Amazing what writing a series can do to you. The last few days I’ve been completely out of tune with the world at large, and I even lost track of most of the blooks I read.
But on to the issue on hand: I’ve just come across Betsy Friedrich’s thesis on blog fiction … and I’m very impressed with it. So maybe as a reader I could’ve done without the first chapter (Definition of Terms), but it was a thesis, so it had to explain blogs to internet virgins academicians.
Highlights from each chapter:
Chapter 1 – Definition of Terms
Here Friedrich introduces blogs and the various forms of fictional blogging – according to her there is a distinct difference between serialized fiction and ‘blog fiction’. The first may use blogs as a medium through which fiction is written, the second utilizes all aspects of blogging – ‘feeds, comment forms and hyperlinks’.
Chapter 2 – Blog Fiction as Digital Media
Much of this chapter is used to point out how comments from readers and the interactivity of the blogging medium has helped shape blog fiction. An example of this:
At its peak Simon of Space received upwards of 75 comments on each post. Some were from new readers, but there was also a group of regular readers and posters … Their comments were often in response to one another, and many readers linked one another as a result of their meeting on the fictional blog comments section … readers were able to form a real community around a fictional text without ever interacting with one another in person.
(page 17, paragraph 2)
Another interesting point she brings up is the strange isolation of fictional blogs – almost all authors of blog fiction she interviewed did not read other fictional blogs, and in many cases were not aware of others. In an interview she conducted:
I’ve been writing a fictional blog since May ’06 and I’ve been struggling to find out if there’s a community or some sort of ‘hub’ for fiction bloggers out there. Unlike other areas (e.g. technology or politics), the whole fiction blogging world seems very small and very fractured. Sure, I’ve seen quite a few other fiction blogs in my travels but there’s no real conversation’ between them. In this respect they’re quite unlike the other blogs I’ve read. Unlike, say, a political blog where you’ll get a lot of instant feed back and links to and from your blog, fiction blogging seems to be quite an isolated and, at times, disheartening experience.
(page 19, blockquote 2)
In this view the Simon in Space‘s community was a rarity.
Chapter 3 – Novels and Blogs: A Historical and Structural Analysis
Then Friedrich takes us on a trek down history – comparing blog fiction to the 18th century novel. She shows us that the 19th century novel was epistolary – or delivered in the form of letter/diary entries, a echo of blog fiction today. The rest of the chapter is spent exploring the social impact blogging has on society, interspersed with social developments and changes in the 18th century.
I regard this as a slight twist to the read-a-blook-on-the-internet concept – what you’re doing is basically formatting your blook content into one easily stored, easily distributed pdf file. Why would you want to do this? Hrmm, let’s see.
create a loose outline to follow, which works because of the genre they’re writing in.
One of the major concerns with putting up creative work online is with copyright. What is to prevent someone from visiting your blook, copying everything you’ve written and then publishing it under their name?
Over the past few days I’ve realized there should be a guide detailing the basics of setting up a blook on the internet – sooner or later a lot of authors are going to realize they have the internet open to them as a publishing option, and many of them do not understand the various nuances of blogs and the blogosphere. This guide would ideally serve as a reference, to make posting up novels or books or even textbooks easier for authors who do not understand one line of code, not to mention copyright on the internet and all the other aspects of blogging a book.
I’ve been coming across a lot of stylistic guides over the past few days … perhaps due to 
