truepenny | more about narrative and blog

heres_luck has entered the fray on the subject of blog and narrative. Check her out. She's wicked smart.

Her remarks about epistolary novels remind me that I've always wanted to write one. Actually have about 90 pages of one somewhere on the computer, but got hopelessly bogged down in trying to think of a plot instead of just having these characters writing letters back and forth. I think the letter-writing game that some authors play (e.g., origin of Sorcery and Cecelia (Wrede and Stevermer) and, I think, Freedom and Necessity (Bull and Brust)) is the coolest thing ever, because the necessary feel of letter writing is in its strophe/antistrophe, and that's a little hard to do when you're writing both sides yourself. You keep writing the letters in the way you want the characters to respond instead of the way they actually would. And since I've read Stanley Ellin's story about the guy who plays chess against himself ... well, let's just not go there, okay? *shudders*