Really Stupid Question about Starting a Blog

I'm about to start a vlog/blog and I have a really stupid question: Should I use blogspot or tumblr or something else?

Also, it would be cool if you could point me in the direction of some really cool blogs to maybe give me a little inspiration. I know where I want to go, just I'm trying to figure where to start.

Depends on how you want to format the blog. Blogger and Wordpress are usually way better than Tumblr, but there are a very few cases where Tumblr works much better. If it's a vlog/blog combo, Tumblr might work well, since it embeds videos pretty well. But if you're going with something of a narrative story, Blogger and Wordpress work a bit better.

Also, for "cool blogs" do you mean popular ones, or well-written ones? Yes, there is a difference. Do you want something more traditional or more abstract?

Well, I'm deciding to go with blogger. But, I would like to see maybe a well-written, popular one? Honestly, I wanna get a good look at where people went so if maybe you could suggest a traditional one and then one that is really bizarre?

I've gone for Blogger as well. It's got google integration to go along with all it's other features, so I recommend it over Wordpress.

How fast do blogs usually progress? Because I don't want to go too slow, but I definitely don't want to rush into it. I feel like for at least the first month or so I should build the character and what he is trying to do. Is that too long?

guitargodd97 wrote:

I'm about to start a vlog/blog and I have a really stupid question: Should I use blogspot or tumblr or something else?

Also, it would be cool if you could point me in the direction of some really cool blogs to maybe give me a little inspiration. I know where I want to go, just I'm trying to figure where to start.

Personally, I would recommend starting a tumblr account to collate your videos and any other material. If you're mixing blog and vlog, or if you're going to involve content from more than one YouTube channel, I'd say it was essential. Ideally the tumblr would be in-character. I suppose, for added authenticity, you could start it after a few YouTube videos/blog entries, when a need to set one up would emerge in the plot, but either or.

I intended to do this with 90DC, but in the end it never seemed necessary.

The only problem with Tumblr for me is throughout this series I don't want the main characters face to ever be shown. So, a lot of interaction with the audience would be through text. I don't know how that would go over with Tumblr.

Quote :

The only problem with Tumblr for me is throughout this series I don't
want the main characters face to ever be shown. So, a lot of
interaction with the audience would be through text. I don't know how
that would go over with Tumblr.

Do you mean in terms of how the Tumblr crowd (if there is such a thing?) would receive it? Because I'd be inclined to say "fuck 'em".

Otherwise, I dunno. Tumblr does let you put up text. Other than that, I have no idea. I suppose you could add the text as an image file, but I'm not sure I'd see much point. Blogspot might be closer to what you're after, but I don't know how that is for non-texty things.

Okay, I think I see what you are saying. A lot of my blog's character development is going to be closely tied into video sharing and images that he took. Text will progress his thoughts and the like so, I think I will try out Tumblr, but if I don't like how it turns out, I might backtrack and make the switch.

Until then, I gotta go get started.

guitargodd97 wrote:

Well, I'm deciding to go with blogger. But, I would like to see maybe a well-written, popular one? Honestly, I wanna get a good look at where people went so if maybe you could suggest a traditional one and then one that is really bizarre?

Dreams in Darkness, Seeking Truth, A Really Bad Joke, and Just Another Fool. Those are some of the earliest, most well-known, and most well-received (though people are a bit divided on JAF's minimalist storytelling). A lot of other popular ones are pretty much just literary trash and reading them isn't going to help you at all. There are some more really good ones out there, but they're generally not nearly as well-known.

Thank you, I will spend the next few days reviewing these blogs as I begin my own. Hopefully, one day my blog will be one discussed on this site too.

I would like to raise another thing guitar mentioned, about pacing the blog? I struggle with this also, so any advice anyone has would be greatly appreciated.

My advice: decide how often you want to update it (based on how often you practically can update it) and try to maintain that. That way you have the option to increase or decrease the pace when you need to.

I'd aim for updating more frequently than once a week, unless there's a reason.

