GGR Hiatus

As you may have noticed, "Giant Girl Rampages" has gone on a hiatus. Having a team of writers can be a great advantage in doing a real-time blog-novel but still offers no guarantee against a period where all of us are so busy with our individual projects that the fun optional stuff like GGR has to fall by the wayside. Book deadlines, promotional obligations, back to school activities, and the general unpredictable events of life tend to intervene. In this case, the last straw as when the chief editor of Chapter Two suffered a week-long power outage due to Hurricane Gustav--thankfully without suffering any major damages to house or health.

We'll always be grateful to our loyal readers whose comments made publishing this story so enjoyable. Chapter One, completed without missing a single weekday, was a success we're all proud of and proof that the blog-novel concept is viable. Hopefully our work will inspire others to follow with even bigger and better stories.

We're not ruling out Melly's eventual return, but we're not making any promises either. We've been working behind the scenes to recruit a new team of writers/illustrators with the time and energy to pick up where we've left off, but dream teams are hard to come by.

Blogging as Performace Art

There's a great article on newlywed Dustin M's Blog Fiction site about how blog fiction is a performance art--and we're not just saying that because he mentions GGR or gives the Giant Girl Creative Team credit for preplanning plots based on reader feedback. We do make some changes behind the scenes when readers lead us one way or another, but in this case Melly would have come around even if an attentive reader hadn't been bashed her over the head by a clue-bat--which we totally enjoyed, by the way.

But posting day-by-day in a real time format for a "live audience" does feel a bit like acting in a live theatrical production. If Melly flubs her lines, or if a post doesn't go up in time, or if a commenter comes too close to a secret plotline, there can be a whole lot of ad-libbing and shuffling of scenes in the background in order to smooth things over.

And we've had similar problems to the one Dustin describes about User Pool, where an entire plot was inadvertently spoiled by an enthusiastic reader who happened to draw just the right parallel to just the right movie. Ours was to a lesser degree, and Melly was able to dance around a bit to make up for it, but that's the danger of writing live and without a net!

The Wedding of Wesley Crusher

One of our favorite fictional blogs is Captain Picard's Journal, which in our current (still work-in-progress) hierarchy would be a Derivative Blog--in this case deriving from the popular characters and situations of the Star Trek: The Next Generation universe of television episodes, movies, and books.  This was an inspired choice for a blog because the show is so universally well known, the story world is so detailed and developed, and becaues the character is already known for the "Captain's Log" narratives that drove each episode.  In fact, if you're familiar at all with the show at all it's impossible to read CPJ without hearing the actors' voices in your head. And although it is billed as Picard's blog, there are plenty of "guest posts" from other characters as well.

There are a couple ways to go with a Derivative Blog. One is to play it straight as a tribute to the source material, and another is to parody the source material.  Either way, the reader gets more out of the blog if they are already familiar with the show/movie/book on which it is based.  CPJ goes for a bit of both approaches but parody and humor predominate. By painting the characters in broad generalizations and letting us get into their heads, we discover pettiness, ulterior motives, hypocrisy, and unprofessionalism that Gene Roddenberry would never have put up with.  In other words, these people are just like the ones in our own lives!

CPJ plots tend toward the short and simple, which makes the story easy to read and follow, but there are also longer story and character arcs--like the one involving Wesley Crusher's engagement and pending marriage to... um... an Amazon warrior from Planet Wondawowman.  Wes's finacee, Karena, is the daughter of the Amazon queen, who looks suspiciously like Lynda Carter did in the 1970s and who is appropriately named Diana.

In real life, actor Wil Wheaton, who played Wesley, is in his 30s by now and already married with children, but CPJ takes place during Next Generation's historic prime, when Wes was still a promising young cadet that everybody loved to hate--or now a promising young Ensign that everybody loves to hate, having only just graduated from Starfleet Academy.  And since we're already outside the show's established canon, it makes sense to throw Jadzia Dax and Seven of Nine under Picard's command, from the Deep Space Nine and Voyager incarnations of the series, respectively.  In the alternate universe of CPJ (which also has its own alternate universe of the Star Trek alternate "mirror-mirror" universe), anything can happen--which is why we're so looking forward to Wesley's and Karena's wedding.

Which, by the way, readers have been invited to.  We urge you to attend.

Upcoming Events

The current "season" of GGR will be ending on August 22nd--just two weeks away! This upcoming week, starting tomorrow, will be especially huge (no pun intended). Around Giant Girl HQ we've been calling it Nightmare Week! On Tuesday night, Melly will be blogging around the clock with short posts every hour. You don't have to stay up with her, but it'll be cool to check out on Wednesday morning. Then on Friday will be a post that will change Melly's life forever.

Updated Character Guides and Spoilers

We've updated the character sheets to reflect further story developments and added a new entry for Miss Freckles.

The entries for Dream Boy and Miss Freckles now have dated spoiler alerts which we expect to use more and more as time goes by. The entire Miss Freckles entry is a spoiler-zone until readers encounter the July 3rd entry, "Out of the Shadows", and half of Dream Boy's entry is off-limits to readers who haven't gotten to the July 31st entry, "Messages".

