In my youth, I wrote a lot of science fiction/fantasy - and it was not very good. I had a few short stories published in university newspapers, and a thick sheaf of rejection slips from small publishers (the big ones generally didn’t answer at all).
I have to admit to not reading any of the current crop of blog novels - stories that come to light one post at a time. I’m not sure that the serial format is conducive to the best sort of writing - review, review, review. I admire those who can pull it off.
Chapter length posts might be too long, so it might be a scene, an event, an image (and speaking of images, there are some very successful blog cartoons, but I really can’t draw).
So what do you think? Do you have a favourite blog serial? Can the medium (a post a day) be used to deliver an engaging story?
UPDATE: there seems to be no single accepted term for this sort of writing - Wikipedia talks about live novels, and other people speak of blog serials, blog novels, and blovels. Interesting.
Hmm… I’ve never followed one but I think the format would be conducive to building suspense, if you could find an audience.
In a related media, my son is a frequent comic blogger on a forum called Drunk Duck. He’s working on moving from standalone strips to a series comic - and the media certainly works well for that. One of his favorite series has some 600 posts in it, some of the work is very professional.
Have you ever checked out the Ficlets forum? It’s a community for writing short-short serial fiction - except folks can write prequels and sequels to each others’ work. Pretty fun. I haven’t written out there in a long time but it’s pretty fun. (my SN over there is Saffron)
Good food for thought!
Hi Jeri,
thanks for your comment
I can see myself spending a lot of downtime there (helps with the work/blog/life balance, a good thing).
Drunk Duck looks great - thanks for the tip
Ficlets looks great too - and it is what I had in mind (although I suppose I was thinking of resurrecting my own dreams to be a fiction author, but I can certainly see the benefits of writing in a community as well).
Thanks once again for reading and for your thoughtful comments
Best regards, Andrew