Blogs – Medium or Genre?

A few posts ago, in my discussion on the concept of a medium, I started out by mentioning a recent conversation with my friend Lazy. That conversation was all about the nature of blogs.

Lazy had stumbled upon references to a text on blogs and blogging by Swedish Academy member Horace Engdahl (without any luck in finding Engdahl's original text, at least not at that point), and had made the comment "why do 'old fogeys' think that blogging is a genre, not a format" (my translation from Swedish). To which I responded that it might, perchance, have something to do with the fact that there are format genres and content genres (as I have previously discussed in here). However, Lazy quickly responded that, as far as she could tell (from the secondary sources she had encountered), Engdahl's mistaken argument seemed to be that blogs were not just a genre, but a content genre; an assumption that would seem to border on the asinine, considering the variety of contents available in blogs.

However, what I found to be the really interesting question underlying this whole thing was this: what is a blog?

Whereas the suggestion that blogs are a content genre seems more than a little ridiculous, it is not beyond all reason that one could argue for their being a format genre (and, as such, a genre). Still, this notion did not fully satisfy me. While quite often reminiscent of genres such as the essay or the column, blogs clearly differ in their multi-medial capabilities (direct links to other pages, embedded video clips, etc). Thus I started questioning if blogs might not actually be a different medium (a question which in turn caused me to write that previous post on what a medium is).

So what is the answer? I honestly do not know and find myself torn. Maybe, as Lazy suggested, it is not so much a medium unto itself as it is an extension of the internet medium (call it WWW, web pages, or whatever). But then again, maybe it is not. Maybe it is an extension of the all but forgotten hypertext novel, albeit with the novel bit exchanged for other literary genres (such as the essay or the column). It is a tricky question and for all my delineations in my discussion on what constitutes a medium, I find myself unwilling to pin the nature of blogs down – at least as of yet.

Some Thoughts on Genre

I promised in a previous post to talk a little about genre...

Genre is many things, it would seem.

Roughly speaking, I would say that there are two major different types of genre: content genres and format genres. Perhaps this is more than a bit simplified, especially considering the great amount of critical literature on genre and genre studies, but nevertheless, I feel that it is a valid view.

Content genres are, of course, genres who are defined (at least primarily) by a specific content, say science fiction or fantasy. This is not to say that some such genres can't also have certain elements and conceits vis-a-vis format, but their primary definition relies on the content they display.

Format genres, on the other hand, are defined by their format, on how they shape a text, for instance, say like poetry or novels or sonnets. And now you probably stopped abruptly with a "wait a minute" on your lips. Yes, I did write both poetry and sonnet there (cleverly separated by the novels, don't you think), and no, I did not make a mistake nor am I so badly schooled as to be unaware of the fact that sonnets are in fact poetry. My point, however, was to bring us to another complication; i.e. that genres exist as an interrelated network of hierarchical structures.

What I mean is that both within content and format genres we have levels at which these genres operate. Poetry gives us a broad genre understanding of the work at hand, whereas sonnet gives us a much more specific one, bound by rhyme schemes and metre as it were. Both describe the same thing, but with different specificity. Equally I might also say that an alexandrine is poetry (since it is true), although I couldn't claim that an alexandrine were a sonnet, or vice versa.

Basically, it's a system of species and subdivision, much similar to the old adage "a horse is an animal, but not all animals are horses."

To complicate matter even further though, it is of course, at this point, worth saying that we can cross-breed genres on the same level and of the same type, and then of course add distinctions on various levels.

So, we could have a poem, narrative in nature (and I guess function), perhaps even using the specific format of the sonnet (by using a sequence of sonnets most likely to get enough space to properly have time and space to tell a story) which is used to tell a science fiction and crime cross-breed, where we might also even be able to define a specific SF subgenre (say space opera) and a specific crime subgenre (say forensic).

