I have moved, or I am moving.

to this address:

jpsmythe.com/fact

Bookmark it now, and please keep coming to visit. I haven’t been posting as much as I would like lately, but that will change. Promise.

 

The Ghost Of You Lingers (Part 1)

I’ve increasingly become concerned of late, when reading about blog fiction, that people (including myself, since writing it) are pigeon-holing and narrowing the field of what can and can’t be blog fiction. So, I want to set aside my own prejudices about what I think blog fiction should be, and address what it actually is. That doesn’t mean that this won’t have my opinions in it – how could I escape them? – but, rather, it means that I won’t pass judgement on if things said/done are right or wrong. Although, I probably well, so tell me off when I do. And, if possible, I’d really like this to be a proper conversation/discussion (which would be immeasurably useful for the PhD, pop-pickers). Oh, and I’m doing this over a few posts – it’s going to be a pretty big topic, I think. So, please, join in the discussion below. So, let’s start at the start, and go right back to zero.

*****

Wikipedia (which, as we all know, cannot be really trusted, but is probably the best source for stuff like this in the whole world) tells us that blog fiction came into prevalence after the advent of the major blogging sites in 1999, and is influenced by Charles Dickens, Lawrence Sterne, Arthur Conan Doyle and Henry James, all of whom were major proponents of serialised instalments of fiction. Now, stylistically, I get it, and I think that for some people a return to the concept of serialised fiction is paramount. But for the majority it really comes down to the form and how it is used. You write in a chunk, and you save it. It’s natural to want to present your work to the world. So, it gets uploaded to the site in a chunk. In order to cope with the standardised formatting of most blogs – that is, newest posts first – many writers adapted to the format, and, taking into account the use of blogs as diary, simply made their fiction take the form of missives.

If we look at the history of the use of various stylistic literary implementations in fiction, we can see that people cannot help but be influenced by the time in which they live. Henry James’ The Ambassadors, for example, was in twelve sections, knowing that it was to be published over the course of a year. The format was adapted to fit the presentation of the story – no chapter could be the length of half the book, for example, or of less than x amount of pages. If we look at e, the 2003 novel by Matthew Beaumont, we can see, too, here, how the formatting forces the tale – the story is pushed by the use of basic time signatures and presentation options. There are interesting surveys waiting to be done – and I would do them, were even a tenth of the people that I have emailed about their blogs to reply to me – concerning blogs, their style and the influences they have gathered (Danielewski vs. Dickens, for example). And whilst you can trace a line of influence and be argumentative (The Observer, on Sunday, argued about the lack of influence that Nirvana and Prince have had on music, saying that the influence hasn’t come from them, but from those people that they idolise and imitate, and golly, you might argue, but in literary circles this can be more than true), you also cannot ignore a) Zeitgeists and b) trends amongst the ‘trendy’.

I am a great lover of the concept – not necessarily the implementation – of belletristic fiction. I love the idea of writing to be pushed by the aesthetic, but am left cold by much of the writing that occurs from this style. And as people became bored with basic hypertext writing – that is, the use of links in text to push readers to other media – they began looking for places to enhance their text, because that it is (one of) the joy(s) of the internets. So, as Postsecret becomes a phenom, so fiction blogs start littering their words with imagery. As LonelyGirl13 tears holes in youtube, so fiction writers start adapting and contemplating how to add video entries to their words. And, as ARGs have more influence and sway (more, even, than I Like Bees and The Beast) amongst the general public, and in how advertising occurs, so writers try to think of ways to play games with their readers.

Then, of course, there are the blogs that break themselves down into chapters, and present themselves as a standardised format story. First of all, there are semantic issues. If we look at the roots of the word ‘blog’, do they actually conform to the Webster’s definition of “an online diary or chronology of thoughts”? For the most part they do not, instead choosing to use the blog publishing format – a very different kettle of fish – to present their work, utilising the formatting graces afforded by blogging tools as opposed to struggling with HTML or the like. Are they blogs, though? Should they be eligible for the previously mentioned Blooker? Not for me to say (but, Damn you, self imposed non-judgemental rule!). But, when taken as blogs, do they conform to commonly held opinions of the format (which, if we look at the example given in Webster’s, is “Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author”)? And, for the most part, how have these blogs assimilated or been influenced by their peer blogs (or anything down that chain of influence)? One of the finalists of this year Blooker prize essentially wrote a novel, broke the chapters into web pages, called it a blog and then self-published it. And in terms of influence it would be arguable that there was anything taken from the world of web fiction, in any of its forms.

So, in essence, Blog Fiction seems to be, nowadays, a kind of catch-all term for Web fiction. That is, if you write fiction and present it on the internet in a form – any form, really – you can term it blog fiction. Which is horrendously vague, given that analysis above, but the vagaries of the form and the products that result from it mean that there is little choice but to make such a broad, sweeping statement. However, one thing can be said for certain: just because it’s blog fiction doesn’t mean that it is interactive. Interactive fiction is something else altogether, and I’ll address that another day.

Next time round (and if you want to tip me off to directions to look at for the next one, feel free): The reverse influence that blog fiction has had upon traditional print literature, and how fiction bloggers might adapt their work to suit publishers and Joe (no pun intended) Bloggs.

 

This is a standard update.

