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."
as a way of exploring... whether it is at all possible to use [a weblog] as an artistic medium to produce interesting work.
No.
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.
and you'll see all sorts of interesting stories. Novels, no, but not short either!
sulli
RTFJ.
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 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
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.