The blovel methodology and why it works

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-like posts. It is not a blog. 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/chapters (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 should 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 around 8-10 weeks, writing around 4 posts pre week (i.e. the about one post per workign day)
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 in around two months we could have a rough manuscript that can then go through an editing and rewriting process and turned into a real novel. But the hardest part is already taken care by the process.

You can follow our updates via Twitter. 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.