I have – probably naturally - a great deal of affection for fiction writers who use the internet as a means of publication. There’s a sense of pride that you can get from internet fiction that is sometimes missing when something gets published through more traditional means. That isn’t to say that print-published writers are less proud of their work – rather, it’s about the visible pride, that pride that you can see. When fiction writers get the chance to tell others that their work is available now, for free – no monies! – and that three hundred people have read it so far, there is something tangible there. You never look at the Guardian literary supplement and read about this writer who is just really, really happy that Harper Collins are offering him a two-book deal. It isn’t news. On the internets, however, that’s a pretty big thing.

At the end of this post will be some links to fictional blogs, writers who write about fiction, and that sort of thing. You probably owe it to yourself to look at them, even if it’s just a cursory glance, to see if they are your sort of thing, and to see if you would maybe buy it and read it if it were in the shops. Because, in this day and age, how can we believe that we don’t have an influence?

Case in point: someone in a comment on this here blog alerted me to The Daily Monster, which is sort of out of my safety zone, but we’ll hang convention for a second. This site features artwork of a new monster created daily by a chap called Stefan, and then the readers of the blog are invited to create background stories for the characters in the comments. Great idea. It is fictional (kind of), and community generated (which we all love, right?) and, more importantly, is going to be published. Why? Well, I’m willing to bet that it’s because it’s pretty popular. If enough people shout about something then the ‘right’ people (whomsoever they might be) invariably sit up and listen. Just look at Postsecret (which, incidentally, I am still dying to find out more about re: their problems with fiction writers, storytellers and liars – do they just assume that everyone tells the truth?).

God, look at the examples given by this year’s Blooker awards! I am very much of the Believer school of thought here – as I have said many times before – and I would rather not single out anything for negative reasons. But some of the writing of the winners/runners up is patchy at best. Some of it is great and heartfelt and passionate and actually intelligent. But some of it is substandard. And this is the benchmark completion, “our” Booker prize! Until, that is, you look at the criteria. See, it’s actually the LuluBlooker prize, and is actually sponsored by self-publishing gurus Lulu. Lulu is a great site: they claim that they aren’t vanity publishing, and use very vague terms about what they actually do, but, essentially, you give them a book, some money and a cover design and they will stick your book on shopping search engines and sell it for you. And some people are making money by selling stuff through it, and there are, inevitably, some really good writers there. But there are issues.

I’ve always been told that any publisher worth their salt will never make the writer pay for anything. There’s no such thing as “reading fees” or the like in the publishing world. And you don’t pay “preliminary editor’s fees”. They give you editors. For free. And that is the problem with Lulu, and, simultaneously, the problem with web/blog fiction: Editors.

I’m lucky. I have a PhD tutor and a really good writer friend (also doing a PhD) and a girlfriend with a good eye to help me edit my stuff at the moment. That’s three people who will see my novel before I send it to agents and publishers. But some people don’t have those people. And I think I’m a pretty good editor as well. I have two types of feedback – feedback for those who write for fun and feedback for those who want to make a career of it (and the former is mainly dominated by “Did I like the story?”, the latter by “How was the story, writing, style, spag etc, and would people read this?”). But many people either don’t an editor, or don’t actually want one – self-belief can be a terrifying thing.

And this is the issue with the Blookers. Lots of news outlets reported on them, and that’s fabulous, as there’s some real publicity for a format typically ignored by the mainstream. But then if you clicked through to the blogs and read some of them blogs that were nominated you might be put of the form forever (and there’s one, in particular, that was a runner up and is really quite appallingly written). But when you look at the remit – the top blogs that have been turned into published books – you assume that this is giving credence to their efforts. It doesn’t make it clear anywhere that they can be self-published to count! And that’s the ridiculous thing: I could turn around tomorrow and publish this very blog here via Lulu and submit it for the competition. Would that make me a ‘published author’? Only by the very skin of rather negotiable teeth!

And I think that people aren’t terribly willing to shout about quality as far as the internet is concerned. If you went onto someone’s fiction blog and left a comment that tidied up some language, or made writing tips, you’d probably be termed ‘teh troll’ (or some-such similar insult). But you’re only giving advice! So, what to do? Well, that’s well out of my hands, and yours, and probably anyone else in the world. There are very few ways to legitimise the use of the internet as a mass-publishing tool, no ways to enforce quality controls on things that you aren’t uploading to your own servers, and no ways to stop people doing things that they enjoy (as that distinction between fiction writers I mentioned before, the “for fun” and “for reals” ones? That exists here too, and, let’s face it – this is the perfect place for it). And I would never dream of telling anyone to stop what they are doing. But for those of us for whom it matters, there must be another way. Anyone want to suggest it?

*****

So, onto some links. First off, shout outs to one of the two people who have pimped their blogs in the comments of this site over the last few months. The simply-titled Stories is somebody’s blog where they write short stories. Simple idea, simply presented, and they may be your kind of thing. For myself, I think it’s great to see someone write short fiction on the net and not get bogged down by the presentation and hypertextual niceties. Next, Horton’s Folly, which I may have mentioned before - I can’t remember, such are the many words I have written for this here site - but it’s great. It’s comedy fiction, funny and stylised and, on occasion (or, actually, most of the time), veers further from the fiction than the comedy, but, regardless. It’s worth checking out. The Doorbells Of Florence is quite the thing as well, some beautifully written stories each hidden behind a doorbell. Great idea.

Then, there’s those sites about blogging that are worth visiting. Novelr is superb, and really good for keeping up with these things. Then there’s Betsy’s Journal (or, as it now seems to be called, Betsy’s Phony Bologna). Betsy and I are doing our theses on pretty much the same topic (hers is on general blog and web fiction, mine is on the corellation between blogs, ARGs and the internet and printed fiction, but, really, they do cross over an awful amount). I’m going to start sticking far more links up at the side of this blog as I really start looking at my Critical Component to the thesis and revisiting many of the blogs that I have links to and may have ignored over time.

