Interactive Fiction
Over at Baboon Palace, which I just discovered by way of Positive Liberty, is a very interesting entry about possibly fictional, potentially-interactive weblogs: Blog Fiction. While the article doesn’t mention any blogs specifically known to be fictional, there are a couple which might well be, and at least one where user comments have been known to influence the activities of the narrator, be she real or otherwise.
It’s an interesting idea. The trick is, if I shamelessly stole the idea, would anybody read it? What setting should be used for such an endeavour? I suppose that depends on how much you want to fool people into thinking it’s real (not at all, in my case), so you could potentially use anything at all, although a setting where an online diary is a plausible part of the scene would help make it come across more smoothly.
Ultimately it would probably be awful, as you’d need to be a writer of considerable talent to pull off something that unusual — and I am no such writer. I suspect it would also have to be something set in the Real World. Or at least, something very, very close to the real world. And why not? Just invent a fictional person, drop them somewhere you know well, and let them live a nonexistant life. I’m sure thousands of weblogs out there are entirely fake in that regard.
I don’t think I’ll try it right now. If this weblog starts sprouting fiction in the near future it will be my NaNoWriMo novel for this year. With any luck, that one will actually be vaguely readable.
I think possibly part fiction could be done. It strikes me that very few blogs are just the mundane happenings of a persons life, just a sprinkling of that with random observations of life around them, etc. You could interject your own views on these events occasionally, while living a life of fakeness online. But then, aren’t we all a little fake online. Many people consider their online persona to be more like they are in real life, but then surely real life is the real them. Interesting idea…
Also, isn’t that idea just Adrian Mole done online?
Comment by Alex — Tuesday, 26th October 2004 @ 12:49
Possibly, possibly not. I doubt I could ever pull it off, but the idea is very interesting.
Perhaps part of the appeal of it is that people don’t necessarily know that they’re commenting on a fictional person’s life. Yes, we’re all at least partially fictional online, but how many of us actually invent a whole new person, setting and interactions for their blog?
Comment by MaW — Tuesday, 26th October 2004 @ 14:39
I’ve been struggling with some of these same issues, especially the idea of people not necessarily knowing whether the blog is fictional or not. (Also, the whole “writing talent” thing.)
I’m torn. Part of me thinks that creating a fictional blog that pretends to be real is too manipulative. A work of fiction should stand on it’s own terms, it shouldn’t rely on false perceptions.
But maybe this would sap the power of the medium. I don’t know. I’m working on a fictional blog right now, and I’m trying to figure out which way to go with it.
What do you think?
Comment by Scott — Thursday, 28th October 2004 @ 4:50
Thanks for dropping by.
I think you’re right. Deliberately deceiving people over the reality or otherwise of a weblog is probably not a particularly good idea. It certainly doesn’t show any particular degree of creativity. If nobody guesses it’s something I suppose, but entertaining fiction is mostly highly implausible anyway.
It could sap the power of the medium, you are correct there I think, as part of the power comes from the assumption that most weblogs are at least closely based on real life. This one is - slightly edited, of course, with a great many boring things omitted (and a great many other boring things left in). It’s more a matter of letting friends know what I’m up to than trying to say anything in particular to the world. Where am I going with this point? I have no idea. I think I lost it somewhere around the fifteenth word.
Comment by MaW — Thursday, 28th October 2004 @ 7:02