Blog fiction | |
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Features | Fictional stories published as online weblogs. |
Related genres | |
Netprov, Hypertext fiction, Instapoetry, Creepypasta, Fan fiction |
Blog fiction is an online literary genre that tells a fictional story in the style of a weblog or blog. In the early years of weblogs, blog fictions were described as an exciting new genres creating new opportunities for emerging authors, [1] but were also described as "notorious" [2] in part because they often uneasily tread the line between fiction and hoax. Sometimes blog fictions are republished as print books, and in other cases conventional novels are written in the style of a blog without having been published as an online blog. Blog fiction is a genre of Electronic literature.
One of the first online stories to include blog-like elements is the online drama Online Caroline (2000). By 2004 blogging had become very popular, [3] and blog fictions were the subject of several news articles that list a range of examples of the genre. [2] [4] Angela Thomas wrote a book chapter on blog fictions in 2006. [1] A chapter of the book Blogging discusses fictional blogs in a chapter on blogs as narratives. [3] In 2017, Emma Segar argued that "social and transmedia storytelling owe much to the narrative conventions established by the practice of blogging, but blog fiction itself has been a much overlooked form of digital literature". [5]
Segar argues that a main feature of blog fiction is relationity between readers and fiction.
Blog fictions have been a particularly popular genre of electronic literature in Africa. [6] [7] [8] The literary orality of blogs has also been analysed as a feature of African American blogs. [9]
Blog fictions are often presented as though they are true, much as early novels were often presented as a "real" diary or letters that had been found by the author. The uncertainty can be part of their attraction to readers. For example, the first blog described in a 2004 article in The Guardian about fiction blogs is Belle de Jour, a blog that turned out not to be fiction but a real diary by Brooke Magnanti. The blog was adapted into a print book, The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl, and the television series Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Other blogs, like Kaycee Nicole's blog, were assumed to be real, but then revealed to be a hoax. [3] Yet others, like the video blog Lonelygirl15 were thought to be real but then revealed to be art projects.
Other early examples of blogs that were discussed as possible fiction include She's a Flight Risk. Some novels were written online as blog fictions and later published as print novels. An example is An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil. [10] (Blog: Roommate from Hell, 2003-2004).
There are also many conventional novels that are wholly or partially written in the style of a blog. [11]
Fan fiction is often written in the form of a fictional blog belonging to one of the characters in a show. [12] Similarly, TV shows and transmedia stories often produce fictional blogs for characters either to extend the story or as a marketing strategy. In recent years, these blogs are more likely to be on existing social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram than on independent websites. For example, the popular show Skam had Instagram and YouTube accounts for several of the characters. [13]
Self-publishing provider Lulu sponsors the Lulu Blooker Prize, which began in 2006. The Blooker prize is an award given to the best "blook" of the year: a work of fiction begun as blog fiction and then transformed into a printed publication.
High fantasy, or epic fantasy, is a subgenre of fantasy defined by the epic nature of its setting or by the epic stature of its characters, themes, or plot. High fantasy is set in an alternative, fictional ("secondary") world, rather than the "real" or "primary" world. This secondary world is usually internally consistent, but its rules differ from those of the primary world. By contrast, low fantasy is characterized by being set on Earth, the primary or real world, or a rational and familiar fictional world with the inclusion of magical elements.
A literary genre is a category of literature. Genres may be determined by literary technique, tone, content, or length. They generally move from more abstract, encompassing classes, which are then further sub-divided into more concrete distinctions. The distinctions between genres and categories are flexible and loosely defined, and even the rules designating genres change over time and are fairly unstable.
Hypertext fiction is a genre of electronic literature, characterized by the use of hypertext links that provide a new context for non-linearity in literature and reader interaction. The reader typically chooses links to move from one node of text to the next, and in this fashion arranges a story from a deeper pool of potential stories. Its spirit can also be seen in interactive fiction.