Visit them all, and tell them I sent you. They won’t know who I am, but it might make them feel warm inside.

 

You Are In A Room. There Is An Exit To The North. What Do You Want To Do? (Hint: Go North!)

At what stage in the development of a project does interactivity begin? I am currently writing my on-line fiction blog, which I shan’t link to here just yet, and am trying to decide when to start inviting people ‘in’. You see, I want commentary on the blog, all in character, and the dream would be that people wouldn’t realise that they were commenting on fiction in the first place (or would realise but would choose to play along, eager to see where the story took them). Only, there are two issues. The first is that the story isn’t actually all that zippy – it can’t be, because of the format – and it isn’t a thrill-ride – I want this, after all, to read as if it could be real. And the second issue is getting people to read in the first place, and to want to inter-act with the story of that character’s life. And that’s a far, far harder task.

My friend Jeff asked me a few weeks back where interactivity began, and what difference it has with ‘active engagement’, and in a very short conversation with myself I realised that it began at point zero, at the decision to read something. Critics and writers debate the issue, and the designers of Args and web-fictions seem to fight to make their hypertext-heavy tomes stand-out, and they all strive to highlight the differences between what can be achieved on digital information that cannot be achieved on paper. But they miss the crucial similarity, I think: if you can’t get someone to read, you may as well not bother. Now, I have one major criticism of the internet as a presentation tool for writing: it’s vile to read through – and that may change in the futures with the advent of liquid paper (or whatever stupid name they have given it nowadays (I like to imagine reading a newspaper by staring into an over tray filled with liquid, and tilting the tray to turn the page, but that’s just me)), but I doubt it. People won’t forsake paper because it’s so lovely. It’s paper! So, how do we harbour that interactivity that we are so desperate for in our lives? When does (buzzword coming!) Novel 3.0 (that’s right, 3!) begin?

Well, life is like a Fighting Fantasy novel: you never know what’s coming next. Except, you actually do: what’s coming next is another page. And another, and another, until finally, you’ll reach the end, and close the book. Well, what is what’s been missing is the other bits? Here’s a basic interactivity lesson. By picking up the book in the first place, the reader has made a choice. The cover/blurb/marketing/word-of-mouth combo? It informs their decision. Opening the book to read page one? Another choice. Choosing not to put it down before the end of chapter one? Another choice. Fine, so the questions (“You have reached the end of the page. If you wish to continue, please turn over. If not, have a nice cup of tea and watch Entourage.”) aren’t printed there for you, but you can give up, stop reading. It is a choice. It is, in the truest sense of the word, interactive.

Sure, you could argue with that – it’s stretching the point, really, isn’t it? Is watching a film interactive? - but how is it less more linear than choosing which page you read next? In Fighting Fantasy, you used to choose whether to hit the orc with your sword or not, and you drove the story that way. And there was a right and a wrong answer – the wrong one would drive you to death. So you backtracked, and chose the right answer, because you wanted to know where the story went. It was linear as hell. If you chose to leave your character dead after page four, well, that was your choice. It wasn’t a good choice, I don’t think, as you lost the story. So, you invariably backtracked. And looking at the example of “interactive fiction”, as in, “You are in a room with a chair and a window to the North”, and you tell it where you want to go, well, that’s surely only as interactive as the writer’s make them? And I’ve been writing one – an experiment I’ve been trying – and it’s bloody hard, and, ultimately, just as linear as a printed novel (if not under a veil of free will). I mean, fine you give the reader/the player the chance to pick up a candle or not, but if they don’t they can’t see what’s in the room with them. Or maybe they pick it up but don’t light it? They have no choice, or they can’t see what’s in front of them. And you can bet that they will either have matches, or have been forced to pick some up earlier in the game.

So what choice do you really have? And why are these players termed as ‘players’? Why aren’t they just ‘readers’? And when you ask that question, where does being a ‘reader’ stop? Does playing Gears Of War – a linear story that requires that you fight a war over five levels with no freedom of progression or choice, only requiring that you use great hand-eye co-ordination to successfully shoot creatures – does playing it instantly drag you further away from this concept of an interactive novel? I mean, sure, its closer to a film, and I would never dream of suggesting otherwise, but that level of interactivity is insanely high compared to the non-linear choice of picking up a candle, and Gears is the least linear game that I can think of. So, what would be a true example of interactive fiction? Well, something like B.S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates makes a good case for itself (with the pages published unbound, and readable in any order that the reader likes, even though it is arguably to the detriment of the story itself). It was innovative at the time – I think it’d probably still be innovative now, were such gimmicks not horrifically overused – and it represented a true break from conventional novel structure. I imagine that, as a reader of the time, when presented with the novel, one had to sit down, arrange the pages, work out where to begin. Your choice to begin with a random page meant that you dictated where the rest of the novel went. You instantly made more of an interactive choice than choosing whether to blow out a candle when you finally make it through a door to the north.

And so, to the internet. Is it more interactive than paper novels? Well, it can be. It should be, if we’re honest. But for the most part it gets suffocated by grand ideas. I still pick up novels I have never heard of based on their covers, and I reckon I discard a third as many as I finish (usually because of bad writing, such is my incessant snobbery). But I am making that choice. I am putting them down, closing them, much as I would a film I disliked or a game that bored me. And I choose to turn the pages with the novels that I do persevere with. I make the choice to read chapter two, or to partake in the literary puzzles it presents me with, or to read the end first if I so choose (which I never choose, incidentally – why would you do that to yourself?). And that’s how I am most interactive.

