Blogging upside down - or inside out?

Ok, so we all know there are important rules for blogging, right?

Of course not! Blogging was borne of broken rules ("you can't publish a Web page without a lot of specialized training"). In fact, I think there ought to be a Blog Scouts of America that issues merit badges for breaking rules.

But I digress ...

It is true that most often blogs accumulate in LIFO order - last in, first out - the most current entry stacks on top of previous entries. So the most visible thing is always the newest thing. It's not a rule - but it is a common practice. But that is not necessarily the most effective presentation for every project.

What if you wanted to write a blog-novel, for example? Story-telling depends on sequencing - something happens first, second, then third. You would want your reader to see the beginning at the start of her experience in your blog - so you might want to arrange the entries "upside down" - the oldest first, the newest at the bottom. So a novel could be written and published on the fly - chapter by chapter. Or sub-chapter by sub-chapter. And always available in the correct (by the author's intent) order.

Of course, each entry also has its own unique address, so a reader that gets hooked on the story could save her place and continue reading after an interruption - or after the next chapter is written.

Groups of authors - combined with commentors - might create some form of fiction that is rather new. Certainly rather different. And of course, thosse links - ah, those links! Assemble the links in a list to form the order in which the entries should be read (if it's something other than top-down) and you have another story in another sequence. Assemble the link lists in a variety of ways - and see how many sensible stories might be constructed from the same set of chapters or entries!

Wiki-like, but with the structure of a blog. Many (most?) blogging applications actually give you the choice - in the set-up - for how you want new entries to be arranged - top or bottom.

Just a thought ...