No entries yet for Mr. Peterson, Mayor Peterson, or Mrs. Lee.

Character Guide: Miss Freckles

Spoiler Alert: Don't click on the spoiler button below until you've read the July 3rd entry, "Out of the Shadows"

Click here for spoilers!

Miss Freckles is a girl, a few years older than Melly, who appears in Melly's dreams as freckle-faced, orange-haired, and eighteen feet tall. Despite having height in common with Melly, Miss Freckles antagonizes her and calls her a freak, stating that Melly has no right to associate with normal-sized people.

Miss Freckles also appears in a deeply-repressed memory from Melly's childhood, leading Melly to speculate that perhaps she is a real person, even an older sister--except that Mr. and Mrs. Mills never mentioned having any other children.

A Quick Note on Promotions...

Someday, when we figure out just how to promote a blog-novel, we'll write an article here about it. We'll include a section about finding online communities who discuss topics that are prominently featured in your story.

And there will be an important caveat to that particular piece of advice...

Make sure they're focused on the same aspect of that topic as you are. Rule 34 of the Internet applies to everything.

Thanks to an attentive reader for pointing this out!

Blog Fiction Typology

After much discussion, here is our current proposal for a blog fiction typology:

• Print Fiction: The universe of print-based fictional works published as books, newspapers, or periodicals.


• Faux Blogs: Print-based fictional works that mimic the format and presentation of a web-based personal journal or diary.

• Web Fiction: The universe of web-based fictional works published as HTML, text files, PDFs, multimedia files, and/or RSS feeds.


• E-books: Substantially-sized web-based works of fiction that are presented as a complete work in itself. E-books may be edited compilations of serialized fiction or may themselves be part of a series of similar works.


• Serialized Fiction: Web-based works of fiction published in installments. Serialized fiction may use blogging software as a publishing platform but with a narrative format other than a personal journal or diary. Material in this category may be adapted from or intended for an offline print format.


• Real Blog With Fictional Elements: Web-based works that purport to be the factual personal diaries or journals of flesh-and-blood authors but are embellished with clearly-identified fictional elements or elements that are obviously fictional to a casual reader.


• Fraud Blogs: Web-based works that purport to be the factual personal diaries or journals of flesh-and-blood authors but are entirely fabricated or predominantly embellished with fictional elements that are presented as real. Warning: when the fictional nature of these blogs is revealed, readers may be royally pissed off!


• Blog Fiction: Web-based works that use a blogging platform to present the personal journal or diary of one or more in-story characters and are either presented as fiction or would be obviously fictional to a casual reader.


• Blogvertisements: Fictional blogs that primarily advertise a product rather than tell a story.


• Contained Story: Fictional blogs that stand alone, containing all the information required for a reader to understand the story.


• Blog-Novels: Traditionally-structured stories with a clearly-intended beginning, a clearly-intended middle, and (if the story is not still being written or on a clearly-intended hiatus) a clearly-intended ending. Structure is what distinguishes a blog-novel from unstructured character blogs and blogs of genuinely unstructured life.


• Character Blogs: Character-driven works in the voice of a fictional character engaged in fictional events, but without a traditionally structured plot.


• Partial or Dependent Story: Fictional blogs for which required plot points are given in another medium, or that require a reader to be familiar with the blogging character from another source.


• RPBs: (a.k.a. Role-Playing Blogs) Works in which individual authors have taken on individual character roles which they maintain while blogging about each other's characters.


• Derivative Blogs: Works purporting to be the personal online journal or diary of an existing fictional character from another medium.


• Fake Blogs: Works purporting to be the personal online journal or diary of a contemporary or historical figure where it is clearly stated that the blog is fake or that fact would be obvious to a casual reader.

Milestones and Teasers

One more thing for the day...

Today's post on "Giant Girl Rampages" is kind of a milestone. School board member Mrs. Lee is the first new character we've introduced in... well... perhaps the very first week, unless you're counting characters like Miss Freckles who only pop up in dreams and memories. There will be more new characters next week.

And tomorrow's post will be noteworthy too, as Melly finally learns the true price of her new GlomCorp wardrobe when she loses something very important to her. Can't say more than that right now!

Melly's Shoe Size

In case anyone was wondering, and because at least one person apparently was, women's shoe sizes in the United States are commonly calculated using the following formula:

Shoe size = 3X - 22.5, where X is the length in inches of the foot-shaped form used to make the shoe.

A woman with a 10-inch foot would tend to wear a size 7-1/2.

Melly has a 32-inch foot, so her new AthletiGlom sneakers are size 73-1/2.

Yow!

WeSeWriMo

The Giant Girl Creative Team has signed on for WeSeWriMo, or Web Serial Writing Month. WeSeWriMo is a writing challenge similar to other month-long intensives, the most famous being NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month that takes place each November.

WeSeWriMo is set to roll through August and involves the writing and posting of web serials. GGCT has committed to posting 20 episodes during the month of August, which we think is quite doable given our June and July track record and the need to wrap up a few current plotlines before Melly starts her first school year.

For anyone thinking about starting up a blog-novel, this is as good a time as any. We're looking forward to seeing what other participants come up with during the month!