As such, the definitions can occur on a very fine level or a more general one, focus on the content or the format. They will be important for the writer to understand when he or she sets out to use specific genres, yet will also be interacting with the text in manners which proves to us that an author can never fully control which genre he or she is writing in. There will always be sliding and overlapping, and the reader or viewer will inevitably see things that he or she reads or views based on what he or she knows.

Which of course isn't to say that the author can sit back and simply not care.

Genre Writing and Writing Genres: Storytelling and Idiosynchrasies in Different Media and Genres

I recently wrote the post "Comics – A Medium Not a Genre", and I would like to follow up on that with a discussion on format, both in terms of medium and genre. The reason behind this is that there sometimes exists a flawed assumption that any good storyteller by default can tell a story in any medium or genre, and even worse, with equal skill. As if the art of storytelling was so universal as to negate any idiosyncrasies of medium or genre. True, there are universal elements, elements that can be used in many (if not all) media or genres, but there are nevertheless differences that cannot be overlooked.

A great poet need not make a good novelist, nor vice versa. By the same token, a great science fiction writer need not make a good fantasy writer. Nor does a writer in the medium of literature necessarily play well in the medium of film, or a film script writer well in the medium of comics.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that one thing excludes the other (there are plenty of writers who have mastered writing within several genres and within several media). All I'm suggesting is that it is by no means a given.

Even if we look at the most ordinary type of narrative prose fiction and compare some writers' efforts within the same type of content genre (I will be talking more about genre in an upcoming post), but in terms of novels and short stories, there are clearly some writers who are either better at the succinct format or at the longer one. The former might seem to drag his/her material out or even get lost in the effort when writing in the longer format, whereas the latter might seem cut short in the briefer format. In fact, it might not even be so clear cut a deal, not a question of good or bad as much as "not quite as good." The point, however, nevertheless stands.

And what this points to is that a writer must know and master the format. Whether the format is a genre or a medium (or even more likely an intersection of genres in a medium; say a science fiction thriller novel, citing a cross-breed of two content genres (SF and thriller), one format genre (the novel), told in the medium of literature), it is a question of knowing how that genre and/or medium functions.

In my post on comics as a medium (referred to in the opening line), I brought up the example of Angel After the Fall in order to show a difference between the media of comics and film. This difference was shown by my pointing to a failure on Brian Lynch's part to understand it in his writing a comics script that (at least partly) reads like a film script. The end result in this particular case, as stated, is not bad (not at all, I hasten to add), but there is no escaping the fact that the inclusion of Lynch's script reveals an intended effect that has not only failed to come across in the finished product; it never had a chance of coming across in that way in the first place, simply because comics aren't film (for details on the argument, see that earlier post).

From my own point of view, understanding a medium or a genre is part of the fun of tackling a particular medium or genre. Writing the script for a film or a comic should not be handled the same as writing a novel, nor even writing a comic script as you would write a film script. There are differences (sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle), but the writer needs to understand these. He or she needs to play to the strengths of the medium at hand, and be aware of any potential weaknesses.

For instance, adapting Joyce's famous stream of consciousness ending of Ulysses to film with an ongoing (near mad) voice-over narration would, most likely, be catastrophic in terms of film-making and most likely quite boring (and yes, there are, of course, those who would argue that Joyce's own version isn't exactly a whole lot of fun either, but bear with me). Translating the sequence to a visual stream of consciousness perspective, however, might better suit Joyce's idea in itself, not to mention work much better in the medium of film. And, while a director is clearly the artistic captain of the film-making ship, it behoves the script writer nevertheless to write for the medium at hand. Because why should he or she write a lengthy, wordy, voice-over adaptation of Joyce's monologue if it is to be thrown out from the get go? Why not think that little bit extra and write a set of visual cues for the director to stage and operate? After all, a script writer for a film is not writing a novel (something that should be even more abundantly clear in a case of adaptation as just hypothetically described), but a script for a film. Shouldn't that script in itself be a blueprint to a successful finished product? Shouldn't it be all about visualising just that?

Maybe it's just me, but it seems strange to happily attempt to write for a medium or a genre without contemplating what it is, how it works, and how you could make it work for your story.