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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."
as a way of exploring... whether it is at all possible to use [a weblog] as an artistic medium to produce interesting work.
No.
The limits of the narrative style are many, especially because every novel would have to start with "If I were a $OBJECT, I'd be..."
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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.
I've tried my hand at a novel before, as my half-shelf of writing books will attest. It seems to me that the whole reason for a novel, or fiction generally, is to communicate an emotional state to the reader. Even SF boils down to this - otherwise, why have characters, why not just write speculative monographs about technology? It's about exploring the human condition and sharing the results.
So what I'd like to understand is how you think this medium and method will enhance that purpose. Why should access to unfinished work, or continuous feedback from reader of that work, help an author convey what must initally be an internal state or vision?
It's an interesting topic more generally, since by and large (I except computer games) computers haven't really added any new media at all. And while Doom may have scared the shit out me at times, it's clear that the richness of the experience was far behind Shakespeare, or even Lovecraft.
Thanks for starting what could potentially be an interesting discussion.
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
Why are people facinated with blogs? They simply offer a more limited subset of the creativity allowed by vanilla html, in exchange for added ease of use and "structure". Why not just use web pages, or better yet flash, or another multimedia form to create unique arts?
I have developed a project called JSPBlog which is a Weblog written in JSP.
I found a million and one written in PHP, so I developed mine in JSP and servlets...
I always loved the idea of a weblog. You can take a look at it at http://jspblog.sf.net
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and you'll see all sorts of interesting stories. Novels, no, but not short either!
sulli
RTFJ.
It seems to me that this is similar to other ideas, both that the author recognizes and some that he may not. Dickens, for instance, first published much of his canon in a serial form. Great Expectations, e.g., was first published in pieces (which you can notice if you read it). This aspect of the "new" art form seems to me to be fairly old.
The one "new" aspect may be the "unedited" nature of the medium. The web allows publishing to be cheap enough that few enough people's financial futures are at stake to require that the produced content be of any conceivable literary merit or commercial quality. On the other hand, the radio show of HHGTTG seemed to be done in a manner that may not have had that much time to go back over it. So that's close.
All in all, it's an interesting idea that may bring together old art forms with the new medium, but I wouldn't say it's revolutionary or necessarily that experimental, in the sense of wondering "whether it is at all possible to use it as an artistic medium to produce interesting work." Of course it is. You may be shooting yourself in the foot by not using an editor, though.
entries are "improvisational," by which I mean that you usually sit down, write it, and post it. There isn't a lot of preparation, hours of editing or things like that. You write it, you post it.
"Preparation" and "hours of editing" are the difference between good writing and bad. Don't be fooled by the medium-- even a good blog entry has lots of thought, preparation, and editing behind it.
Unless you've already sat down and thought about storylines, character development, plotting, and pacing, your story is likely to end up an unreadable, uninteresting mess. Real authors of novels don't just sit down and blurt out whatever comes into their head at any given moment. Don't assume that the immediacy of the blog format will substitute for good preparation and planning.
i beg to differ. i have had a blog since the beginning of 2000, and i have never felt as if i was wasting my time. blogs are great ways to experiment with writing, to get out your feelings, and to generate discussion amongst your peer group.
Just because a flash site can be bad, doesn't mean it will be.
Same goes for web logs. Especially since it's intended as a project more than an online diary.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
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.
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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
?
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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.
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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. =)
You could organize your blog according to topic, and then add entries under each heading:
Would it be "interesting?" I guess that's up to you.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've sold fiction and non-fiction works. The effort in getting something published that is also suitable for human consumption is much larger than most people realize. Anyone can publish on the web, but, as agents and editors often point out, who's doing the quality control? I don't think that weblogs are suitable for writing or reading compelling fiction. Good writing is hard, and demands endless revisions, rewritings, and editing. Any professional writer knows this. Consumers seldom see the first draft of an article or story.
OneStepFromElysium indicated that Memento might be a good work produced as a blog. I beg to disagree; the novella and the movie are very carefully crafted. I believe a novel COULD BE MADE TO LOOK like a weblog, much like Bram Stoker's Dracula is made to look like a collection of journals, telegrams, and newspaper clippings. The nature of real weblogs may hinder character development, plot development, and narrative.
For comparison, check the original Memento story out, published by Esquire Magazine. Could something like this have been written as a weblog? Hm... something to think about...
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they try to make money/fame/something useful out of it.
Um, I think you've managed to state the goals of everthing any person has ever done. So maybe you should quit your job because it only gets you money. Don't post on slashdot so you have no chance of fame (yeah right), and go shoot yourself since you're probably trying to do something useful with your life.