New Resource: Web Fiction Guide

As we try to figure out exactly what we're doing with Melly Mills, it's helpful to see what other people are doing with their blog-novels and blog fiction. The problem is finding good stories to look at, since this is such a new/specialized/experimental way to tell a story.

That's why we were so thrilled when a great new directory and rating site opened its doors this week. Web Fiction Guide has a searchable directory of online stories including ours and handy tags so readers can find other stories with similar themes. There are lots of site editors listed, and they will be posting articles, interviews, and happenings in what will hopefully become a full-fledged web fiction community.

Keep an eye on it.

Blog Fiction Typology Discussion

A detailed summary of our most current typology can be found here.

We think it's useful to examine the place of blog-novels in the larger scheme of blog fiction, serialized fiction, and online fiction in general. Not because we want to put any author into a pigeonhole or stifle their creativity, but to set up a framework for further discussion.

Our starting point is folks who have looked into this topic from an academic perspective, starting with a 2005 paper by Angela Thomas.

In a blog entry in May of 2005, Betsy Friedrich commented on the terms defined in Thomas's paper:

• Serialized Fiction: Lots of authors have recognized the wonder of the internet as a free publishing tool. These blogs don't necessarily use the blog as a form. Some aren’t even in first person. I suppose someone could blog in the third person, but I think one criteria of blogs is some perceived connection between the narrator/protagonist and the author. It’s great that authors are using blogs to publish their fiction independently, but I think we need to make a distinction between blogs that have fiction in them and fictional blogs.


• Commercial Blogs: This refers to marketing stratgies that utilize blogs. For example, the Captain’s Blog from Captain Morgan's Rum. This is a fictional blog, a blog written by a fictional character, but somehow I feel like intent makes it something different than fictional blogs. The intent here is to sell a product. The story is a by-product of that marketing strategy, rather than the goal itself.


• Contained Story: This is what I think of as a true fictonal blog and deserving of the term. The author has created characters and a world for them. They use the blog as a form, at least to some extent. The blog exists on it’s own, it doesn't rely on any other person's creation to exist.


• Interactive Role Playing: A great grandchild of D&D, in these blogs authors take on a character and maintain that character while interacting with other characters. A fascinating idea, but again, I think it’s more than a fictional blog and the term doesn't do it justice. Maybe they could be called Blog RPGs? Sort of sterile, but at least it’s descriptive.


• Character Diary: In these blogs the author has used a character from an existing work of fiction or from real life and made a blog for that person. For example, Darth Vader's blog. The author found an existing character and is writing a diary for them (which happens to be hilarious, by the by, if you're a Star Wars fan.) Another blogger did his research and wrote a blog as if he were Julius Caeser- another existing "character" that the author liked enough blog as. There are also lots of character diaries surrounding Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and Star Trek. Some character diaries can be really great, but like the other forms, I think they are different than fictional blogs and need their own name.

Friedrich developed her views further in a 2006 thesis and other blog posts such as this one from February 2006:

As I may have said at some point in this blog, I'd like to focus on fictional blogs written in the first person, what I've called a contained story. This is different from people who write fan fiction or short stories which they then publish in blogs. I'm most interested in journals by fictional characters that utilize the format of a blog in some way.

That said, I've been thinking of a second distinction in fictional blogs. There is a difference, I think, between what I call character blogs and narrative blogs. A character blog is heavily based on a fictional character and their daily life. Examples would be God's Blog http://bigoldgod.blogspot.com/, and American Short-Timer americanshort-timer@blogspot.com.

A narrative blog tells a story. It has a beginning and end; there are plot points. It is probably not about the minutia of someone's daily life because that does not make a very interesting story. Examples are Transplanted Life http://transplantedlife.blogspot.com, and Simon of Space http://simonofspace.blogspot.com- the blog I've been reading the most of lately.

I hadn't previously made this distinction, though it seems obvious now- especially since so much between the two is different. The motivations for writing, the process, the readership, all of these are going to depend on whether it is a character blog or narrative blog.

This is our best understanding of Friedrich's circa-2006 typology of blog fiction:



This is a great framework to build on, and future blog-fickers will be indebted to this pioneering analysis. As for our own initial ideas on the subject, we humbly offer a few small revisions.

• First, we're expanding the chart upward to show it in a greater context of online storytelling. Blog fiction is online storytelling that uses a blogging platform, possibly including multimedia elements, hyperlinks, and a commenting system. Other ways to tell a story online include podcasting, webcomics, and forums.


• Second, we're trying to find a better home on the chart for the commercial fiction category, if it even needs to be culled out at all. We disagree with the principle of mixing story content or author intent into the discussion of story format. It would be like saying a movie isn't really a movie if it includes product placements, which many of them do. Or that a book like The Devil Wears Prada isn't really a book because there's a product name in the title. And if we start by excluding commercial fiction, we might also exclude stories that support a political viewpoint, or ones that have a moral lesson, or ones that make us think about philosophical issues, and pretty soon all that's left is bland and mindless. We're keeping the "Commercial Fiction" box on the chart for now, but we're not happy about it.


