After you’ve got your idea of a Character and his/her blogging style, and you’ve registered him/her an email account (or a forwarder) and found him/her a free or paid host, you can finally start blogging.
Although, before you can actually begin with blog post writing, you need to prepare and publish two important pages:
- Disclaimer
- About Me
Let’s analyse the importance of these two pages, to see why they are to be your priority.
1. Disclaimer
You can view an example of Character Disclaimer here on my Ambrosia Echo’s blog: http://ambry.phinkable.org/me/disclaimer/.
The purpose of a Disclaimer is to inform your readers about the fictionality of the owner of a certain website, by stating who the creator of the Character is (YOURSELF!) and why you gave your Character a web life through blogging. This page needs to be linked either from the sidebar or from the Credits or About Me page, so that it is visible to readers and, at the same time, it does not disturb the ‘magic of pretending’. In a few words: be honest to your visitors, but don’t break the spell of fiction.
2. About Me
As Nigel Watts puts it in his “Writing a Novel – and getting it published“:
Characterisation refers to the visible attributes and history of a person. This is often the starting point of getting to know the cast of your story. What do they look like? What is their biography? What star sign are they? What are their likes and dislikes? It is useful to write a profile of each main character in this way – listing as many attributes as you can. Their past, too: what sort of school did they go to? Do they have brothers and sisters? What sort of upbringing did they have? There are enormously important formative influences in the lives of real people. If you want to create ‘real’ characters, they need a personality and a history.
In a short, concise and to-the-point paragraph, Nigel Watts tells us what a Character’s “About Me” page (or his/her profile for a novel we write) should inform readers about:
- Biography
- School, Star Sign, etc. (a basic profile)
- Likes and Dislikes
- Family
- Upbringing, Education
Of course we can add or remove details according to our Character’s style and personality, but what we need to remember is that “if you want to create ‘real’ characters, they need a personality and a history“. They need to be as much alive as we are.
We are our Characters’ eyes, hands, brain; their physicality.
As soon as you start blogging in the shoes of your Character, you will realize how much benefit the already written About Me page will bring to your “online acting” (yes, a role-player IS an actor).