Fictional Weblogs
I was reading the latest JOHO today when a little snippet caught my attention. David Weinberger had posted it on his blog earlier this month, and it started me thinking then, but since his JOHO is basically a rehashing of things he’s already written, I saw it again today. He wrote:
Why aren’t we seeing more fictitious weblogs? […] a genuine form of narrative fiction: daily postings from a fictitious character.
That made me wonder: how many of those are out there? I could imagine the weblog being a rich medium for a writer to stretch his or her creative muscles, developing a character and keeping it going for months or years like that. The idea certainly isn’t new, after all. Many a novel has been written as a series of diary or journal entries. Dracula is the one that immediately springs to mind. But has it been done online?
Dr. Weinberger himself pointed to one, the one that made him ask the question. It certainly looks fictional, but it has the distinct disadvantage of having seemingly killed off its main character. Then I faintly remembered that Julius Caesar had a weblog. I looked for it, and it’s still going strong. I give this guy an A for the idea and an A+ for keeping it up all these years. And of course many people remember Kaycee Nicole, although that was different for a couple of reasons. 1) The author actually wanted people to believe it was true, and 2) The fiction continued outside of the weblog and spilled over into IM chats, written letters, and even phone calls. That wasn’t so much a work of fiction as a deliberate attempt to toy with people’s emotions.
What else, though? I went looking and found a few lists of fictional weblogs. In all, though, they only add up to a few dozen sites, some of which have been abandoned. Is this a realm of fiction that is yet to be discovered, and then when it does it will explode? Or will it fall by the wayside as a medium for fiction, even though the technology itself grows? (See also hypertext fiction and Choose Your Own Adventure).
Tom Coates asked the same question two years ago. I wonder if he ever got any answers?
Filed under The Computer Vet Weblog
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Very cool! I never knew that Caesar was so up on technology.
I've been thinking about this for the last few days, making plans to start up a weblog for characters from my own fictional world.
It's an intriguing idea, and I can see a number of ways of approaching it.
Any writer who has created a lot of characters in a large fictional world, would have to think about how the ongoing diary would relate to novels and stories based in that world.
A character who takes a sentimental journey on the Chatanooga Choo Choo, for instance, might also be fighting for his life in a sinister crop circle in a novel in progress.
In my own case, the problem is a little more complex because I post a weekly serial to my website, hopping from one set of characters to another from week to week. A diary might confuse things, or it might help make sense out of a strange world.
I enjoyed this site. I don't have my own weblog yet; I'm still trying to figure out basic things–should I go for a paid service so I can upload illustrations? Or host it on a regular site? Or will the software explode in my computer as soon as I try to use it?
Cheers
Bob
do you know about the barbie blog? very cool…
we are most certainly still about, my friend. i only hope that, 3 years later, you are still about, as well!