• Third, we're making a distinction between narrative blogs that unfold in real time and those that don't. We think there's a major difference between how readers interact with these stories and we're also a little biased because our story is one of those real-time types.

So this is where we were in July of 2008:



Additional discussion since then has revolved around where blog-novels, as we like to call them, fit into the chart.

The original consensus of our group was that the real-time element was required, putting them into that bottom left box. Subsequently we've come across some asynchronous blog-novels that work very well in their time frame (and we've taken to calling them "asynchronous" instead of "non-real time" because it's less contrived and more cool sounding that way).

Blog-novels are now synonymous with narrative blogs.

We've added fraud blogs onto the chart, to indicate blogs that present themselves as factual but are really works of fiction. There have been a number of these that have become popular and celebrated, only to have readers throw a fit when they discover that the author is not actually dying of cancer, working as a call-girl, or whatever. It's the same problem we've seen with memoirs that turn out to be fictional or highly embellished--people don't like it when their fact and fiction mix without adequate warning.

Interactive Role Playing is now known as Role Playing Blogs, or RPBs, on our chart--a slight improvement though I'm sure the people who do them probably have a name that's cooler and more descriptive.

Also gone are Character Diaries from Fictional and Non-Fictional Sources. If they're fictional, we're calling them Derived Blogs. If they're non-fictional, we're calling them Fake Blogs--like the Fake Blog of Steve Jobs or the Fake Blog of Dick Cheney.



We'll continue to add to the discussion draft until we come up with more ideas, which we probably will.

Week #5: Foreshadowing

Some quick author notes we may add to and revise as time goes on...

In Week #5 of "Giant Girl Rampages," Melly's giant monster dream forms the centerpiece of a week that sees Melly withdraw for a while after another bad outing in town.

We've previously established Melly's dreams as being particularly vivid and populated by recurring characters like Miss Freckles and Dream Boy. In this dream we have those two dream-beings interacting with Melly and each other in a cinematic landscape--the problem being that we also previously established that Melly hasn't seen a whole lot of movies in her life and probably wouldn't dream in pop culture references like Godzilla.

Our solution was to have Melly start the week by raving about a certain Japanese monster movie she just happened to see over the weekend. Now when the dream hits, we know that she's seen the film and has it freshly churning in her mind. Foreshadowing is your friend in blog-novels just as in paper-novels. And if you read the posts carefully, you might see more foreshadowing of things that may not happen for weeks or months yet--like Friday's post about Melly's big secret and whether Jay knows about it or not.

==>http://bigmellymills.blogspot.com/2008_07_06_archive.html

Week #4: Fanfic

Some quick author notes we may add to and revise as time goes on...

In Week #4 of "Giant Girl Rampages," we wanted to do something special for the Fourth of July. But in Melly's case, the meaning of Independence Day is inverted because she is in the process of losing her independence by becoming more and more dependent on the people around her. The resulting post is so much of an emotional bombshell that we were nervous that it would alienate our small but growing audience, even if it does go to the core of the "vulnerable giantess" theme we're going for with this story.

Thankfully, we were able to have Melly angst with the best of them and still end the week on a positive note. as we received our first illustrated "Giant Girl Rampages" fanfic just in time to lighten things up! We linked to the story with a bonus post on Saturday and the week was saved.

Normally authors have a range of conflicting feelings about stories written by fans: we're flattered that someone would feel so strongly about our work that they would want to extend the story; we're anxious over our loss of control over our creations; we're curious about what the reaction will be at our publisher's legal department, and we're generally amused, angry, joyful, or outraged depending on how well or how badly the fanfic is written. This particular fanfic was a pleasure to read because the author had clearly studied the characters as we'd presented them and had come up with a logical, consistent, and enjoyable story about them. Bravo!

Also, the pictures were so much fun and so much better than any of us could ever hope to draw.

==>http://bigmellymills.blogspot.com/2008_06_29_archive.html

Week #3: Multitasking

Some quick author notes we may add to and revise as time goes on...

In Week #3 of "Giant Girl Rampages," we tried to deal with pacing requirements in a five-day format. We resolved the issue of moving Melly into her new shed and gave her a few days to adjust before dropping a new issue in her lap--Mrs. Johansson's disapproval of Melly's wardrobe, which represents another soon-to-be-vanishing connection between Melly and her deceased mother.

Four other things we tried to do this very productive week (with varying levels of success):

First, we had Melly comment on some of the comments she's been getting. This brought those issues into the main narrative and emphasized the interactive nature of publishing a novel in blog format.

Second, we had Melly comment on a current news story in an attempt to connect Melly's world with the world of the readers.

Third, we kept the Jay-Melly plot simmering.

And fourth, we introduced a new mystery element with Melly's fuzzy memory of the "Freckles" character and her strong desire not to delve any deeper into the matter. We're doing Monday through Friday posts with weekends off, so "something big and unexpected on Friday" might become a way for us to keep reader attention over a couple days without a post. Like a chapter-ending cliff-hanger, but with weeks instead of chapters.

