Bringing Characters to Life with Blogs!
Wednesday, August 30th, 2006I watch most Monk episodes (thanks to TiVo) and happened to see an ad for their character blogs. What a great concept! The Monk blogs offer a new medium for viewers to continue their connection with the characters.
The blogs of Captain Stottlemeyer, Dr. Kroger, and Natalie Teeger each “sound” very unique. Each character is writing about events from his or her own perspective and in a distinct voice.
For me, as a writer, stumbling upon “character blogs” represents the discovery of an amazing tool for novel-writing and beyond!
Currently, I’m working on differentiating my characters’ voices in my novel, Consumption, and I can see how creating character blogs could be very useful for this. Perhaps I’ll have each of my characters write blog entries about their impressions of important events in the story. Their entries wouldn’t be posted anywhere (at least not until after my book is published); rather, the characters’ blogs would be opportunities for me to delve deeper into their unique minds and voices.
Look at what I just said there: “Perhaps I’ll have each of my characters write blog entries…” Eek! I’m giving writing assignments to imaginary people! We writers are a strange breed!
Beyond helping writers, though, I think character blogs could offer a lot to readers! Personally, I think it would be great to read a novel, and then go online to read some characters’ blog entries. Character blogs could provide additional insights about how a character felt at a particular point in the story. As well, for as long as an author continued to update the character blog(s), our favorite hero or heroine could survive past the last page of a book!
I’m excited about partnering books and the blogosphere! Novels can bring a story to readers in an intimate and in-depth way, and blogs can offer a real-time existence for fictional characters! What do you think of this pairing?
Think of your most loved or hated novel characters. Would you be interested in reading their blogs?
September 6th, 2006 at 10:03 pm
I have a feeling that honest character blogs, especially from the author, will be interesting, but solicited ones to promote a show or product will be seen as the community as a lame attempt.
It may be fun to arrange the blog entries in event order and then postdate them, one per day, after the release of the book. That could give people a reason to revisit the site and promote it to their friends.
October 4th, 2006 at 11:42 pm
Hi Anton,
I’m sorry for not replying for so long! As we were transitioning from apartment to house, I didn’t keep up with my blog at all. Oh well. Things are quieting down a bit now, and I can start to focus again on writing and blogging. Nice.
I really like your insights! I can see your point about the community not being impressed if character blogs get constructed as promotional materials.
Your idea about an author possibly arranging blog entries to occur one per day after the release of the book is great! Certainly something to think about if/when that time comes for my novel.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
Cuileann