Aussie Bloggers

What’s Fiction Blogging?

Fiction blogging is a minority niche where the blogging medium is used to deliver works of fiction. There, that sounds simple, doesn’t it? But of course, it can get far more complicated. Blog posts may consist of:

• journal-type entries - similar to a personal blog, but from the perspective of a fictional character. This may be public knowledge, or kept secret (ie, readers think it’s a normal personal blog)
• whole short stories
• partial stories
• group-participation stories (where a group of people all write parts of a story – this can get quite chaotic in real-time)
• Notes from the author, and a link to the latest story written

Is it possible to run a successful fiction blog? Obviously, this depends a bit on your definition of ’successful’. But in general, I think the answer is “Maybe, but it’s even more work than mainstream blogs.”

Why fiction-blog?

Everyone doubtless has their own reasons for fiction-blogging. Some assume that they’ll make money and heaps of fans. Some want their work critiqued by a wider community than they have access to locally. I have a few reasons of my own:

Love: I love to write fiction. And my motivation to write skyrockets when I know that someone is reading and enjoying it.

Realism: I don’t think my work is anywhere near publishing-quality yet. I could wait around, polish it up, keep writing, and hope to get it published… but let’s face it – I’d be gambling my current level of creativity on a maybe. I’d probably stuff up any chance I have of writing a bestseller by stifling myself this way.

Weird non-original theory time: I think that in the next 20 years, the music and publishing industries will undergo radical change. We’ve seen bits of it over the last few years in the music industry. Think about it – why undergo the huge overheads involved in publishing a paper book or creating a DVD or CD when you can publish electronically? Add to that my suspicion that we’ll move to different methods of paying for products like this, and maybe you can see why I’m not keen to get too embroiled in the traditional publishing industry. Of course, you might just see the words ’sour grapes’ blinking neon lights over my head instead! Certainly, if a publisher came to me right now with an offer of $50000 for everything I’ve written in the last year…. hooooo boy, that’d be a hard offer to resist! But I’d do it with misgivings, honest

That said, there are a number of problems specific to fiction blogging.

The problems

An uncomfortable fit: The blogging world tends to be centred around two concepts – exchanging information, and personal relationships. Fiction blogs don’t tend to enjoy high profiles because they often don’t meet either of these requirements for the majority of readers.

Different expectations: People don’t tend to blogsurf to find fiction, and they often don’t like to read a story from a screen. News, yes. Fiction? No. If it’s a story with lots of background information that requires reading previous stories, the chances of someone sticking around long enough to read it drops even further.

Space restrictions: The writer’s style needs to fit blogging requirements. In order to make a decent amount of sense, the stories need to be fairly short. In order to stay in a person’s subscription list on an RSS reader like Google Reader, the blog needs to be updated fairly regularly.

Losing the deal: If the writer hopes to get a publishing deal for the material in the future, the fact that it’s already been effectively ’self-published’ on the internet will put off many publishers.

Not looking for you: I haven’t gotten a single regular reader (that I know of) from a search. Sure, a number of people find my fiction blog via searches – around 4-5 each day. But they don’t tend to comment, and as far as I know, they don’t come back. Why? People search for information. Fiction blogs offer an experience, not information. Interestingly, even those searches obviously looking for fiction on a certain topic don’t seem to yield readers. Probably because the searcher had something quite different in mind.

So is it worth it?

I hate to be such a fence-sitter, but it’s up to you. A lot of fiction blogs apparently just fade away and quietly die. Worst case scenario, yours might be one of them.

How can I make it better?

Remember when I said that blogging is all about information and relationships? If you want a successful fiction blog, I think you need to harness at least one of these. You might weave current events or the latest celebrities into your stories. You might spend time each week visiting a certain number of blogs (on all sorts of topics) and leaving well-thought-out, appropriate comments. Or you might spend that time getting to know others in the fiction blogging world, commenting on their fiction. Or you might do all of those and more besides.

Just remember this important fact – as a writer, it’s all about the content. As a fiction blogger, it’s that and so much more. Good luck!