Confessions of a Serial Fiction Writer by Theresa Santy

Confession #1: I don't like killing people

Sometimes killing people is necessary in order to move a plot forward, add conflict, or raise the stakes.  But it’s never fun and I don’t particularly care for the mission.  Knowing that the people I need to kill are imagined does little to ease my nerves.  The moment I’ve given a character a name and a single quirk I’m attached.  

I discovered this flaw of mine shortly after I launched a project in serialized literature called Blog Fiction, that is, a blog that tells a fictional story.  In my Blog Fiction the character Kristen Craemer tries to navigate life, and I do my best to upset her efforts.  From the beginning I wanted to kill Kristen’s Uncle Rob.  I had little difficulty subduing Rob into a coma, and to twist the knife in a little deeper, I had Kristen discover that this uncle was also her biological father.  But even the best laid plans can go astray and when I saw Kristen weeping over her comatose Uncle-Father Rob, I caved.  The man rose from his persistent vegetative state and recovered. 

My next target was Kristen’s mother Ruby, against whom Kristen held a calcified grudge.  Perfect, I thought.  I would give Ruby cancer and before Kristen had the chance to appreciate her mother, Ruby would be gone.  The cancer progressed.  Then a dear friend of mine lost two loved ones in a row, one of them from cancer, the other her mother.  It suddenly occurred to me that real people were directly affected by the devastations of death and cancer.  Imagine!  At the time, killing Ruby felt inexplicably contrived.  The storyline had become too real, leaving no escape for readers.  My own mother stopped reading the blog.  Still, I had to kill somebody, even if it was only to prove to myself I could do it.  I closed my eyes, typed like mad, and poof—Ruby was gone.

Confession #2: I write like a drunken sailor, though I’m neither drunk nor a sailor.

 

I launched my Blog Fiction with little more than a three sentence sketch of Kristen and a bucket load of enthusiasm.  I charged into the story, staggering and tripping, shifting and adjusting.  The beauty of live fiction is that it puts the writer in the troubling position of having to either write something, or let the story collapse.  Kristen had collected some readers.  On any given day the blog could be visited by someone from the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Slovakia, or from any earthly country with an Internet connection.  This knowledge inspired me to move the story forward.  If Kristen’s story had been written offline, I’d likely have abandoned her long ago. 

Early on, I had a poor understanding of plot, conflict, and proportion, but lucky for me I received some unsolicited quality feedback.  One critic gave the Blog Fiction a decent review overall, but said there was too much excruciating detail.  I sulked until I realized the guy was right.  Since then, I’ve worked on writing tighter.  Another critic said that although he liked the concept of Blog Fiction, he was not impressed with my application of it.  (Ouch.)  This critic complained there wasn’t enough narrative tension, that the conflict present was more of a dryer lint variety than the earth shattering sort.  Begrudgingly I saw this critic was right as well.  Adequate narrative tension requires constant rising conflict that goes beyond the heartbreak of a broken nail.  The concept of narrative tension is a skill I continue to work on to this very day.

Confession #3: I’m a stranger in a strange land.

 

In the beginning I tried to befriend a host of craft bloggers.  I figured we had similar interests, since Kristen loved to craft and knit and was a graduate from the California College of the Arts, for crying out loud.  Craft bloggers wanted nothing to do with Kristen.  They wanted to swap pictures of knitted caps and vintage glam holiday crafts, not ruminate with Kristen over whether or not she would ever see the gorgeous man with the emerald eyes again. 

I wandered the Internet in search of foreigners like me.  I found a smattering of websites that provided directories, feedback, and community for Web Fiction writers.  But even on these sites, I felt out of place.  The bulk of Web Fiction was sci-fi, fantasy, fan fiction, and decidedly secular.  I found no Christian-Influenced Inspirational Blog Fiction like mine.  I was bizarre in a land of eccentrics, so I set out on my own.  Soon after, another Christian writer contacted me and then launched a Blog Fiction of her own.  Later, another came along.  The three of us have built our own micro-community by connecting through our blogs.  In the scope of all literature, we three are like the sole inhabitants of a speck of dust sitting on the tip of the nose of Cindy Lou Who. 

Confession #4: I love Blog Fiction.

 

Blog fiction may be an obscure literary medium, but it is also a powerful, free, and widely available writing tool.  This tremendous resource has given me the experience I needed to grow in skill and confidence.  I also have an improved understanding of plot, conflict, and proportion, and can now kill characters when necessary. 

I am no more rich or famous than when I began writing Blog Fiction, but I understand a great deal more about my purpose as a writer.  I once heard the question posed, “If you were the last person on earth, would you still write?”  My answer is an unequivocal yes.  I write out of passion, need, and compulsion.  I recommend writing Blog Fiction for anyone else who feels the same. 

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Theresa Santy is a member of the incredibly supportive online writing community FaithWriters.com.  She lives in Southern California with her husband and two children, and aspires to write and live for the glory of God.  She recently finished a project in serialized literature called a Blog Fiction (a fiction presented as a blog) at KristenACtheManiAC.blogspot.com, and is presently writing a love story biography and a novel based on the main character of her Blog Fiction.