Procrastinating on that novel? Write a Blovel instead

There are a lot of writers out there with great ideas. Many of them start to write a novel. Most never finish the first ten chapters.

The problem is that writing a novel is a great undertaking. You need to put hours and hours into something you don’t really know is going to work. Writing a novel summary is complicated because sometimes we don’t know where the novel is going to take us. Of course you should have some sort of big points: maybe the ending, parts of the middle, great lead characters.

You’re also probably not living to write, you have a full time job and a home to tend to.

I’m one of those writers. I have at least five ideas for novels. I took two writing courses in Gotham and realized that a novel is a lot of work. The courses were more concentrated on writing short stories, which could be (and is) the basis for a novel. But short stories were too shallow for the characters in my head.

I had read about people trying to make blog novels (this is an example), but the problem with them, in my mind, is that they’re no different from putting a Word document or PDF on a website and letting people download them.

So I’m formally introducing a writing approach and a meme: “Blovel”.

Ok, so it turns out the term does exist, coined no less, by the famous Wonkette, Ana Marie Cox:

Cox, 33, began writing Wonkette two years ago and quickly became a must-read for Washington’s political and media wonktocracy, working the gig into national prominence, television appearances and an inevitable “blovel.”

But the “Blovel” I’m proposing is different from the coined term. You can call it “Blovel 2.0″ if you’d like.

My version of a Blovel is a story told in blog posts. Here are the rules I’m suggesting would define a Blovel (all this of course could change if enough people get behind the idea):

• The story is told in 40 posts (give or take)
• Each post should have at least 500 words and up to 1,000 words
• If you don’t have a structure for the story, it should follow the Three-Act Structure (A Beginning, A Crisis, A Resolution). In this scenario, the first act should be posts 1-10, the second act would be posts 10-30 and the third act would posts 30-40.
• It has to be written in first person narrative (none of that “little did he know“). However you can change which character tells a particular post, as long as it’s only from his point of view (i.e. post 1 is told by Michael, post 2 by Sarah, post 3 is back to Michael, etc.)
• It is strongly suggested that each post should end with a cliffhanger.
• It has to be written in 40 weeks or less, but it is strongly recommended to write one post per day (i.e. the minimum is one post per week)
• You shouldn’t allow comments on the posts
• Posts must be published and you should engage people to follow them, so that you can get an early readership, feedback and a push to finish your manuscript.
• Once you publish your post, you can’t go back and edit them. This is strictly forbidden, as it will slow your pace down.

The posts should be as simple as possible. Let your fingers do the writing, don’t stop for mispellings or over edit. Just let the words out. The idea is to create content that you can revise when you’re done all the way through.

The positive side to these restrictions is that it will force us to follow the story from one point of view, which for starting novelists is the preferred way to go, it will establish a structure to the plot and at the end of 40 weeks we could have something we can gather into an e-book and sell on Lulu or refine further into a real novel.

Yesterday I started the first post of my first blovel using Tumblr (and I highly recommend you use it if you don’t know it). The simple setup and streamlined UI allows you to concentrate in what’s important: your writing. I will post a link to the first post of that blovel on Monday. Please read update #3 below.

I’ve also created a FriendFeed Room called “Blovel Spot“, where you can let me and everyone know about your new blovel, and exchange ideas with other writers. I also suggest that we tag Twitter updates of the blovels with the tag #blovel.

I want to specially thank my friends Tom Bentley, Michael Donk, Maria Schenider and Steven Devijver at the Triiibes site for their amazing input on the blovel rules.

So what do you writers think? Wanna join me in writing your first blovel?

Photo by adulau

Update #1: Susan Callan Bauman has started a blovel which is already up to a great start. You can read Chapter 1 here.

Update #2: I have started a blovel called “Love for Life“. Check it out!

Update #3: After working with Tumblr for a couple of weeks, I found out that using a regular blogging tool is counterproductive for a writer trying to do something like this, so I’ve coded and launched a new tool to write blovels. You can try it out at Blovelspot.com. I also moved my blovel to this address: http://loveforlife.blovelspot.com

Tagged as: draft, inspiration, tips, writing