==>http://bigmellymills.blogspot.com/2008_06_22_archive.html

Comments and Feedback

A major benefit of the blog format for storytelling is that readers can provide instant feedback to a story in progress. Even better, readers can talk directly to the characters and maybe even have them reply! This was one of the features that originally excited us so much about blog-novels and their potential to go beyond what traditional paper novels can do.

Our advice to blog-novelists is, simply, to turn on the commenting feature for their posts, police the comments to weed out the inappropriate ones, and post replies to encourage the rest. You may want to close comments on an occasional episode that creates a controversy, but turning off comments on all posts would defeat the two-way interaction that is the main purpose in having a blog in the first place.

You may not get many comments in the first month of your blog-novel, until you start building a readership, but don't let that discourage you. Most readers will not ever leave comments, no matter how much they're enjoying your work. When you do start to get comments, respond to them with comments of your own--in character or, if you're more comfortable that way, as the author. A small trickle of comments will encourage more and more.

In addition to providing a means for reader feedback, comments will help you understand what your readers like and dislike, or where they are confused and need further explanations and details.

In Week #2 of "Giant Girl Rampages," we dealt with Melly's feelings of loss for her family--showing her anger by having her lash out at Jay Appleton. Some readers felt that Melly's behavior was uncalled for and that she should immediately apologize to Jay. Others identified with Melly and, viewing Jay through her perspective, decided he was a jerk and not worth associating with. As authors, we were able to take both of these reactions into account in fine-tuning and steering the Melly-Jay relationship over the ensuing weeks. We were also able to have Melly herself provide interaction through comments that helped readers understand her moods and motives. By doing this, the comments became an important part of the story.

We also received some abusive comments from a reader who seemed oddly obsessed with Melly's feet. Fortunately, other readers rallied around Melly and let the foot guy know that his comments were inappropriate and unwanted. We were able to delete the comments in question and, deprived of a voice, the foot guy went away.

If you're very lucky, your readership will become a community in itself and comments will riff off each other as much as off of your original posts. This hasn't happened to us, and probably never will, but we've seen it on other more popular sites. And even on our site, the commentary enhances the story.

Beginnings

Authors have agonized over beginnings since, probably, the beginning of storytelling itself. The start of a traditionally structured story must serve many purposes all at once: it introduces one or more characters, sets them in a certain place and time, establishes any number of reader expectations about style and substance, and starts a chain of action that will hopefully carry through until the final chapter--and all of it has to grab the reader before he or she abandons the work in favor of something else.

Blog-novelists who structure their stories with deliberate beginnings, middles, and endings have the additional challenge of having to do all of this in a single take, because substantial revision to a blog-novel in progress is difficult or impossible. In this way, blog-novels cross the written word with live storytelling.

We recommend that blog-novelists take the time to plan and plot their blog-novels before posting a first entry that will be, essentially, written in stone. Looking back now on the opening week of our blog-novel, "Giant Girl Rampages," it feels like we were hopelessly ill-prepared for putting the first episodes on the web, even though we pre-wrote the first five days and had rough plots ready for the next three months.

Blog-novelists coming from the world of books, especially, need to prepare for a little disappointment when looking back on earlier parts of the story. As with all first drafts, your main character's voice will evolve as she takes on a life of her own and the plot will develop layers and meanders you never expected. You will feel the urge to go back and revise--and you won't be able to. With the blog-novel, any substantial amount of retroactive editing will be impossible, but what you get instead is the constant prod to make forward progress.

The beginning of a blog-novel should be a clearly intentional beginning that works toward a clearly-intended ending, or else what you're writing isn't a blog-novel, but instead something called a character blog--which is perfectly fine if that's what you want to do. Your open-ended character blog will also require some pre-planning though, because you'll need to know something about your character and story world before you start.

In Week #1 of "Giant Girl Rampages," readers meet Melly Mills and learn about her unusual size, her background, and her personality. We describe an important event that has turned Melly's world upside-down, with aftershocks and unforseen consequences that will continue to unfold for months to come. We introduce Dr. Crisp and other key people in Melly's life, reveal her aspiration to meet and fall in love with a boy who is even taller than she is, show her reading habits, and witness her introduction to a sport that will play an important part in the story. That structured beginning gave us a platform on which to build the rest of our story.

If we continue GGR long enough, and if we don't end up abandoning it in the middle, it will wrap up in a nice, neat, clearly intentional ending. It may not be exactly the ending we had in mind when we started the project, because stories tend to take on a life of their own, but for a blog-novel, just as with a paper novel, it's important to have an ending in mind from the very beginning.

Blog-Novel Resources

Here are some sites and resources to help blog-novelists along the way. Some relate to blog-fiction or serialized online fiction generally but may also be helpful.

Meta Blogs

Blog Fiction by DustinM

Novelr

Making Melly Mills

Blog Communities

Web Writers on LiveJournal

Forums

Blog Fiction Forum

NovLounge

Pages Unbound Forum

EpiGuide online entertainment

Story Directories

List of Blog Fiction Sites

Flogalicious: A Fictional Blog Directory

Pages Unbound

Web Fiction Guide

Awards

Blooker Prize (for blogs turned into books)

References

Friedrich, Betsy. Fictional Blogs: How Digital Narratives are Changing the Way We
Read and Write. Coe College, 14 February 2007 (PDF)

Thomas, Angela. Fictional Blogging and the Narrative Identities of Adolescent Girls. University of Sydney, 26 March 2005. (Word Document)

Wright, Tim. Blog Fiction. trAce Online Writing Centre, 16 January 2004.

