I’m wandering in circles. So…if I said to you, “Who’s writing the best blog fiction on the internet?”, what would you say?
(I tried searching for ‘best blog fiction’ but I was not encouraged by the number of hits I got in return. And ‘best blogfic’ turned out even worse.)
— Mark Barrett
When you get around to the type of internet fiction called blog fiction, or blogfic — and it won’t take you long — you should stop in at BlogFiction.org. On that site you’ll find posts that will help you put things in context, as well as get you up to speed on the current state of the genre (if that’s the right word for it).
First up, and a must-read, is a post titled Blog Fiction Defined. It’s exactly the kind of deep analysis I like, but it’s also very accessible, and includes a clickable flow chart to help you grasp the information presented. Even better, there’s an explicit acknowledgment that it’s too soon to nail some of the details down, and from an editorial point of view that’s a very good sign.
After that, poke around on the blog and in the forum. There are some good nuggets of information to be found not just on the subject of blog fiction, but on the much more important question of what blog fiction is and may become. As someone who’s interested not just in reading blogfic, but in writing it, I need to know how blog fiction is put together as a matter of craft, and BlogFiction.org seems interested in that question as well.
— Mark Barrett
If ‘blog fiction’ is an obvious term for fiction on the internet, so is ‘web fiction’ — and that broader term is what I typed in the search bar yesterday for my first formal surfing safari. The top hit for that phrase turned out to be a site called Web Fiction Guide, which describes itself as a “community-run listing of online fiction”. (Sweet!)
As a first stop on an uncertain journey it seemed a welcoming place, and after taking a look around I think it would be worth your time to stop by as well. (Visiting the WFG Forums will give you a sense of the traffic on the site, as well as the vibe of the community.) [ Read more ]
By Mark 4 Comments
In what I’m sure is an unflattering admission, my complete unfamiliarity with the subject of fiction on the internet includes the current terminology for the various expressive forms. For example, although I had heard of individual instances of blog fiction, I didn’t know if ‘blog fiction’ was a generally-used term, or even a broadly-used, all-encompassing term.
Well, yesterday I read a short Wikipedia article on Blog Fiction which not only provided a useful overview, but also answered or at least paralleled a number of my own thoughts about the subject. I’m still not sure of the scope of the term, but I now know I’m not alone in that uncertainty. (I encourage you to read the piece when you have a moment.)
Specifically, the article confirmed my belief that there are two big questions facing blog fiction and other types of internet fiction (if such distinctions need to be made):
1) Can old and new storytelling techniques be harnessed into a mature craft which will make internet fiction the emotional and artistic equivalent of more established types of fiction?
2) Will the potential for — and seduction of — authorial ambiguity in blog fiction create useful tension as a technique, or simply confusion on the part of the reader? [ Read more ]