And yet, there’s so much more. My novel has taken huge swathes of ideas from the internet, in much the same way that writing from all ages informs and educates the literature of the time (just look at the huge 19th century trend of belletristic fiction for evidence). I have taken forms, aesthetics and typography, as well as writing it in short chunks, bursts, designed to be consumed in as little or large parts as you like, and added leaps in time, flights to other pages that serve as research, distraction, even, perhaps, non-sequiteur (much as the majority seem to use the internets). Have I done it well? God knows. As I have said time and time again, the most important thing isn’t the gimmick, but the story told, and that’s the part that I am happiest with. So it has the raw ingredients: where does Novel 3.0 start? Well, it starts in the spin-off. Jonathan Lethem has recently published a novel that is sort-of about filesharing, and he is sort-of making it public domain (in that, in five years, people will be allowed to use his characters and text however they see fit). Now, this relies on people liking the novel enough to want to use the characters and novel – and, frankly, caring enough to use it in this way when there is absolutely no financial or real-creative gain to be had in the long run. But it’s a noble idea (though so much of it is marketing and spin, I don’t know how Lethem will feel if his characters appear in a novel that sells better than his one has, possibly doing things that he would never have dreamt of doing to them). And my novel kind of hits that same marker, only it guides. The linearity of the freedom that I want to offer to the reader is far stricter. There’s a blog, and a character, and that character is looking for something, and readers of the blog can either help of hinder them in finding it. And, if all goes to plan, it’ll be true interactive fiction: I don’t know if that character will ever find what they are looking for. I don’t know if I want them to. But I want readers of the blog to guide me. And if they’re read the novel, they will be able to assist me far, far easier. Or hinder. Whatever they choose. It’s more interactive than turning a page, but the ultimate choice, the choice to follow or not, to continue or turn back, that’s still theirs.

*****

It’s been a while since I last posted, so thanks for sticking with me and being patient, if you are still reading this. For what it’s worth, I’ve read some great stuff lately – including some blogs – and I’ll be posting about those later this week. So, if you’re a fiction blog that I don’t know about, let me know the address in the comments and I’ll shout-out to you pretty damned soonish. Unless you’re about Vampires. Then, you should just assume that it won’t be for me.

*****

Battles’ Atlas, Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky, the new Polyphonic Spree (amazing), the new Rufus Wainwright (lots of pomp), Candie Payne, Moon Maan, The National, new Guns And Roses songs, Dan Deacon, Clutch and Chromeo: All these things are awesome. Oh, and that new Manic Street Preachers album would be good, as an old-school Manics fan, were the lyrics not so shabby (Autumn Song? Christ.).

 

The Internet Has Made Our Fiction Spoilt.

I read a lot of blogs, and by ‘read’, I mostly mean ‘scan’. I have a lovely tabbed Netvibes page set to appease my every blog need, to let me see when Slashdot has updated itself with some invariably useless information or when wired has posted an article about bionic toes. And one of my favourite blogs is the Joystiq Gaming Blog. This weekend they posted about ARGs from the SXSW festival (which I love, incidentally: rock music and technology are a marriage made in Heaven, Texas). The article talks about the roots of ARGs, and the commonly held perception that the ARG is something that almost solely exists and survives through the internets. Not true, says Joystiq, and I agree.

I think it’s a dangerous attitude, this idea that something starts and end with the internet. Let’s us look at this lump of technology – and I feel, compared to what we’ll have in ten years, calling it a lump is not unfair – for what it is, and what people seem utterly desperate to avoid calling it at the moment: it’s paper, only its on a screen, but everyone can read it. And it has all the trappings that that definition entails. People get all high-horsey about strictly linear definitions such as this, and then scream “Yea! But Youtube!” at people when they suggest things like this, but it would be foolish to suggest otherwise, right now: the majority of content that I get from the internet comes from words that people write, not the videos that they post or the flash-games that they try to persuade me to play.

But here’s a horrible example (and yes, it really is overused, but stick with me) concerning content and quality controls: imagine that you went down to your newsagent and bought your newspaper one day to discover that they had thrown all editorial policy out of the window, and allowed reader submitted articles, filled with dubious writing, content and ego. Alright, so maybe that’s harsh: imagine walking into your locals Smiths, or Borders, and looking for your favourite magazine when they have suddenly decided to allow anyone to take up shelf space with their own publications. Still too harsh? Imagine searching for something (and I cannot remember how people did this before Google, or at the very least Alta Vista, so use your imagination) and finding hundreds of other articles before you stumble on the information that you were after, only the articles were, for the most part, poorly written, researched and full of split-infinitives (or such). Imagine buying a board game from your local toyshop and discovering that the questions were poorly written, some had no answers and half the pieces were missing.  WELL, WELCOME TO OUR LIVES!

Of course, I’m being ridiculous to emphasise a point (which has wandered away from my original topic somewhat). The internet is only as good as what we put into it. Simple fact. And I think that there’ll be a streamlining of the information flow at some point as we progress, as previously print-only magazines start shifting to the web in droves and either destroying their html equivalents, or truly suffocating under the weight of the competition. Those shelves at your local newsagents only hold 100 magazines, and if you aren’t on them you aren’t being sold, but the internet holds a million times that number, and judging whether you are still on the shelf is an infinitely harder proposition.