Blog Fiction Wikipedia Entry

Why Are Some Posts Tagged "illustration"?

We encourage artists to create illustrations of Melly or the events in her story, as long as they are appropriate for Melly's young readers. When Melly finds an image she likes, she may include a small thumbnail version on a post with credit to the artist and a link to the full-sized image. Images of Melly posted elsewhere should link to the "Giant Girl Rampages" blog.

Clicking on the illustration label will bring up only those posts containing Melly Mills illustrations.

Why Are Some Posts Tagged "fanfic"?

We encourage other people to write stories about Melly or the people in her world, as long as they link back to the "Giant Girl Rampages" blog and the story is appropriate for Melly's young readers. When Melly finds a fan-written story she likes, she will link to it with a post labeled fanfic, short for fan fiction, because it's a fictitious story written by a Melly Mills fan.


Clicking on the fanfic label will bring up only those posts containing links to Melly Mills fanfic.

Using Meta Information

When readers start a book, they flip open to the first page and the story begins. But with a blog-novel, readers may arrive in the middle of a story already in progress. They may leave for a while and miss important plot developments. Or they may need a quick refresher on a character who hasn't been seen for a week or two.

Blog-novels require meta information--supplemental text that's about the story but isn't part of the story. This might include character guides, plot synopses, frequently asked questions, posting schedules, and information about the author(s). Meta information can appear in the blog's sidebar, in the header, in posts, or in a separate website.

Three weeks into "Giant Girl Rampages," we realized that our meta information would no longer fit neatly into the sidebar. Luckily, we discovered that the blog format also makes for an excellent resource site with virtually unlimited room for expansion.

On our behind-the-scenes blog, "Making Melly Mills," every main character has an entry that can be updated as we learn more about them. And each entry has its own URL, so we can link to them from the story site.

Also, because blog-novels are still so rare, we've included frequently asked questions about what we're doing, why, and how--as well as tips like the one you're reading now, for blog-novelists who want to join in the fun. These resources are available for the reader who wants more background information without bothering some other reader who just wants to get on with the story.

Blog-Novel Writing Style

With all stories written in the first person (as told by the character herself) it's important to choose an appropriate and distinctive voice and stick with it.

Our advice to other blog-novelists is to think about your character's voice before you even start writing your first post. Make sure the style you want to use matches the background of the character you have. Once you're into the story, it will be difficult or impossible to go back and make style changes from the beginning.

As you write, keep in mind that blogging is an immediate activity for your character--the events of the story have just happened, or are still happening, and the emotions of the moment should work their way into the tone. Avoid the narrative distance often seen in books, where characters may be recalling events that happened months or years before the telling.

Finally, remember that your character's word choices and writing style tell readers a lot about who they are and where they're coming from. Figure out how the character's personality and background are different from yours, as the author, and be sure to reflect that difference in your writing style. If more than one character is writing the blog, each should have a distinctive voice.

For "Giant Girl Rampages" we wanted Melly Mills to be articulate and literate enough to tell her own story, so we worked a love of books into her background. She's also been isolated on a farm for her whole life, only recently gaining access to the Internet, so she's not going to be using any texting slang, emoticons, or pop-culture references. She hasn't read a lot of blogs, so Melly mostly writes the way she talks, in an informal tone with colloquialisms she picked up from her parents.

Melly uses shorthand words like cuz and 'tho because we wanted to remind the reader that this is a blog, rough and unfinished, and not a polished and edited novel. We adopted the triple-exclamation-point so that Melly can express strong emotions--and because we imagine her voice, powered by giant-sized lungs, to be megaphone-loud. We even wrote that down as a rule in our notes: Always three exclamation points for Melly, never two or four!!!

If we've done our job, a reader will believe that Melly's blog is actually being written by Melly and her words couldn't have been written by anybody else.

Why Are Some Posts Tagged "Jay"?

Jay Appleton is an important figure in Milly's life. He is the first person her own age that she ever meets and interacts with on a regular basis. Their relationship will evolve over time and it may be useful for readers to go back and review all that has happened before.

Clicking on the Jay label will bring up only those posts that Melly writes about Jay.

Dream Boy

Melly sometimes fantasizes about a "dream boy" who would be tall enough that she would need to stand on tip-toes to kiss him. Over a sequence of dreams the boy, who she has nicknamed Dream Boy, has invited Melly to run away with him to the Island of the Tall Ones where all the inhabitants are tall like them and where Melly would be welcomed as a queen.

Spoiler Alert: Don't click on the spoiler button below until you've read the July 31st entry, "Messages"

Click here for spoilers!