I think I want to update too often. I'm constantly itching to put more stuff out because I've got a million and one thoughts and plot twists careering around my brain at 100mph, and I feel like I'm going to ruin it if I do it too quickly.

Yeah, I had this with a couple of videos; as soon as I'd posted them, I wished I'd waited. Self-discipline is a bastard.

My advice is to get the ideas down, but don't put them out right away. Just stash them somewhere.

I'm going to post at least one thing a day, whether an Image or a link to a song that my character is really "feeling" or just a simple little text blurb. I'm saving videos for big things, as my character wont show his face ever so it will need to be a big deal for him to get on camera in the first place, haha. But this has all be extremely helpful.

If you're doing daily updates, I strongly recommend writing more than you need, just in case.

Definitely. There's no way I'm having anything weird happening for a long time, maybe foreshadowing, but minimal at that. I already have this really cool thing planned out that is foreshadowing when things will begin in the series, heheheh

Etreo, pacing is just something you sort of have to learn. Reading other blogs will help with that some. Usually (though not always), you can tell which ones are paced well because they keep you clicking on update after update, while the ones that aren't paced well are a chore to slog through.

If I could give a bit of advice on pacing, though, it'd be this: focus on what's important, cut out or gloss over what isn't. Look at Marble Hornets. Jay goes through tons of footage and cuts out a LOT of it. Even when he's just walking along a path, he doesn't show you the whole thing. He shows bits and glimpses, and sometimes shows you things that might be relevant but probably aren't. Good pacing. Compare that to Windigo, where there's almost no relevant footage until about halfway through--and then it tries to pack the movie with too much story. Bad pacing.

Thanks, I think that I've just about cracked it now. Thanks to Fotzepolitic as well.

guitargodd97 wrote:

Definitely. There's no way I'm having anything weird happening for a long time, maybe foreshadowing, but minimal at that. I already have this really cool thing planned out that is foreshadowing when things will begin in the series, heheheh

My advice over this is: make sure that there is at least one thing that will be relevant per clip/entry. It doesn't matter if it's stuff that won't be relevant for a while, but make sure it's there. If you have a scene or an entry that appears to be mundane, you should at least know why it's being included.

The great thing about this is that people won't notice it. You can feed your audience key information without them knowing it. So even if an entry just tells you that a character has a sister, or has moved to a different town recently, it all helps to paint a picture.

I know that if you were doing a real blog, half the entries would just be whining about not having enough money to get hammered or whatever. But there's this thing called conservation of detail, best summarised as "the reason why you never see Jack Bauer take a shit". Even at their most immersiony, people want to be told a story, not just to follow some guy's life around with a camera. I'

d call this the difference between realism and reality - realism being when, while being chased, you trip and fall and get winded, meaning that your pursuer; and reality being when you get your sleeve caught on a doorknob, or walk into a room, forget why you came in, and then leave - but this is the sort of thing I can get way too Into.

I usually go with Tumblr, just because anything I do is going to rely heavily on photography. As far as speed, that really depends on what you're writing. You need to lay out a basic story at some point. Slender blogs should have the basic plot features that you usually associate with any fictional story (beginning, middle, and end), and if you can get those planned out before you start, then that's a lot better than winging it.

It might also be a good idea to avoid the typical model for a blog about slenderman. They often seem to go exactly the same way, and if you've ever noticed, very few of the more popular blogs follow the pattern (normal, slightly suspicious stuff, slenderman appears, character stops blogging because of death).

Is there any series that has occurred where the protagonist was just a little too curious about the world around him and that's why he ran into Slender Man? Oh and my blog is pretty normal for the time being, just a kid who is dealing with pretty normal things: Relationship drama, school troubles, that kind of thing. Little does he know....

I didn't want to start a new thread to ask this, and this one seems healthy.

Coug and I have been talking about the possibility of doing a sort of grand Slendy project, which would almost certainly involve neither of us as actors. We've had some ideas that we like, but I'm conscious that we're potentially creating a project idea that we have no chance of realising.

So I'm just wondering if people have had success with long-distance collaboration like this? Specifically with the actors being at some remove from the writers.