It's more of a waste of time to read a blog than it is to write one.
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I mean really. Blogging is someone putting a paragraph or 2 (or a dozen) a day, a week, etc into an online journal. They are often trivial. Personally I think thats why people like them. They show that other people involve themselves in the trivial aspects of their own lives as much as the rest of us.
As for a story, go ahead and write one. But the difference between yours, and everyone else who blogs is, theirs might actually be true.
Then again, maybe they are already telling a story, and we don't know it yet.
A friend of mine started a parody blog of the blogs that overwrought, overdramatic teens sometimes write. A soap opera in blog format so to speak.
Most people think blogs are uninteresting snippets of uninteresting people. Why not invent an interesting person?
The blog format is just another potential tool for the literary process. It is thus important to consider the properties of this tool to decide how to use it.
What new capabilites does the blog bring to the table? What new stories does it allow you to tell? What new writer-reader dynamics does it allow? Fiction in the form of journal entries is not a new thing. Done well, it can create a sense of intimacy between the writer and the reader. Long running web comic strips such as Sluggy Freelenace show that you can get away with a long running plot in little daily chunks on the web.
At the same time, you have to consider the bad properties of such a tool. As with many serial novels, people may be unlikely to start in the middle, or backtrack years to catch up. Many people tend to find it tiresome or slightly painful to read novel length stretches of text off of a computer screen.
I'd say, if you have a story to tell that fits the form, go ahead. I don't tend to see it as such a breakthrough for literature, just another slight variation in the art of storytelling.
There was a message board on a BBS I used to go on(long since perished in the rise of the Internet) that was for such a thing... It worked fairly nicely. As for navigation, just make it clear when each entry was made. Ideally, I'd have it start with the first entry, so that its easy to follow the story from beginning to end. Perhaps use cookies so that repeat visitors can start off again where they left off last time... If not cookies, use some means of bookmarking exact locations.
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Then why do you read slashdot? it's much like a set of interactive blogs... and yes some blogs are indeed interactive... people link back and forth.
Also, though they are a public forum for a person's thoughts, they really aren't intended for a huge growth in traffic... they're a place to keep one's thoughts...
Sure some are for the purpose of artistic expression, but my view of art is that it is mainly for the individual who creates it. Yeah yeah yeah, they're public so others can view it, but most wont... who cares?
Identity is not such a simple concept that a person is the same in every situation.. we all play roles which are different for different people or places. For me, sometimes I have a hard time keeping track of who I am all the time; by having a blog, I can help myself create some continuity... after all, it's just a journal, but one that I can update from anywhere, as long as I'm near a computer with web access.
but as many people have suggested here, I've probably already bored you, because you're not interested in what other people say... so off I go to my own thoughts again...
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Yeah, I hate it when plot gets in the way of a good story...
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the Choose Your Own Adventure books I used to read, at least in the non-linear navigation aspect.
I'm not too familiar with blogging, but to set up a blognovel, wouldn't you need to write something where the concept of "what happens next" is unimportant? Can one write an story without chronology? I suppose Naked Lunch was pretty devoid of a timeline.
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You might look at Invisible Seattle's 1984 BBS-based in.s.omni, a collaborative effort that involved putting kiosks at art shows and in the basement cafe of the Elliot Bay Book Company, along with dial-in access. It used a room-based BBS arrangement plus the assumption of the names and personae of literary-artistic semi-obscure but mythic characters by the principals. As I remember it, it was a lot more fun - and smarter - than anything on the Web. But we were satisfied with such simple toys then.
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since I'm fascinated with his tale, I'd like to point out the work of jorm, who's currently writing a (superhero?) story told episodically via livejournal.
He's left me chomping at the bit for more.
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Most blog apps have this already. b2 which is my favorite certainly employs this feature, so you can filter by category. I'm not sure what this would add to a novel's narrative format, though. If it's not a linear progression through a story, it shouldn't be called a novel, although it may be no less meaningful a form of art. A blog can be a linear progression, but not if you filter out part of it by categorizing it.
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I'll second this, that guy (gal, whatever) isn't a troll, he's an author. Regular readers can clearly see the progression of the artists writting style and technique, and the story is darn interesting.
Or at least it was, I haven't checked it out in a few months.
