I desperately wish that John’s blog would become canon-compliant and serve as an actual secondary storytelling device instead of this random whatever-the-intern-feels-like-posting thing that we want to love but just can’t trust.
OH BUT IT DOES!!!!! Man, I wish I could find the link to the post I read recently that finally confirmed this for me, as well. Because I hadn’t known before. A woman writes it, but I forgot her name. She gave an interview and explained that she sits down with the writers, they tell her what should be in the blog, discuss ideas, she then sits down and writes it and presents them with the final version, after which they may comment on details and change a few things if necessary. IT’S TOTALLY CANON-COMPLIANT!!!!! DGSDGHSLDG LGHSLDGHLSDGHSLDGhSd
I’d love to see that, because I haven’t seen much that indicates they put this much co-writing effort into it. First and biggest thing are the huge date discrepancies! I searched for it and didn’t find anything… if anyone knows of it, please pass it along. 🙂
No, John’s blog is written by Joe Lidster.
In an interview, he had this to say about the process of authoring a post for one of the tie-in blogs:
Were you given a lot of instructions by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat or were you free to create the blogs the way you liked?
It’s very much a team thing. I tend to have a meeting with Steven, Mark, Sue and Jo Pearce (who’s responsible for the actual websites) very early on where we talk about the three stories and how the online material can complement them. Jo knows all the techy stuff so she’ll say what we can and can’t do – and will make suggestions about new things we can try. After that, I’ll usually type up my thoughts and everyone will agree a way forward. Then it’s pretty much down to me – I’ll write it all up and I’m very lucky in that I get a lot of freedom in how and what I write. It then has to be signed off and there might be notes on specific bits. Then it goes over to the clever techy people who make it look like a real blog.
From this interview: http://sherlocknyc.tumblr.com/JoeLidster
So, his stuff does get approved, but he also had these to add:
Was “The Improbable One” Moriarty?
No. He’s my own character. Who knows where he’ll go?
and
There’s a discussion about the date of the Fall. On the blog, the last post is from June 16 but the date doesn’t match with the facts in the episode, like the childrens’ holidays. Is it intentional or is it just the kind of thing that the producers just miss?
No, it wasn’t intentional, sorry. It’s just one of those things that slipped through. Trying to get all the dates to fit is one of the hardest parts of the job. It’s one of those things that is nobody’s priority so I have to scour the scripts for any clues I can find and try to get everyone to agree where possible. I reckon it’s probably down to Moriarty hacking the blog.
So he gets a fair amount of creative freedom to do things like invent his own characters, and while they do try to make their facts line up, the quality control is not flawless. (Though he says he does get the scripts, so he’s not making it up out of whole cloth.)