Dream Boy promises, in a dream, to help Melly obtain clothing in her size. Shortly thereafter, a crate of custom-sized clothing arrives from a company called GlomCorp, with whom Mr. Appleton has been talking about providing Melly with a corporate sponsorship. In the crate is a letter with a message from Dream Boy, written in vanishing ink, stating that the price of GlomCorp's involvement is that Melly and Dream Boy can no longer be together in their dreams--although Dream Boy hopes they are able to meet someday in real life.

Melly is unsure whether the message is a prank, a trick of her mind, or just maybe the real thing. When she goes looking for Dream Boy in her dreams, she does not find him.

This character sheet will update with new information as needed.

Why Are Some Posts Tagged "dreams"?

Each week or two, there will be one post tagged "dreams". This is your cue as a reader that the post reveals something about Melly's dreams. It may be a remembered event from the past, insight into her anxieties, or an expression of her hopes and aspirations. Melly's dreams might even predict the future.


Clicking on the dreams label will bring up only those posts that Melly writes about her dreams.

Mrs. Johansson

Mrs. Johansson is Melly's case worker at the Child Welfare Division of the state's Department of Family Services. She is a stickler for rules and procedures, red tape, and paperwork. She makes life difficult for Melly, perhaps incidentally, or perhaps because she enjoys the power of her position.

Melly initially considers her to be a witch, but she softens a bit as Melly's case becomes less urgent and takes up less of her time. Even so, Melly remains resentful of the fact that Mrs. Johansson has so much say over her life and chooses not to consult Melly on her feelings about the many changes in her life.

This character sheet will be updated as needed.

Who's in the Giant Girl Creative Team?

"Giant Girl Rampages" is conceived and written by a team of four published authors with a combined total of 27 years experience writing for children and young adults. Together we have fifteen novels and non-fiction books to our credit.

We've come together to create an innovative story using web technology, instant-publishing, and real-time storytelling techniques. We call our project a blog-novel and, as far as we can tell, ours is the first ever to be written for specifically middle-graders or teens. We estimate an equal chance of this project either failing spectacularly or succeeding beyond our wildest dreams.

Our publishing houses and literary agents are not involved in this project and, at the moment, have no idea what we're up to. Therefore, we are required to be stealthy and anonymous for at least a while longer.

Mr. and Mrs. Appleton

Mr. and Mrs. Appleton are a nice couple who have taken Melly in after it became known that she was living on her own in the farm adjacent to their orchard. They have a son, Jay, who is about Melly's age.

Mrs. Appleton is short and stout, and younger than Melly's mother was. She enjoys fashion magazines, romance novels, and girly things that she often tries to press on Melly. To her, Melly is the daughter she has always wanted--or will be by the time she gets through with her, as evidence by the decorating scheme she imposed on Melly's shed.

Mr. Appleton is tall and skinny, and younger than Melly's father was. He sometimes seems overly concerned about the costs of keeping Melly, which is understandable given the expense of building her a place to live, providing custom furniture, and supplying her with Melly-sized portions of food. Mr. Appleton embraces any opportunity to make money off Melly, starting with the GlomCorp sponsorship.

This character sheet will be updated as needed.

Why Are Some Posts Tagged "This Changes Everything"?

Each week or two, there will be one post tagged "This Changes Everything". This is your cue as a reader that the post is a special one that represents a major change in Melly's life--her living conditions, her relationships, or her general outlook.

The plot developments and/or character changes depicted will ensure that life will never be the same for Melly ever again.


Clicking on the This Changes Everything label will let you catch up quickly on only the most important posts.

Jay Appleton

Jay is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Appleton, the orchard owners who have taken Melly in after it became known that she was living on her own. Although Jay has lived next door to Melly for their entire lives, the two have never met before due to the isolation Melly's parents imposed on her in order to protect her from the outside world.

Initially Jay seems extremely fearful of Melly and does not talk to her unless forced by his parents. He later hints at knowing a secret about Melly that she doesn't want revealed.

Jay is short in stature and slight of build. Melly estimates that he's five feet tall or shorter, although she confesses to not being the best judge of heights so much smaller than her own.

Jay is about Melly's age and, if she is allowed to attend the public high school, they will be in the same grade.

This character sheet will be updated as needed.

What is Melly's Posting Schedule?

The goal we've set this story is for new blog entries to be posted on most weekdays, sometimes twice. So far the Giant Girl Creative Team has been able to drop a post or two on every weekday since the story started, so hooray for us! If we space on a weekday or two in the future, don't be surprised--those are days when Melly is just too busy to blog.

We're experimenting now with a main daily post that drops at 11AM Central Time, which makes it possible to drop a bonus post a few hours before or afterward. We're not expecting to do more than two posts in any given day.

Also, Melly takes the weekends off and so should you!

Dr. Crisp

Dr. Crisp is a local doctor and school board member who serves as Melly's physician and academic tutor. From Melly's description he appears to be an older gentleman with athletic interests and surprising agility on the basketball court. Dr. Crisp is the one who introduced Melly to basketball and installed the hoop on the side of her shed.

As the story progresses, Dr. Crisp proves to be the most trustworthy and caring adult in Melly's life.

This character sheet will update with new information as needed.

What is a Blog-Novel?

