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[Blstrgmr]

The Art of the Slenderblog

[Uniquename]

>good blogs

[Blstrgmr]

I expected that, heh. I'm not a big blog follower, so I wasn't sure if there were any apparent "good" ones. I figured there had to be...somewhere.

[SaigoSentinel]

Re: The Art of the Slenderblog

[Blstrgmr]

I honestly think my ideas impossible then, if the blogs aren't usually good. I'd certainly need resources and reliable actors...and space...and a car. I'm still in highschool, so I'd prefer to rely on my natural writing skills as opposed to being on camera. As far as I can tell, the audience I'd like to reach would prefer college students.

Guess I'll just leave the idea out in the open and come back to it if I ever can. If anybody else wants it or wants to hear it, drop a PM.

[Baronness]

[Fotzepolitic]

My depressingly sensible advice:

Read lots of existing Slenderblogs, watch lots of existing Slendervlogs, see what's been done, get a feel for what you'd want to do. I know this might sound obvious, but one thing every creative writing teacher will tell you is that everybody wants to write but nobody wants to read.

Once you've done that, take your ideas in one column, and list your resources (i.e. actors and personnel, sets/locations, AV equipment) in another, and see what you can practically do. It sucks, and depending on what your ideas are, you might find you're crossing a hell of a lot of them off, but in the end, the ideas that you can actually realise are way better than the ones that you can't.

Once you've done that, talk to some people on here about any specific ideas that you're really attached to, to see if there's any way to make them work. Some of da yoot use special effects to do stuff that a Luddite like me would've just dismissed off-hand.

I'd say don't start looking outside for people to do you favours unless a) you absolutely can't avoid it, or b) you trust the people who you're going to be asking implicitly. You can get a sense of whether people are really interested in being part of your project for the long haul, but if you sense that someone's wavering, don't rely on them. It might seem cynical, but when you're three months into the vlog and aren't having to stall every single stage of production because you didn't commit to having an important recurring character played by a massively unreliable stoner asshat (who nevertheless objects strongly to any suggestion that he should leave the project); you'll thank me.

[Fotzepolitic]

If you're just on about writing, I dunno, there's a hundred bajillion words written on how to be a good writer. I found "How To Write A Bad Novel" quite interesting as a read - it's less about telling you how to write, and more about identifying bad habits of writers (or habits of bad writers?). I found I avoided some of the obvious ones but still did a couple (like over-use of adverbs).

I'm not a huge fan of the blogs, but some tips I'd offer:

• Don't write in fractured sentences and/or single-sentence paragraphs. It's really annoying.
  
• This goes doubly for the "unfinished journal entry". You can get away with doing that maybe once, but if you're doing it as part of a blog (rather than a handwritten diary), it makes no sense for the author to break off halfway through a sentence because he's being attacked by malevolent spirits... but then hit Send?
  
• Describe things other than what you see - sounds, smells, that sort of thing.
  
• Unread anything you've ever read by Stephen King. He's terrible.
  
• Read some HP Lovecraft.
  
• Read House of Leaves, but then don't try to do House of Leaves.
  
• A shark has to constantly move forward or it dies. This is definitely the case with Slenderblogs.
  
• TELL A STORY. It's amazing how many people think they can get by on "atmosphere". There's been maybe two authors ever that could do that, and you're not enough of a heroin addict to step to either of them.
  
• Beginning, middle, end. This applies to individual entries as much as the story as a whole.
  
• Pick a pace and stick to it. Decide how often you can update the blog, and update slightly less often than that. Don't update every day, because that kind of pace will destroy you. You can always write tomorrow's entry today and then wait til then to post it.
  

I think that'll do for now. Obviously avoid cliches, embrace tropes, and have fun writing it. Also, set yourself an ideal time-frame - i.e. a point when you will either finish the blog, or finish the first section of it.

[DaLadybugMan]

Also, Tumblr's generally not the best site for formatting a blog. There are ways to make it work, but in general, Wordpress and Blogger are better.

I'd also add that you should avoid using "proxies" of any sort. Unless you watch a lot of vlogs and read a lot of blogs (in which you will undoubtedly encounter proxies at an average proxy/story ratio of >1/1) and know you can write one in a way that doesn't resemble the average interpretation(s), people are going to say "oh, it's THIS guy again."

[Fotzepolitic]

Man, I've been at this for a while, and I'm still not totally sure I know what a proxy is.

[TheLonelyLemon]

I've rarely seen proxies fitting well into a series.

TribeTwelve is the main example, they made proxies actually do something and be relevant. Not just there because proxies are cool.

Everyman still has me confused on how HABIT came into the plot. Seriously. Dafuq.

[Blstrgmr]

@Fotzepolitic

Thanks a lot for the advice, I'll be sure to follow a good bit of it. Very insightful, very sensible.


On the matter of proxies, the feedback I've suddenly seen puts me off a bit, heh. The idea I had sort of revolved around proxies, possibly expanding on the concept a bit more rather than just having a generic guy in a mask wandering about. Like I said, PM me for a full-ish outline of it. If proxies are mostly..."discouraged" by this community, then maybe I should start to stray from the idea.

[TheLonelyLemon]

[Fotzepolitic]

People said my series has a good proxy. I don't think it does.

[DaLadybugMan]

It's possible to do a story that focuses on proxies and does it well. It's been done before, of course. Hell, I've written examinations of proxies myself. I'm sure you can pull it off, but keep in mind that, like I said, it's been done before, several times in fact. If that doesn't deter you at all, go right ahead.