Writing a fictional blog (lakebelle.blogspot.com) is fun and not fun, weird and not weird, all those writerly things. To write the blog it is difficult to get into character. I do it for the novel, but the book has dialogue and exposition. In scenes I can step back, describe the scene, set the pace, work towards the climax, heighten the tension. A blog is just a character’s chatter withno real story arc. Where is it going? The blog turns drama into gossip–so maybe that’s what all stories are anyway. Elaborate forms of gossip.

When I first thought of creating the blog I thought I’d sit a craft entries and have some kind of plot in my head. But then when the time came to write my first post ever, I winged it. That’s the way I’ve done it since. Once in a while I get some idea during the day that I know I want a certain character to write about, but most of the time I have no clue until I hit the ‘new post’ button.

Then I go to the novel, in which Linnie and Tim are minor characters and the novel takes place in the past before the blog, and it’s just, well, a weird feeling. It also means certain things about the characters are locked into place because I’ve blogged about them. Lucky for Linnie and Tim, they’re guarunteed to get out of the novel alive.

And I know more about them than they’d ever post about themselves and it’s difficult to know what it is that comes across to a reader who doesn’t know their background. In a novel there are loads of tricks to spill the past on someone and to reveal motivations and real desires, but in a blog…well, I don’t know.

At the very least it’s a good writing exercise. I think.