There are lots of blog/novel hybrids out there that could legitimately be called blog-novels. Some are paper-printed novels that imitate the journal-entry format of a blog. Some are traditionally-written novels serialized to the web using blogging software. And some are blog posts collected into print volumes.

Our definition is... A blog-novel is a traditionally-structured work of fiction published online in real time as a standalone blog. This requires all six of the following elements:

1. A blog-novel is traditionally-structured with a clearly-intended beginning, a clearly-intended middle, and (if the story is not still being written or on a clearly-intended hiatus) a clearly-intended ending. Structure is what distinguishes a blog-novel from unstructured blog-fiction and blogs of genuinely unstructured life.
   
   
2. A blog-novel is a work of fiction and would be unmistakably fictional to a casual reader. Disclaimers are provided that the story is fictional, or enough fantastical elements are included to make it totally obvious. This requirement excludes works that are presented as factual, just as memoirs are distinguished from works of fiction, and for the same reason: Readers feel deceived when they take a work as fact and later discover it's not real, and pissing off your readers is just bad form.
   
   
3. A blog-novel is published online. This requirement excludes works in print or other media that merely co-opt the formatting and sensibilities of a blog.
   
   
4. A blog-novel is published in real time with a one-to-one time scale so that time passes between posts at the same rate for the characters as it does for the reader. The story might not necessarily take place in the same year, century, or universe the readers are in, but if a week passes between posts for the reader it should be a week later for the characters as well. And if there's ever a six-month gap between posts, there had better be a darn good in-story explanation!!!
   
   
5. A blog-novel stands alone so that the blog or blogs that make up the narrative contain all the information required for a reader to understand the story. This requirement excludes blog-fiction in which required plot points are given in another medium, such as blogs by fictional TV characters who merely comment on events taking place in their shows. A blog-novel may adapt stories from television shows, movies, manga, comics, and print novels, or may incorporate characters from other sources, as long as the resulting story can be read and enjoyed by an audience unfamiliar with the source material. A blog-novel can also be adapted into another medium without losing its blog-novel status. This definition also excludes blog-fiction used as just one element of an immersive story environment in which vital plot points may be provided by forums, social media, traditional websites, email, or instant message.
   
   
6. A blog-novel is published as a blog: i.e., as a first person narrative from a character or characters who intend to be writing journal entries and who mean for those journal entries to be viewed by the general public. Blogs are linear, serialized, epistolary, and interactive, with the possibility for including multimedia elements.

Blog-novels have their roots in eighteenth century pamphleteering and the serialized publication of fictional works from the eighteenth century to the present day, such as Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1759-67), many of Charles Dickens' novels, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes series, and Henry James' The Ambassadors (1903, with each of its twelve parts appearing in The North American Review before being published as a whole that same year).

Melinda "Big Melly" Mills

Melly is very tall. Freakishly impossibly tall. Basketball hoops come up to her hips, and most people are only a bit taller than her knees. She looks down on giraffes, and has to bend down to peek into a second-story window. She's just a bit shy of 18 feet, and nobody else has ever been anywhere near as tall as that.

Worried for her safety, Melly's parents kept her sheltered from public view in the middle acres of their family farm. Melly lived in the barn from age seven on, having outgrown her parents' house, and was content to tend to the dairy cows and read books her mother borrowed for her from the public library.

Ma died when Melly was twelve. Pa passed away in her fifteenth year, and Melly suddenly found herself alone in a world that knew nothing of her existence--until the day she strolled into town and caused a bit of a scene. The name of her blog is taken from that day's newspaper headline: "Giant girl rampages through town".

Melly has been taken in by the Appletons, who own an orchard adjacent to Mills Farm, which makes it convenient for her to continue caring for her beloved cows. She is being tutored by her physician, Dr. Crisp, and expects to attend public school for the first time, starting in the fall.

This character sheet will update with new information as needed.

Is Melly For Real?

"Giant Girl Rampages" is the story of Melly Mills, a fifteen-year-old with a problem fitting in--mainly because she's approaching eighteen feet tall! This story is a work of fiction. It takes place in a world that defies the laws of physics and biology as we understand them. If the story were printed on paper sheets and glued into a cardboard cover we'd know how to react to it, because we're all used to visiting the world of books and returning to our own world without blurring the line between the two.

But instead of being fixed in a static book, Melly's story is unfolding in real time, in first person narrative, in an interactive medium most people use to convey facts or honestly-held opinions--the blog. And a funny thing happens when a story is told through a blog. Readers experience the blog-novel at the same pace as their lives, they gain the ability to communicate with at least one of the characters, and the line between reality and fiction fades away.

In the blog format, Melly's voice seems more immediate, personal, and trustworthy. Is she reliable enough to make the outrageous events of "Giant Girl Rampages" seem like they're really happening? We wouldn't have thought so, but readers have surprised us by treating Melly like a real person despite her impossible height. They give her unsolicited advice in their blog comments, ask questions about her life, and explain how their own experiences relate to hers.

The blog-novel exists in an electronic environment where readers and characters interact, and in that environment Melly Mills is as real as anybody else. She believes in her existence as strongly as anybody else. And if you accuse her of being fictional, be prepared to prove that you're not just a figment of her imagination.