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...but a long time ago, in an era far far away (the late 80's, pre-public internet when bbs's were king), there was a BBS in Portland, OR that was basically a simple front to two CPM 8" floppy disks in append-only mode. As each floppy filled up, the system would switch to the other and the full one would be replaced with an empty one. People posted anonymously and creatively and it had a loyal following for several years... A limited audience probably helped the signal-to-noise ratio, but it sounds like a less structured version of what you're talking about here, and it worked pretty well...
This is the weblog of a girl who clerks at an adult video store. The subject is rather interesting and its well written. It's probably, unfortunately, the pinacle of weblogs at least for me. The adult video store weblog was an intersting read, the one on salon made me wish I was reading an adult video store weblog :)
:-)
Some of us might remember The Spot A now defunct weblog that tried to make a go of commercializing this form of entertainment (they failed, they even manage to fail at the pinacle of the dot com craze). And they managed to fail with PICTURES!
I guess the moral of the story is, if you're going to do a weblog, make it something interesting like a clerk at an adult video store or maybe a massage parlor or something where you have a lot of quirky personalities to talk about.
Back in the BBS days (*sigh* ... pause for warm fuzzy memory) here in Australia there was an echo-mail area called "Life the Universe and Everything". The whole point of this area was the development of a semi-continuous complex-as-buggery story. The story was created by the participants over time. It was a very weird experience to jump in the first time. The main point seemed to be to impress everyone else with your creativity, wit and dramatic flair. The story was so convoluted that newbies had practically no chance.
Still it was an interesting area. People got severely addicted to it. But it wasn't a novel, it was however a kind of fiction. It reminds me of a blind double date I once went on. I knew the other girl, she was really really smart. We ended up having a coded, semi-fictional fantasy exchance across the table that just kept escalating in complexity ... the others couldn't follow it. That's what Life etc was like.
Good luck. But don't expect a novel. A novel is a very particular kind of fiction. A lot of enjoyable fiction that is called a "novel" today is not a Novel.
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...so great in fact, it'll never work.
Why? Because you'll get feedback, good or bad, that will (at the very least subliminally) change your mind about where the story should go.
The story is first. No matter what book(s) you read about writing and fiction, the story should be king. If it's not, you might as well hang up those typing hands and give it up.
The problem with this is that first of all, and this happens ALL the time, you'll just plain ole run out of ideas. But then, you'll protest, by all of the feedback you're getting you'll get more ideas. Well, here we have the Too Many Cooks In The Kitchen scenario that plagues most writerly "collaborations." Everyone wants to have their say, and when you start in one direction, even a tiny bit, by the time you get another hundred pages or so, you've altered your original narrative in such a way that you'll hardly recognize it anymore.
The second, and most important problem? No rewrites. Lemme land a quote on ya: "The first draft of everything is shit." - Ernest Hemingway. Smart guy. He's right too. The simple fact is that when you finish a writing a large or small piece of fiction, there is at least 10% fluff that needs to be trimmed. Normally more, but I myself shoot for 10% at the least. The problem with the blognovel is that, once you get so far into the story, and you realize something is off, there's no way to change it without editing what may amount to dozens of entries. Then you get frustrated. Then you panic. Then you give up.
You note Great Expectations and its episodic format. But what you don't realize, and what I'd stake my life on, is that Dickens probably finished at least two or three large sections, rewrote the first one, published it, wrote another large section, rewrote the second part, published that one, and so on.
With this format you don't have the luxury of forgetting parts of it, only to rediscover them later on your first readthrough. Not doing so is subjecting many an unsuspecting reader on something they didn't know they were in for: a novel that's not a novel but wants to be a novel but will never actually be a novel.
You have an idea; just the wrong way to go about it.
Here's a suggestion: how about building a story with multiple blogs of fictional people? You can design sites with fictional towns and places (imagine, you can build your own fictional police force website, write your own police reports about incidents, etc) and then link them together with a condusive narrative. This would also work well with more than one writer, all of you with your own story, just interwoven with one another. But hey, it's just an idea.
Good luck.
for instance, I read dangerousmeta almost daily. I don't know all that much about garret's daily activities but I know he posts a decent assortment of news and tech links without too much commentary. I've been reading long enough to slightly understand his point of view, adding an extra understanding that I might otherwise miss or be annoyed by.
The art is in the communication.
Bleh!
To think that I would one day ask that. Thank you Sebastopol for asking a question I have never dared to ask. Thank you devon for this great link.
I don't know if Rebecca Blood's essay was mentioned on Slashdot when it was published, but it is definitely worthy of being some "Stuff that matters."
Damn, it almost makes me want to start a blog.
Ah.. flashbacks to the old BBS days...
---N