Blogging – as a means of dialogue
Last week I wrote about what it means to blog. I’ve actually received some good feedback from that. Though, I think the entry is not totally complete. In that spirit, I add to the dialogue...
Specifically, when going about the internet and reading people’s blogs, there is often a sub-text to the variety of blogs that exist in the greater interwebbythingamajig. These blogs actually interconnect. Not literally, not directly; not in the sense that you can look to the left of my blog and see links to other websites, but rather, in the sense that there is a level of communication that exists between various authors of blogs.
That may not be clear.
Let’s look at books. You may not see it, but there is a dialogue that goes on between authors. This dialogue is what gives people the various genres in publishing. You get general fiction because a lot of people are writing in a very general way… these are, frequently, the books that do not have specific genre defining characteristics.
So, fantasy as a genre. This starts, really, with J.R.R. Tolkein and his Lord of the Rings series of books (to include The Hobbit). This is, effectively, the first fantasy novel, though there are others that also qualify in this genre from the same era; and caused people to look at the genre and write about it.
Writing a fantasy novel, in effect, is a response to Tolkein and other writers who have pioneered the field.
Science Fiction is also relatively new. Fantasy is an offshoot from Science Fiction and, in most bookstores, is filed among the science fiction.
Now, extend this to specific elements. Someone writes a story that touches upon using the American Old West as a setting for effective sword and sorcery rather than medieval Europe. Someone else reads this story and realizes the literary impact of the subject matter, and decides to write a novel along the same lines. One author writes in response to another author.
One more example:
Yevgeny Zamyatin was a Russian writer. He wrote We. The book We inspired a lot of authors in the west to respond to the idea of Communism and its advancement through literary methods. These authors include George Orwell (1984 and Animal Farm), Ayn Rand (Anthem), and Aldous Huxley (Brave New World). In each instance, the author in question is writing a response to Zamiatan. They each had their own take on the same subject matter: Communism and Socialism is bad.
Blogs are a similar form of dialogue. Often, this dialogue is a lot closer to home and more direct, but the dialogue exists and is extant.
One of those means of conversation is in the distribution of memes through bloggers. A meme is a series of questions that cover information that is not publicly known about an individual. When tagged with a meme, the outcome is that you are meant to tell the world who tagged you, fill out the meme and post it, and then tag other bloggers with that same meme.
The outcome is a focused conversation on specific subject material.
However, in the blogging world, when you read someone else’s blog and find something they are writing about, you, as blogger, can respond to what another blogger wrote. One dialogue that has been going on, lately, is the secret homosexual characters in novels. This was spawned by J.K. Rowling announce on her U.S. book tour that Dumbledore was homosexual. Fans, of other authors, have asked whether or not they have characters that are homosexual but not in a way that is applicable directly to the plot or story.
The answer to this question, by at least one author, has generated a response in the news as well as among other bloggers.
Does it matter? Not really, personally, I don’t know that I would have read the Harry Potter series of books had I known about Dumbledore early on, personally, I wouldn’t have read the series of books and would have lost out on a well written, very creative, story. Dumbledore, in hindsight, doesn’t change the nature of the story nor does it cause me to rethink the series; his personal choices do not effect the super-story that is taking place with Harry at its center. Harry’s choices matter to me, not the supporting characters. Dumbledore, though prominent, was a supporting character.
That last paragraph was an addition to the dialogue that has been going on.
Lets say, however, that someone who has a website decides to talk about … oh … I don’t know… let’s say, relationships. For whatever reason, the five types of romantic communication strikes a chord with me. Without asking permission, I choose to offer my own take suggesting that a person read C.S. Lewis’s The Four Loves and Eric Fromm’s book The Art of Loving as either supporting or dissenting to the original blog topic.
My writing does two things.
- I get to write my own ideas on the subject at hand based off of what I am reading; and
- I get to put those thoughts out there for someone else, possible the original writer, to read and respond to.
This is what dialogue is. When you speak to someone else, you expect them to respond. When a person does not respond, they either tacitly agree with you, or they disagree with you and choose not to respond, which then makes the first option true. A response, though, allows for ideas to be shared in such a way that other people can clarify what I am saying, append what I am saying, or contradict what I am saying.
One of the points to blogging is, specifically, to create conversations about different things. Writing is one of the topics I choose to discuss (In Order to Write); I also, when it is applicable, choose to discuss what I’ve written (Alicia Grey, Cassandra West, Clockwork Princess, and others); I also have other discussion sites going.
The blog, then, is a place where you can discuss something that you feel passionately about and want to share with other people. It is appropriate, when reading someone else's blog, to write a post on your own site in response to theirs, and even more appropriate when you link back to that site for emphasis or as a means of pointing people to where you got your idea. This is why I often link to the articles I am reading that launch me into an essay on politics or other things.
John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West
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