“I need to listen”–this feeling endures and feeds reading of books and faces I think. Amending this write now!

Kirk, I wanted a distinction from something actually different, as opposed to something of the same quality but simply added-onto which I may erroneously believe conveys the verb augment. Kassia, always crisp–never milquetoast–answered me right.

The Hood Company

I’m not sure I understand Brian’s comment. A character blog can certainly augment fiction, but it can also be a new way of interacting. Unless I somehow missed the old way that characters interacted with readers — was there one?

A character blog can also be a great tool for writers to discover a character’s voice, provided the character is the sort who would blog in the first place (as Kassia just noted). What better way to learn what your character is really made of than to have him or her engaged in a flame war with angry readers?

I’ll go further with this and suggest that blogs are just the starting point. Where appropriate characters should be actively participating in other types of social media. Why shouldn’t a character have a flickr account, a list on 43things, and bookmarks on del.icio.us?

The way information is shared between the character and readers is different — suddenly you have the ability to hold two-way conversations between characters and readers. This requires particular skill on the part of the author, sure, but it opens new ways to interact with the story. Okay, maybe not new but certainly not ordinary.

There also exists the opportunity to do different kinds of world-building. The various pressures and limitations of novels put some restrictions on world-building in the narrative. Done right, a character blog (or something else entirely) can make the fictional world a more vivid place. Remember, that the character blog does not need to come from the perspective of your protagonist — in many ways, other characters might be better suited to this activity.

In fact, I’d caution that a character blog only works if the character were the type to blog. Mike Hammer? Don’t see him as a blogger. Though, if he were, it would like not be safe for work.

Augmented fiction is sufficiently different that I think it’s the definition of a new way of interacting. It’s in many ways taking the story to the readers rather than waiting for the readers to come to the story via the bookstore.

The Hood Company