The twist is with my site the emphasis is not on the writing itself, but on the characters in the blooks.

Alright let me explain. Basically I put together a ning site (as quoted from above ”Damn it, Jim! I’m an author, not a web developer!”) For those that don;t know ning basically lets you create a watered down version of a personal myspace or facebook.

What I am doing with the community is encouraging people not to sign up as themselves, but rather to sign up as fictional characters. They can fill out a fictional profile, upload pictures of the character, even upload videos, and of course blog about their daily life.

The result has been a small mix of independent writers messing around, mixed with kind of a lot of fan fiction. My hope however, is that anyone who is writing a blook can sign up under the guise of their main character, and use that characters interactions on the site to promote their own blook and get the word out.

There are also a bunch of other things I am working on developing but I wont get into them.

If anyone is interested the link to the site should be in my name. Thanks for listening

I’m trying again with http://www.dreamfantastic.com
I started the site up after trying and failing to find good sources of serial fiction online. Of course, the moment I started the site, i ran into it EVERYWHERE. But the point behind Dream Fantastic is a community, both for writer and readers, and the intermix between the two. It may work, it may not, but like most internet based communities, one thing I know. No one community will do it all.

I think that it is entirely true that there is no one good universal point of entry (POE). Nor is any one site capable of being our community. But you know what? Pages Unbound is a good POE for some people. The Open Directory Project category for online fiction is good for others. An individual story is for those who like it, assuming that it’s got an adequite links section. And you know what else? This looks like a bit of community right here. So does Pages Unbound, in a different way. And I’m trying to set up my own bit of community. (It’s not yet ready, though.)

No one site is going to serve any of these functions, but put together we’re pretty good. The community exists, or is starting to, it’s just not connected well enough to be obvious yet.

I feel that what will hook new people and bring them into the larger audience is stories themselves. While I feel that a certain amount of “education” might be helpful for people who’ve never considered the benefits of reading a story on their comptuer, very few people learned about the existence of webcomics from some resource site and then said, “I believe this sounds like an interesting medium to explore and I shall now find an example of it which appeals to me.” They found a webcomic they liked and that eventually led them to look for more (usually by following links from their “gateway” comic.)

They are, I believe, different means to the same end.

Don’t get me wrong… I will be very happy with any exposure referred to me by any reviewer. At the end of the day, though, I feel the future of the medium (and any individual venture within it) will depend more on its ability to capture casual clicks, which in depends more on authors putting themselves in the path of random surfers than any sort of critical commentary site which will primarily be read by people who are already part of a cozy little de facto community.

The idea that people need professionals to help them “filter the crap” is an idea hopelessly mired in the pre-information-age.

We’ll need filters, definitely. People who share the same reading tastes as we do, (eg: a person like Sebastianky), will act as one … and admit it: we just don’t have all the time in the world to filter through dross.

There will be filters. Not professionals, yes, but other people, other forms.

It was immediately met with some vehement criticism by a couple of publishing industry types who noticed it, assuming it was a self-publishing website a la Storywrite or thisisby.us that was going to attract 1,000,000 would be writers trying to get discovered by being read by the other 999,999, but the key to the site is that it really is intended for the benefit of -readers-.

Just discovered your first piece of web lit? Got to the end of the archive and are desperate for something to read? Pages Unbound to the rescue.

I don’t filter or screen for quality… I feel that the buzz/digg/topsite-type approach allows readers to do that for themselves. The idea that people need professionals to help them “filter the crap” is an idea hopelessly mired in the pre-information-age.

It’s not the best site in the world (“Damn it, Jim! I’m an author, not a web developer!”), but it’s a start.

The link’s in my name if anybody’s interested.

Thanks, Bradley.

On the other hand, it’s important to remember that you aren’t going to successfully build up your prose solely on the backs of your fellow authors. You need people who read but don’t write. That is, one of the most important parts of a blooker community will be referring readers.

@Richard and others:
As far as a hub, Lexy Erin has recently set up a site that may serve at Pages Unbound. I’d like to see it grow as a hub for both readers and authors.

Oh, and Eli – I’d be happy to guest post, assuming that your offer is open to readers and bloggers, as well as blook authors.

I took the liberty of reposting Eli’s article above as a take-off point.

The site is http://creativeblogs.org/bbpress/
if I can get some feedback about what folks want, I will use the bbpress install as a sandbox and try to build it around our discussion. We can make it look however we like, right now it’s just a basic install with a few plugins.

If you are interested in continuing the conversation, come on over and let’s talk.

@KSB. I’d wondered about an Amazon-style thing too. We’d need a hub of some sort. And hubs may be hard to come by, largely because they’re often the responsibility of one person on whose shoulders a lot will rest.

Also, while I do read an awful lot of fiction blogs, I’m not sure that other writers do and I’m not sure how to persuade them. I get the impression that may writers just read others to ‘learn’ from them. And people tend to feel that they learn from acknowledged masters in their field, be that Leo Tolstoy or Dean Koontz. I doubt anyone really feels that there’s a lot to be learnt literarily-speaking from Richard of Undead Flowers (to take a random example!).

@Duane. Let us know what you come up with. I have no PHP skills or anything like that but what you say sounds interesting and promising.

@Scott. I think your third point is key. Although I think the idea of writing a novel online is not necessarily the way to go. Your first point is important here: people are rarely invested in reading a lengthy piece of literature online. It takes a lot of time, mental energy and discipline. With the printed word, I can sit down and relax with an aesthetically pleasing printed book, but with a blogged novel I’m tied to a computer screen and often just read it during breaks while I’m doing other stuff.

Sorry to sound pretentious, but the aesthetic and relaxation aspects of reading just aren’t there with online fiction.

Character blogs are a way around this, to an extent. One of my favourite character blogs is Wilf’s World which is very easy to pick up and put down at will (although I do actually read it religiously!). The problem is that, for me, I want to write stories with a beginning, a middle and an end so I’m not sure I’d find the character blog very satisfying.

What about some sort of Amazon-style recommendation system that tracked what fiction blogs you enjoyed?

We should start, I think, by making sure we all have some agreement on the basics of what’s needed. A sort of vision for this thing.

Then, I think a combination of bbpress (or 9rules) and wordpress with its rating and social networking tools, I think we could create a fairly sophisticated site.

I won’t say I’m a php whiz, but I am fairly competent at the basics.

Let me look into 9rules, and set up a “sandbox” to play around with.

Meanwhile, more feedback?

@Gloria: I’ll take you up on your offer! *what do you want to write about?*

@Cheryl: I remember following that Darth Vader blog! That was before I set Novelr up, and it was GREAT: funny, witty, references to the movies and the general sense of playfulness … I remember clearly he posed a what-if scenario: what if Vader had a reasonable working relationship with his minions?

The campfire in the 3rd post was mind blowing.

@Duane: well. Now’s the time to brainstorm, then. I’m thinking something along the lines of 9rules notes (which in itself is based on BBpress). But I can’t begin to imagine the PHP prowess needed to craft it into something that works for us.

My experience in experimenting with internet community tells me that we need a lot of feedback about what people want, and what they will actually participate in. And then we need them to participate in building it.

I am more than willing to dedicate the time and space if we can get the feedback and do it collaboratively.