[Incidentally, there was an article in The Guardian last week about magazine numbers in the UK suffering, and publishers folding titles and such. I think this is totally premature: fine, most magazines can shift to the net, whatever, but I still buy print magazines simply because they are so much nicer to read. Sure, these mags have to adapt (who doesn’t, nowadays?) but to think that they cannot exist as a lovely piece of design print - see Edge, Wired, GamesTM as examples - is just a little foolish, methinks.]

Back to the ARGs, anyway. To think that they are something that requires the internet to play is insane, and to think that they are made better by the internet… Well, that’s slightly more subjective. Personally (and for someone who deals in this whole ‘New Media’ bullsh, this may sound peculiar) I would far prefer to be playing it through actual tangible media. And I think that the above point about quality would ring far truer were the the case: if something is tangible, people seem to put far more effort into it.  The difference in quality between something that you would submit to a magazine for publication and something you’d find on the interweb is huge.  With fiction its even more so: in print, the only time you find Vanity publishing is in… well, vanity publishing.  On the net?  Everything is vanity. 

Imagine: you buy your newspaper, and there’s an advert for a product that sounds odd. You google it (I didn’t say that the two were mutually exclusive, mind you) and you find out that it is made by an inventor, who offers to send you a sample. You then receive a package in the post with a panicked letter form him telling you that you have to help him, blah blah, add some cliché to simmer for 20 minutes. What you end up with is something that takes the form and format of the ARG (looking at Perplexcity alongside it) but with genuine ‘game’ playing involved, as opposed to the puzzles presented by Perplexcity and its ilk (which have made them mass contact board games, I think). I want the real more than the imaginary with these things. I want to feel that what I am doing is affecting somebody or something tangible.  There are virtual ways around this, of course, ways to promote that feeling: feedback.  If the ARG is a successful conversation between two people that is more than possible.  However, the sheer amount of time required to have a two-way conversation if more than five people ’play’ your ARG would be hell.  It would be a full time job.  So, how to get around it?  Selective replying.  But how can everyone know that you’ve replied?  Oh!  What about a comments section?  It amazes me that people don’t use this.  Character-based fiction blogs seems to stop at the post itself, letting the commenters ramble on about this and that, never trying to maintain the fiction above and beyond where they absolutely have to.  Why not try and promote replies that assist the story?  Hell, why not let them drive the damn story!  If a suggestion in a comment makes you think of somewhere cool to take your tale, then dammit, just go with it!  We don’t live in an age where I could set up an ARG and afford to send everyone who subscribes to it letters and presents and have great chats.  However, we can reply to comments, and we can think outside the box to find new and inventive ways to present our writing, and to read.  We don’t need to stick with this idea of cyber-fiction - we should be thinking of ways to let this technology help us make our writing better.  Otherwise, I think the traditional publishing route is one that writers shouldn’t really stray too far from.  Don’t get published?  Maybe there’s a message there.

***** 

Remember last post?  I wrote something about Cloak & Dagger, two Marvel comics favourites?  Well, a Pitchfork Writer wrote something as well.  It’s very good: you should read it.

 

Spitting Venom: Hotel Dusk, Cloak & Dagger And Modest Mouse.

Blog/web/internet/interactive/cyber/paper/periodical/serialised fiction - and you can really pick any of those to focus on for the next point - seems permanantly at a crossroads. There’s always someone saying that these things have either a) died or b) turned a corner, and there’s always someone on the opposing foot waiting to stamp them down. In looking at blogs for my work I have been reading about the new problem of ensuring that you visitors know that your site is a blog as opposed to a website - as the internet becomes less imposing to less traditional users, people are more likely to visit blogs, whereas they were, before, the territory of the somewhat ‘geekier’, selective denizens of the web. And so some people - mostly marketing people, admittedly - thing that we should be using the blog as a method of making simple websites. And I spoke about this with a friend yesterday - blogs are easy websites. They are nearly idiot proof (and I only say nearly, as there’s no stopping idiots posting idiotic content on their blogs, or telling you what they had for lunch that day). But why stop them being blogs? That, I don’t get.

The concept of the weblog always makes me think of Star Trek, directly leading to the notion of Ships Logs from ‘back in the day’. As a way of tracking what was being done as reported information for those who weren’t there to see it themselves, the Logs were invaluable. However, random strangers weren’t asked or invited to read them. This is equally true for the internets: why bother reading something with no interest to yourself? How can you persuade someone to read fiction on the internet if they have no interest in reading fiction in the first place? Answer: you can’t. Impossible. However, that tells you the target market, surely? Readers. Get them in, lure them with decent fiction that they will know and appreciate and want to read. Make it easy on the eye and simple to digest, and make sure that it’s damned simple to find and print. Take away the idiotic notions of ‘tailoring’ stories - because, really, people, just because it’s on the internet doesn’t mean it has to be written with either l33t speak, a cyber-hacking protagonist or in the form of emails. If its a good story it’ll stand out. Simple.

[Sidebar: None of the above accounts for the sheer volume of Vampire stories. I swear to God, every second person who starts a fiction blog starts it about Vampires, and every third starts it for children (which means that occasionally there are child vampires. Probably). I suppose it's all about understanding your target market. I suppose.]

So, now, I put out a request: any ideas of where I can find some decent blog fiction that steers away from these things?

