I have along time ago when I was a kid. I don't know if that is a real type of Writing style. I've Written one before at Bcreek.com which doesn't exist anymore. I don't mean Diary of Anne Frank. Becuase that's NOn fictional. I"m talking about fictional diaries.
I did a three page ish one for an English assignment once. Looking back at it now it was incredibly poorly written and the storyline was awful. It was three entries by this kid who thought her aunt was a witch. Think I got a B/C for it but either way having it marked and graded put me off the idea and I am yet to return to the world of fictional diary entries. There's some decent ones out there though - Bridget Jones being the first example I can think of. What was your fictional diary about?
I never used to keep a fictional diary as such, but I used to use certain 'artistic licenses' when I was writting about things which had happened, so that they were more interesting, exciting, sad, or whatever. It was like a mixture of real life with my own improvements made
I had alot of them. I don't remember. There was a certain way to start it and it was supposed to go on and on but I kept making new ones. And we had people join in on the diary as if they were a part of the diary as differant characters. It was fun.
I did when I was a lot younger, and that is what I based my first novel on, now I look back at it like an eternal (almost) outline and because of that I know my characters REALLY well by now.
I did one 4 years ago. It was about a guy in a zombie apocalypse and he recaps his days before going to bed with a group of people surviving with him. My main goal was to emphasize how you need to keep your guard up at all times and can leave no room for error. I wanted to build up the anxiety right from the get go, but have the characters feel more comfortable day by day, and then towards I think like Day 23, one character makes a mistake with half their group being lost to zombies and their hideout overran. Unfortunately at 17 years old I wasn't that great of a writer yet so it was hard to execute my ideas onto paper. I may revisit it one day again.
I tried once. Wrote about a girl who went to a demon hunter school, but as with my real diary, I quit fairly quickly. For some reason I was never into diaries.
I can't remember the name of the book. It was pretty popular. I think it was, "Go Ask Alice" or something along those lines. But I think people found out recently that it was fictional, and written by somebody just trying to keep kids off drugs. And if you ask a moron holocaust denier, The Diary of Anne Frank. Haha.
I'm showing my age when the first one I thought of was 'Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾', which was excellent (and caused a ton of diary novel copycats). Probably because of all those weak copycats the idea has never appealed to me - they made it obvious how using a diary is really a cheap trick to make the reader associate with the MC (since you read it as though you were the writer). So it felt gimmicky, although it could be just because the copycats were that bad, and I'm being mean to the concept - there could be plenty of room for more. I did try to write a fictional blog once, but got bored of it pretty quickly. I like to know where my plot is going, and found it hard work writing it on the fly like that. Not quite the same thing I suppose.
The novel Frankenstein is somewhat a series of fictional diary entries. Although they are not explicitly diary entries they are a series of personal letters.
The idea has never appealed to me either, although I think that's mostly due to the fact that I don't know how to write a diary for my own mundane life never mind one for someone with an interesting or exciting life! Although I do remember reading a childrens' book by Ian Whybrow which was from the perspective of a young wolf in diary form, and if I recall correctly it worked quite well, but then again I mustn't of been much more than 10 at the time; so I can't be completely sure of myself.
LOL. Are you J.L. Bourne? He wrote the "Day by Day Armageddon" series that is a daily account of the zombie apocalypse. He ends up at "Hotel 23". It is pretty strange if you haven't read it and and wrote the sentence, "...but have the characters feel more comfortable day by day, and then towards I think like Day 23, one character makes a mistake with half their group being lost..."
I honestly have never read it at all, and when I read this post I threw my hands in the air saying to myself "f*** the idea has already been used." And it wasn't exactly Day 23, but around that day.
I never seriously considered writing one. But now that you mention it, I might just give writing one a try.
Dracula was also written in diary format, although it was more excerpts from various diaries belonging to the main characters.
There's a really good fictional diary I remember reading about somebody called Adrian Mole. Apart from that I haven't seen any, to be honest i've never even thought of doing one but the idea appeals to me
If this is about novels correct me if I'm wrong, but Emily Bronte used a diary as one of the narrators in her 'Wuthering Heights'.
Yes, I have an online journal (very popular actually and haven't been writing enough post recently) where I keep the time, place and (sometimes) situation fictional, but the emotions dipicted are real, as in, if I broke up with somebody today and sulking, I make up a scene to show how I feel. I didn't do this to cheat the readers, but mainly to protect my anonymity as I am a closeted gay. I find writing this journal very very helpful in my story writing, and may be someday I'll write a novel based on the journal/blog.
My book Diary of a Public Radio Slave is in diary format. It is available on Amazon as an ebook for $2.99 or as a paperback for $9.99. Here is a link: Diary of a Public Radio Slave
Tried this once, I liked the idea, but found actually writing the events to be more fluid. The Things they Carried pulls this off well.
Once as part of an assignment. I found it too easy to start simply telling, rather than showing, the story when writing it as a diary.
Yes, I have a rather lengthy journal for a fictional character that I played in an RPG. He lasted several RL years, so the journal became understandably long. Final word count was something in the realm of 128,000 words. Definitely the longest work of fiction I've ever "accidentally" created.
I tried writing a story which was set in a fictional world during a war that went on for eight years. It was written using a diary format between six different characters, but also included scenes written where the characters (in real-time) would follow through with a particular mission or side-story. Being written while I was in high school, it sucked then and sucks now. But having written a 2000-year history about the fictional world, I can't let it go to waste. One day, I'll get back onto it and develop the hell out of it.
