Slashdot Mirror
Narrative and Weblogs: the Blognovel
Diego writes "A few days ago I started Plan B -- a blognovel as a way of exploring the narrative constraints created by a weblog, and whether it is at all possible to use it as an artistic medium to produce interesting work. It also presents some interesting challenges on the UI side: what kind of navigation to use besides the basic calendar navigation of the blog? How could it be made obvious that it's not intended to replace print or even ebooks? I thought the slashdot community would have a lot useful things to say about all of these issues. I've also put together a short intro page and a FAQ that I think will be useful to start the conversation: What is Plan B? and the
Plan B FAQ."
Memento used a storytelling style very similar to what you are describing. In fact, it's easy to see that story being done in a blog style.
As a navigation system, I think the slashdot-style topics would make a great addition. This way you can progressively follow the entire log, or you can pick a topic that the author has made, and follow a sequence of topical notes and opinions.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
and you'll see all sorts of interesting stories. Novels, no, but not short either!
sulli
RTFJ.
I had the idea a while back of creating a whole fictional community of blogs through which to tell a story. Basically, I would set up a network of sites, one for each character, and they would relate the events of the story from their own points of view. Characters that knew one another would have links to each other's sites, thus informing the reader of the connections. This approach might lead to something more like War of the Worlds and other fictional journalism, as opposed to a fictional diary, as in the proposed work.
Shockwave Flash movies are the greatest thing to happen to non-sequitur humor since Japan.
Ok, so I've been surfing since Mosaic 1.0 in 1994, and ftp'ing pr0n for zurich.ai.mit.edu since 1990, and the first time I heard of a 'blog' was a few months ago. The odd thing is, this discussion of blogs came out of the news websites and not the nerd websites.
when the hell did blogs become so famous? and are they just the modern equivalent of
?
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
While I applaud any and all attempts to update the antiquated form of the novel for the modern era, I think it may be a classic case of "too little, too late." When you use the Internet as a medium, you are by necessity targetting the Internet demographic, which can be described as middle class Americans and Western Europeans in the 12-28 age bracket. That means the oldest people in your target audience will have been born when disco was in full swing.
These people came of age in the early 80's. They grew up with cartoons, MTV, hair bands and cocaine. They've been disillusioned, become disillusioned with their disillusionment, and are jaded and cynical as a result. With middle age creeping up on them, they have neither the time nor the desire to sit down and read, whether in a library or on a computer screen.
But is this so terrible? I'd propose that, no, it isn't. Look at what has gone before: we've lost great art forms such as traditional oral storytelling, the inscription of heiroglyphics into stone tablets, papyrus scrolls. The printing press upset the wonderful tradition of books copied and illuminated (illustrated) by monks. Yes, it is sad when traditional and familiar art forms fade away, but it also signifies progress.
We're reaching a point where the sheer amount of information available exceeds the expressive power of the book. Flash, DVD, and video games are the media of the future. This attempt to adapt what is essentially a dying and doomed art form to modern tastes is touching, but ultimately doomed to failure. And while we should (and probably will) all look back fondly on the Book Era, we should not shy from our destiny in the Information Age.
We are on the verge of accomplishing great things for Mankind. This is a time like no other previous, and with all probability like none to come. Let us not be distracted by nostalgia and wistful dreams.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Ideally, you should also be able to navigate the text in different directions, which means that the story will be more "experiential" than plot-oriented. I hate plot-oriented stories anyway.
So basically, you're creating a character who will then tell 'their story' through the blog?
I didn't fully read all the entries, but is the character supposed to be posting on the blog, or is the blog itself just the medium?
Also, I couldn't immediately ascertain this by reading the story, but does time for the character correspond to the time and date on the blog?
I think these would be important things for the audience to be able to figure out quickly, to help them get into the story and get to know the character.
All in all, I think this is a cool concept, and would be interesting alongside traditional fiction, perhaps even movies. E.G. You could be reading a story set in a certain time period about a character or two, and go online and read a character's blog about occurances during that time period to get a better idea about small events that might not advance the plot, but would be otherwise interesting in regards to the development of that character.
i bet a lot of minor characters would have entries complaining that the main character is always in the limelight. =)
I think a much better (and ready-made) UI for an experiment like this would be a Wiki; if you really want the calendar style navigation you've got the 'RecentChanges' page, but otherwise navigation is much more organic, and from an authoring standpoint it's much more stream of conciousness; creating a new page is as simple as creating a link to it.
I began using a Wiki for my own site a few weeks ago and I like it a lot better than the chronological format that seems to be the standard for "Blogs"; information becomes contextual and meaningful as crosslinks develop between pages. You don't have the compartmentalization that comes with organization by date and/or category.
As an added experiment in meaningful context, I integrated the top five Google search results as sidebar links for each and every Wiki page on my site... sometimes the links aren't really all that related to the page's topic, but most of the time they're dead on. My next plan is to include the top five referring URLs on each page as well, which should get some interesting feedback happening in combination with Google's links.
I don't get it either. I dislike everything that weblogs stand for. I don't care about other people's daily life. I don't care what happened to somebody on the street. I don't care about what one person finds funny about this waiter at his/her favorite restaurant. These things should be left to his/her self, like a diary.
The only reason i can see that someone would want to have a log of their daily life, is for an auto-biography, which should be left to someone who has been in the public eye quite a bit, and whos private life has been affected by it. Face it, most everyone that does one of these online journals is just not interesting. I even hate the stupid word 'blog' that people use to describe them. Its just a buzz word that stupid people use to sound important, like 'proactive' and 'paradigm.'
I'm fired now, aren't I?