*****

Hotel Dusk is a brand new game by Nintendo which they are describing furiously in their marketing as an “interactive mystery novel”. There’s a whole fuss being made about the fact that you “hold the DS like a book!” whilst playing, and blah blah blah. Here’s my problem with this - and this translates to the games industry, generally, as a whole - it’s not brilliantly written, and the story is less than engrossing. Very few companies - Bioware being the only notable example I can think of - employ writers to work on their stuff, and if they do it’s a huge Gaming press big deal. Why the hell is this not the standard? Directors of films only write their own films if they can write in the first place - why do games manufacturers assume that because they came up with the story that they are the best people to tell said story? I love the new Legend Of Zelda game, but, dammit, the writing could really be better! I love my Gods (and Gears) Of War, but the writing is often generic and uninspiring. As a writer, and someone who loves being told a great story, why aren’t games fufilling my requirements? The ones that look like they will - the aforementioned Hotel Dusk, Phoenix Wright, most RPGs - rarely do, and it’s only when you have a Halo, a Half-Life, something where the story isn’t touted but is stupidly cared for, that’s when the games really come into their own with stories. It’s like wrestling: when you hire out-of-work sitcom writers as the WWE does, why are they surprised that the writing can be so godawful? Gah. I’m off my hobby horse now. Only for a second mind you.

*****

Back on. Marvel has continually dropped the ball on two of the greatest comic characters of all time, Cloak and Dagger, and it’s peeved me. I have to shout about it here: someone, please, take Cloak and Dagger and give them the damned respect that they deserve. They are two of the deepest characters that Marvel has in their stockpile, and they are so underused it is criminal. Just let them breathe, Marvel. Don’t know how? Come talk to me. Really. I’ll story them to death. Metaphorically.

*****

The new Modest Mouse album is amazing. It has Johnny Marr on guitar, which seemed oddly desperate to me, a grasp as something interesting, and yet its so far superior to its kin - The Shins new album, for example - I can only applaud. Really, it’s quite the thing. Well done them. Other things I have really been enjoying include The Sarah Silverman Show, Squadron Supreme, Ex Machina and the fact that new NIN singles are amazing (if you remember how great NIN could be). I’m out.

 

Every Single Holiday A Book In A Box.

I read a wonderful article - wonderful for all the wrong reasons - whilst I was away on holiday which, unfortunately, has gotten lost in the wash, as it were (and if anyone knows where I can find it, please leave a comment and let me know!). It was - I think - linked to through a Wired blog, and basically concerned the death of fiction. Apparently, it’s dead. Crikey.

Now, I am well aware that these things pop up every few years and people cry and lament the death of the novel/short story/whatever, mostly - of late, lamenting it as having died because of technology. (Incidentally, did you read that Google want to kill the book? I did.) Regardless, this article was annoyed with people saying that fiction was dead - much as I am - and it had me for a few seconds. Until it stated that - and I paraphrase - “Fiction won’t die as long as people play computer games!”. That’s the point when, in my mind, the author of said article loses all credence. And this is what is leading me to write this post: a lamentation of my own about how we (writers, readers, people) are using the internets.

When the internet became something more than an outlet for porn and news, a few years back, and became an easy and clever way to broadcast opinions, thoughts, facts and lies, people naturally turned to the creation of fictional writings. It’s something that we, as a people, have always done - as soon as an outlet exists for creative thought we try and fill it. Whether that outlet is verbal, cave walls, Xbox360s or iPhones, we will find a way to use that to our advantage, and to tell stories. And so the internet grew into this haven of self-publication. Finding it too hard to get published? Do it yourself. Recognize that you aren’t the greatest writer in the world, but have a story to tell? Do it yourself. Fiction on the internet grew and grew (and ultimately plateau’d far, far sooner than most thought it would, but that’s a story for another day). But it grew in a way that meant that the average Jo would never find an inlet, less they were well versed in sci-fi/cyberpunk/fantasy/fan-fic/humour writing. The medium - and mediums are always abused in new creative outlets, until they themselves settle down - became the focal point. We have emails, shouted writers, so lets write something in email format! I’ve been there, and I have tried it. I wanted to send emails to the readers from characters (a la failed EA games project The Majestic). And Blog Fiction takes the form of heavily stylised diary entries, written to make a point as well as a tell a story (and that point, almost invariably, is ‘Look how I am using the format!’). Though, people forget; people wrote on paper for thousands of years, and pretty quickly got over the idea of writing texts in the form of letters (It was viable for a while, and I am never sure if St Paul ever sent his letters to the Corinthians or not, but it was more a gimmick than not, as the truly enduring texts - Chaucer, for example - were spoken first, then transcribed, and are general stories). But on the internet there are very few people - it seems - who have thought “Hang on, I can write, and I have a story to tell. Here it is!”, and then placed said story on a website for people to do with what they will. Because they assume that nobody wants to read a 2 thousand word tale on their computer? We have printers, PDA’s, soon to be world-caching text readers. We are willing to try, I think, if the product is worth the effort. So why don’t people put stories that they write on the internet?

I think it’s a legitimacy issue. I think the fact is, using the internet for fiction is pure vanity project (much like a blog, or a website, or self-publishing, or releasing your own record through Myspace, or any of the hundreds of thousands of things that are somewhat more accessible for the public to accept), and people don’t like to put themselves on the line like that. There’s a fear there. What if you aren’t even accepted by an audience that, en masse, might not matter as much as the purchasing public?

