What is a blog carnival?
- Thread starter nancy sv
- Start date
I was *just* wondering the same thing after reading about a Holiday Flash Fiction Carnival. I need to get up to speed on the lingo. 
I'm fairly new to the concept myself even though I wrote for the Flash Fiction Carnivals here at AW five times running. I did some digging and found a couple of useful links:
Blog Carnival website
What Wiki has to say about blog carnivals.
When Ben Solah began the Flash Fiction Carnival, the idea was to have a host present a theme for people to use as the basis for their flash. They can write in any genre as long as it's within whatever length parameters the host sets. The writing time for the carnivals here at AW has been two weeks. When the writers participating are done with their flash, they post it in their blog and send the permalink to the host along with the title and author name. If a writer does not have a blog, they can ask a friend to host their story for them or the blog host if they are amenable. I hosted a number of stories in my blog this month, for example, for the FFC III. Then participating writers read and comment on everyone's stories and everyone gets good feedback and more exposure for their writing and blog.
Ben's theme was BEGINNINGS. Sam's was MADNESS. Mine was TRANSFORM. BunnyGirl likes to host holiday themed flash carnivals in her writing blog. We're on the second one of those now. I'm guessing her next one will be for Valentine's Day.
I think that about covers it, but feel free to ask more questions. I more than likely missed something.
Blog Carnival website
What Wiki has to say about blog carnivals.
When Ben Solah began the Flash Fiction Carnival, the idea was to have a host present a theme for people to use as the basis for their flash. They can write in any genre as long as it's within whatever length parameters the host sets. The writing time for the carnivals here at AW has been two weeks. When the writers participating are done with their flash, they post it in their blog and send the permalink to the host along with the title and author name. If a writer does not have a blog, they can ask a friend to host their story for them or the blog host if they are amenable. I hosted a number of stories in my blog this month, for example, for the FFC III. Then participating writers read and comment on everyone's stories and everyone gets good feedback and more exposure for their writing and blog.
Ben's theme was BEGINNINGS. Sam's was MADNESS. Mine was TRANSFORM. BunnyGirl likes to host holiday themed flash carnivals in her writing blog. We're on the second one of those now. I'm guessing her next one will be for Valentine's Day.
I think that about covers it, but feel free to ask more questions. I more than likely missed something.
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OK, so let me get this straight... Someone (anyone) decides to host a carnival and they put the word out (where? anywhere?) and people write stories about the theme. Am I right so far? Then the host puts all those links on their blog and everyone comments on everybody else's blog. Is that it?
If I understand this correctly, I could decide to host a carnival. I would put out the theme - say... "Travel by Bike in Outer Space" and people would write stories about their adventures traveling to Mars or Pluto on their bikes. Then I would take those stories and put small snippets of each one on my blog and place links to the others. Is that all I, as the host, do?
If I understand this correctly, I could decide to host a carnival. I would put out the theme - say... "Travel by Bike in Outer Space" and people would write stories about their adventures traveling to Mars or Pluto on their bikes. Then I would take those stories and put small snippets of each one on my blog and place links to the others. Is that all I, as the host, do?
Nancy, you might want to check out the carnivals we've done already here at AW to get a better idea. The carnivals I've written for and the one I hosted germinated here.
When Ben did the first FFC he established that it should be open to everyone in any genre and that only the theme, as established by him, would be the common element. Well, there's the flash word limit aspect too, of course.
BunnyGirl types a bit about each story she hosts in her holiday-themed carnivals. I didn't do that. I just posted links. Now it's true that for the stories I hosted in my own blog for other writers I tried to include a bit of biographical information about the author at the beginning of each piece so as to differentiate each one from me a bit more, but I didn't do even one sentence synopses of the stories because with twenty writers that would've taken forever!
And sure, there's no reason you can't host one yourself. If you are too specific with your theme you might not get very many participants, but that's your decision. It's YOUR carnival, after all. To follow the theme of your interstellar example, you might want to theme a carnival by region. The various regions in the US and Canada, then Mexico, then Central and South America. You might go by country in Europe and Asia too, depending. I know that people do bike tours all over the world, so I can see this working very well for you. You may wish to make the point that you're seeking non-fiction accounts, unless of course you're open to fictional ones. That might be interesting, actually.
It's a lot of work. You have to confirm that the participants did author their pieces and then get the coding done for the links, but that turned out to be time consuming more than difficult.
Is this helpful to you at all?
When Ben did the first FFC he established that it should be open to everyone in any genre and that only the theme, as established by him, would be the common element. Well, there's the flash word limit aspect too, of course.
BunnyGirl types a bit about each story she hosts in her holiday-themed carnivals. I didn't do that. I just posted links. Now it's true that for the stories I hosted in my own blog for other writers I tried to include a bit of biographical information about the author at the beginning of each piece so as to differentiate each one from me a bit more, but I didn't do even one sentence synopses of the stories because with twenty writers that would've taken forever!
And sure, there's no reason you can't host one yourself. If you are too specific with your theme you might not get very many participants, but that's your decision. It's YOUR carnival, after all. To follow the theme of your interstellar example, you might want to theme a carnival by region. The various regions in the US and Canada, then Mexico, then Central and South America. You might go by country in Europe and Asia too, depending. I know that people do bike tours all over the world, so I can see this working very well for you. You may wish to make the point that you're seeking non-fiction accounts, unless of course you're open to fictional ones. That might be interesting, actually.
It's a lot of work. You have to confirm that the participants did author their pieces and then get the coding done for the links, but that turned out to be time consuming more than difficult.
Is this helpful to you at all?
Thanks Valeenc!! Yes - that helped. I'm not sure I really want to host a carnival, but I did want to understand what they are all about. And I'll keep it on the back burner and may decide to host one at some point in the future.
I didn't get a chance to do info about each of the stories in my holiday carnival, although I still might go back and update it. My ISP was flaking out last night and once I realized I didn't have a stable connection I figured I better get it posted any ol' way and worry about the rest later.
Carnivals are just a nice way to help each other out by showcasing each others' work. And yeah, I'd be all over one with a bike theme!
Carnivals are just a nice way to help each other out by showcasing each others' work. And yeah, I'd be all over one with a bike theme!
I do think it would be neat to have lots of biking stories!! I'll have to think about hosting one...
I'd like to add that carnival don't have to be just fiction. Blog Carnival lists carnivals where people submit posts/articles about almost any topic. Just a couple off the list:
- Pilates
- Traffic
- Earning Money Online
the more I read about these, the more I like the idea. It would be great to get info from lots of different people about one topic!
That's why I sent Nancy to Blog Carnival and Wiki, TB. There she could find more complete answers since my only experiences have been with flash fiction carnivals.
Also my suggestion about a biking themed carnival was, in my mind and I thought I conveyed such, for non-fiction works.
I'm sorry if you didn't understand what I meant. I'll try to be more clear in the future.