Mom's Cancer is an autobiographical graphic medicine webcomic by Brian Fies which describes his mother's fight against metastatic lung cancer, as well as his family's reactions to it. Mom's Cancer was the first webcomic to win an Eisner Award, winning in 2005. Its print collection, published in 2006, won a Harvey Award and a Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis.
Lulu Press, Inc., doing business under trade name Lulu, is an online print-on-demand, self-publishing, and distribution platform. By 2014, it had issued approximately two million titles.
Electronic literature or digital literature is a genre of literature encompassing works created exclusively on and for digital devices, such as computers, tablets, and mobile phones. As electronic literature uses games, images, sound, and links, these writings cannot be easily printed, or cannot be printed at all, because elements crucial to the text are unable to be carried over onto a printed version.
Web fiction is written works of literature available primarily or solely on the Internet. A common type of web fiction is the web serial. The term comes from old serial stories that were once published regularly in newspapers and magazines.
Urban fiction, also known as street lit or street fiction, is a literary genre set in a city landscape; however, the genre is as much defined by the socio-economic realities and culture of its characters as the urban setting. The tone for urban fiction is usually dark, focusing on the underside of city living. Profanity, sex, and violence are usually explicit, with the writer not shying away from or watering-down the material. Most authors of this genre draw upon their past experiences to depict their storylines.
A media franchise, also known as a multimedia franchise, is a collection of related media in which several derivative works have been produced from an original creative work of fiction, such as a film, a work of literature, a television program or a video game. Bob Iger, chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, defined the word franchise as "something that creates value across multiple businesses and across multiple territories over a long period of time".
Nick Montfort is a poet and professor of digital media at MIT, where he directs a lab called The Trope Tank. He also holds a part-time position at the University of Bergen where he leads a node on computational narrative systems at the Center for Digital Narrative. Among his publications are seven books of computer-generated literature and six books from the MIT Press, several of which are collaborations. His work also includes digital projects, many of them in the form of short programs. He lives in New York City.
The biographical novel is a genre of novel which provides a fictional account of a contemporary or historical person's life. Like other forms of biographical fiction, details are often trimmed or reimagined to meet the artistic needs of the fictional genre, the novel. These reimagined biographies are sometimes called semi-biographical novels, to distinguish the relative historicity of the work from other biographical novels
Transmedia storytelling is the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms and formats using current digital technologies.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to fiction:
Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditional narrow sense, "fiction" refers to written narratives in prose – often referring specifically to novels, novellas, and short stories. More broadly, however, fiction encompasses imaginary narratives expressed in any medium, including not just writings but also live theatrical performances, films, television programs, radio dramas, comics, role-playing games, and video games.
A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The English word to describe such a work derives from the Italian: novella for "new", "news", or "short story ", itself from the Latin: novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning "new". According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, Medieval Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian Renaissance novella. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, in the historical romances of Walter Scott and the Gothic novel.
A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living writing novels and other fiction, while others aspire to support themselves in this way or write as an avocation. Most novelists struggle to have their debut novel published, but once published they often continue to be published, although very few become literary celebrities, thus gaining prestige or a considerable income from their work.
Jill Walker Rettberg is co-director of the Center for Digital Narrative and Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Bergen. She is "a leading researcher in self-representation in social media" and a European Research Council grantee (2018–2023) with the project Machine Vision in Everyday Life: Playful Interactions with Visual Technologies in Digital Art, Games, Narratives and Social Media. Rettberg is known for innovative research dissemination in social media, having started her research blog jill/txt in 2000, and developed Snapchat Research Stories in 2017.
Online Caroline was a web soap opera in 24 episodes written and published online by Tim Wright, Rob Bevan and Tom Harvey at the production company XPT in 2000. It was "an instant hit" and won that year's British Academy of Film and Television Arts award in the interactive category.
Netprov is "networked, improvised literature" or collaborative literary improvisations performed on the internet. The word netprov is a portmanteau of "networked" and "improv" as in improvisational theatre. Netprov is considered a genre of electronic literature.