[Incidentally, I think the random reader audience is just as important as anyone who can buy your stuff, unread, from a bookshop shelf. I maintain that my record and DVD buying has increased since I cotton on to downloading stuff - the bits I like get bought, and I hear more stuff I like. Simple maths. The biggest fear - soapbox rant ahead - is that the companies who promote and sell products are afraid that their willingness to release substandard product will become exposed, as hype no longer becomes enough to sell something - and for no further proof needed, look simply to the absolutely godawful Towers Of London (because, really, who aspires to be a third-rate Motley Crue?)...]

So, I want to do my (tiny little) bit to change that. I am starting a website in a few weeks/months that will feature articles, stories, poetry, songs, reviews and the like, with the only criteria for publication being a) It has to be well written, b) it has to be original thought and c) it has to offer something of yourself in its content. The same rules will apply for the fiction as everything else - I’m soliciting the first few submissions, but after that the policy will be one of ‘Open submission or commission’, and everything, no matter the style, genre or personal taste will be considered for the site (though I draw the line at Heroes Fanfic. Unless it’s really, really good, and deals with Hiro.)

So, that’s my upcoming excitement. And this is my question: if anyone has a story, article or anything that they fancy putting up for being a part of this site, please get in touch. I know a few people to kickstart this thing off, but after that I really rely on the kindness of strangers.

In other news (and where would this dedicated fiction(esque) site be without this chunk?), Studio 60 is back to being my favourite show again after a tiny slump - mostly because of Mark McKinney’s fantastic appearance (at a time where Kids In The Hall season 3 is currently being worked through, and is still amazing). I’m about to play catch-up on Heroes and Battlestar, so that’s some good viewing in the weeks ahead. I have gotten really into watching repeats of QI and Top Gear on UK Gold when I am bored, and thoroughly enjoy them both. Music wise, The Good The Bad And The Queen is both good and bad, The Long Blondes and The Hours have done wonders for my faith in British pop and Ginger’s Yoni sings with joys I haven’t heard in ages and ages. Oh, and against my previous judgements, Dreamgirls was really, really enjoyable.

(PS - Don’t tell anyone, but Justin Timberlake is a really, really funny comedy performer.)
(PPS - Saturday Night Live seems to be on the up, lately. I think it’s Studio 60’s fault.)

Technorati Tags: BlogFiction, Fiction(Other), WebFiction

 

To Be This Good Takes…

I haven’t updated in AGES. I apologise. My reason? I’m writing this from the cripplingly slow internet connection of the Sheraton Hotel in Kauai, the beautiful garden island of Hawaii. Prior to this I was in San Francisco, and prior to that was staying at my parents for a delivious Christmas. Prior to that I had crazy amounts of work to finish off before my hiatus, and prior to that I was tidying up some PhD bits and bobs. So, I’ve been busy. I’ve also been writing, both creatively and something for this blog and another blog, which I intend to start in the new year), and am talking about going into business with one of my chums for a VERY exciting venture. So, it’s not a quiet time for me. Apologies to the over-2000 (!) of you who have read this blog, if you recurrently visit, but I shall update in a week or so with some news, some discussion and an invitation. Curious.

Happy New Year, anyone who reads this, and I look forward to writing more about writing in the year(s) to come…

 

Use Hyphens Sparingly.

It’s a hurly burly world we live in, it really is, and nobody can be totally sure what to do with ourselves.  Here we are, a world full of people with dreams of writing a novel/the great American novel/their life in a novel, and we are always inspired by people who get out there and do it, who make it happen.  But we still need tutoring.  I did a Masters course in Creative Writing (which taught me little bar self-restraint and respect), and we all did it because there are people in the world who know more than us, who we can learn from.   One such person is Karen at Author Network, who wrote a whole page about how to write for the internet!  Karen gives us a variety of helpful and handy hints for the fiction writer who desires to spread their wares on this fine web of ours, with advice such as “Try writing in the same way as you speak, this will make the work more concise and engaging”, and “Give information in bite sized pieces, people on the Internet do not read in detail - they scan the page for clues, which may be textual or visual or aural”.  She does warn, however, that they “are unable to give any real assurance they will work as Web writing is an art form that is still in its infancy”, which is a shame, as I won’t write without assurances of success.

I jest, of course, as this article is a few years old, and written with the best intentions.  However, it does point out a few general issues with this lark, the most obvious being the poor grammar and syntax of the advisory piece.  Since my last post, when somebody replied to my would-be-wise words, I’ve been thinking more and more about the issues with the internet as a publishing tool, particularly with self-publishing, and that’s editing.  When you have written something, and you own a domain name, and you have the technical knowhow to at least run a blog, you have no reason to edit yourself.  One of the biggest flaws I have seen in writing students, friends, even respected and published authors is the lack of editing prowess, as more and more editors seem to lack the skills needed to write properly, and this rubs off on their editees, and you end up with writing that needed snipping a ways back (like this sentence).  To return to an old friend, constant reader, in Stephen King, I truly believe that his lack of an editor who is BRUTAL with him has led to his letting his literary paunch show, but he’s Stephen King.  When you are a budding up and comer, you need an editor who will rip holes in your if they need to be ripped, and help you rebuild them.  Websites don’t really have this.  Even the more controlled environs of the internets, where people such as Salon.com print the stories of writers, where McSweeneys feature daily short works of prose, editors work far more on the basis of whether something reads fine, or whether it reads brilliantly.  As a representation of your work, why would any author/writer want to settle for anything other than their best?

I could rant on and on about authorial deadlines, and how they are inevitably going to hamper the creative process and all that bumf, or how I have put myself under a very strict time-management routine to juggle work, life and the Phd/Novel (and, if you know me, you’ll know that I rarely, if ever, stick to said routine), and how that routine, maybe, will have an adverse effect on the quality of the finished - that is, pre-editor - product.  The internet is a brilliant tool for instant feedback, but as “Jeff” said in my interview earlier this year, who wants a thousand editors?  But with the internet, at the moment, it’s seems like it’s a thousand or none, and I know which I would rather choose.

[Incidentally, this is in no way written because I am also contemplating the thought of agents and editors with regards to my own novels.  No way.]

 

We Await Silent Tristero’s Empire.

I wish that I could say that Bruce Springsteen had a contribution to who I have become as a writer, but I think I’d be lying. Recently, sure - How could I not be influenced by an artist that I spend a large amount of time listening to? But back ‘in the day’, as they say, I didn’t “get” him - he was someone that Americans listened to, and, yes, Born In The USA sounded terribly jingoistic to these ears. But then, thanks to various people in my life I got into him, and loved him. It’s never too late, as they say. And there’s an overcomplicated simplicity to his music that I think has rubbed off on me, and has taught me things about writing - recurrence being one of the Boss’ biggest themes, and, probably un-coincidentally, one of mine. But then, I would argue that the same over-complicated simplicity (or possibly simplified complications) is found in other bands I love, like Wilco, for example. And I’ve found that my writing has become less complicated as time goes on. I am still writing intricate tales, and I would like to think that my writing - as I’m sure most writers like to think - is fairly individual, fairly ‘me’ (and I can’t really name anyone else who writes in the same style as me, at least not that I personally read). So, it’s not too simple, not too complicated. As the three bears would say (I hope): Just right.

But I’m diving into something else here, a foray (however slight nowadays into the grand scale of things) into a world of fictions that is far too complicated. Fiction on the internets seems to be split into two distinct groups: those who can’t really write but have a story to tell, and those who can write and think (believe?) that they should be using the medium more than they are. Yeah, that’s a violent generalization, but when looking at something as large as the web, what other choice is there? I think that no-one can deny that this format that promotes reading won’t be important soon in the development of literature - whilst it has been influential thus far, nobody’s written that great novel that couldn’t have been written without the internet (though I’m sure that David Foster Wallace is scribbling furiously as I type). But people are stretching themselves, walking before they can run. Here’s the way that I see it, personally: We have this amazing format that we haven’t even started to pick apart in terms of what it can present to us, the readers and writers, in terms of how it might present and project fictions and literature. With the written word, put onto paper, whole generations of form would be written before somebody broke that form, and tried something that hadn’t been done before. It took until 1759 for somebody to produce a text like Tristram Shandy (and even then, we couldn’t have gotten there without the influences of other writers before him {Cervantes, Rabelais and so forth}, and from there we can see how the breaks in form, the stylistic implications caused reflected on the works of Dickens, Eliot, Twain, Pushkin, Poe, even staunch linguistic stalwarts like Hardy. And nowadays, the aforementioned Foster Wallace has reaped the benefits of Stern’s work, and a scan of my bookshelves shows work that simply could not, in the form that they exist, have been written without Shandy’s existence: Perec’s ‘Life: A User’s Manual’, Gunther Grass’ ‘The Tin Drum’, Pynchon’s ‘Crying Of Lot 49′, works by Auster, by Danielewski, by Marquez, by Vonnegut. However, that’s not to say that they wouldn’t have been written: I firmly believe that had Stern not stepped up, somebody else would have, and the development of literature would, for the most part, have continued along the path that it has.

[NB: I'm a firm believer that technical frippery is all well and good, but it's the message behind the games-playing that sticks and influences, as opposed to the physical act. Otherwise, we'd all be cutting holes in our novels to enable us to read five pages ahead of where we are.]

And this is the problem - as I see it, mind you, because for millions of others there is no problem at all - with internet fictions. People are jumping the gun, and refusing to just accept that maybe, just maybe we should be using the internet to write the fiction first and let the game-playing grow organically. This is nowhere more apparent than in the world of ARGs, which, let’s face it, are interactive stories at their most basic, but the authors are coming up with the stylistic implications first, and then shoehorning the stories into them. The stories are suffering and the ‘games’ are getting harder and harder to play. Case in point: Descry. It’s an ARG that, when I first read the front page, didn’t understand. I still don’t understand how to play it, really. But, like the best ARGs, it purports reality. And it keeps it, kind of, with efforts to include pictures of key personnel, and of places, until you get to the tab labeled ‘Blog’. And this is where it all falls apart for me, and where I decide not to play any more; it doesn’t read real at all. It claims to have been written by numerous people, but the voices are the same (bar the fact that the younger character refers to his mentor by the name “Doc”, which surely, nobody has done since 198(5?)5). And yeah, this probably doesn’t matter to the people who really want to read it, and are willing to look past these foibles, but in terms of mass mainstream acceptance as a valid form of literature, it really does matter. The idea that something can be immediately readable is really, really important. Outside of She’s A Flight Risk (which appears to have run away) and the intriguing Indian Lake Project most fictional blogs seem to try too hard to run away from story for the sake of form, or concentrate on the form and let the actual quality of what they are doing take over. A stylistic idea does not make a writer - this is the case in the paper publishing world, so why is this not the case on the internets?

Well, I think the answer is simple: the internet is the world’s cheapest form of vanity publishing. Anyone can have their idea, and rather than spend thousands and try and to persuade bookshops to carry and sell their tome, they can just tell everyone they know about it. But where does it go from there, really?

Technorati Tags: BlogFiction, Fiction(Other), Novel 2.0, Novels, WebFiction