The Great American Tweet

Twitter Fiction, if it can be described as a single entity, derives its uniqueness as being a subset of electronic literature delivered specifically via the Twitter platform. It affords the author the advantage of the platform: an opportunity to connect with some of the 330 million users who visit monthly and (presumably? hopefully? potentially?) consume content.

Twitter Fiction

The printing press was a bad idea.  Self-publishing was a bad idea.  E-Books are going to be the death of books, and now cellphones or tablets are squashing out both.  Writers are now either getting on the Twitter Train, or condemning it.  Twitter Fiction seems to be another process of story-evolution.  It’s happening.  It doesn’t mean that literature and writing is a dying art, it just means that it is changing.  There are entire website dedicated to twitter fiction.  There is even an annual Twitter Fiction Festival.   

“The concept of Twitter fiction may seem superficial to many because it can literally be done by anyone and, quite frankly, it goes against the established realms of highbrow literary art that dominate most lauded magazines.” (Santully, n.d.)  Santully then points out that the time invested in writers and readers in Twitter Fiction vs. full stories evens out.  It could take about fifteen minutes to write a twitter fiction story, and thirty seconds to read it.  Whereas it takes much longer to write and then read full stories.  Santully also notes that as he was getting started as an author, and on Twitter, he found that submitting Twitter Stories actually promoted stronger feedback from editors, with more detail, because they can easily pinpoint what they do and do not like, or their thoughts on the piece.

The youth of today are programmed to share stories and thoughts in 140 characters or less.  They adapt to saying as much as possible with very little space, in the hopes of validations through favourites and retweets.  Many magazines looking for short stories prefer submissions of 1,500 words or less (Santully, n.d.).  I can’t tell if the medium is influencing the message, or the message is influencing the medium, but the way to deliver stories is evolving, and people are evolving with it.  Melissa Terras, a Digital Humanities professor calls it a different type of art form, with a different experience and new constraints (Goldhill, 2015).

Favourites like choose your own adventures are even going from books, to online websites, to Twitter.  One author has created an online choose your own adventure on Twitter, with many possible outcomes, combined with links to websites.  He states that there are thousands of interactions with fans.

The interview with the author is in the first 8-9 minutes.  If the video is not showing up, a link to the interview is here.

Authors can also use Twitter Fiction to not only help them get published with a full story, but to promote upcoming book releases, like author David Mitchell did with his piece of Twitter Fiction.

Author Robert Swartwood says (Crum, 2015) that a story should do four things:

1.       Tell a story

2.       Be entertaining

3.       Be thought provoking

4.       Invoke an emotional response

If a story can do that in a few tweets of 140 characters (or even less than that, such as ‘Six Word Stories’ examples can be found here) why should it matter?  It forces authors to expanding their writing skills, reevaluate how to deliver something creative and creates very concise forms of writing.  

I still prefer print and ebooks, twitter stories end far too soon for my liking, but I could see how it would be easy to get lost in a website that hosts twitter stories, and comb through dozens of them in one sitting.  

References

274: Twitter fiction, designing a grief app, the dangers of digital metaphor and more(2015) Available at: http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2651112278 

Crum, M. (2015) Here’s how you write A short story on Twitter. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/07/twitter-fiction_n_7205686.html

Goldhill, O. (2015) Is Twitter fiction the new literary genre?  Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/09/the-rise-of-twitter-fiction/404761/

Santulli, A. (n.d.). Consider Twitter fiction. Available at: http://www.thereviewreview.net/publishing-tips/consider-twitter-fiction

 Six word stories. Available at: http://www.sixwordstories.net/

The role of aggregation in Twitter storytelling

The transitory nature of Twitter makes it difficult to tell stories, whether fictional or otherwise. While there are tools (ScribbleLive, CoverItLive, Storify) to collect tweets, an editor is required to aggregate the work. 

In the example of Elliot Holt’s #TwitterFiction [sic] project, the story is narrated by three characters, each with their own Twitter handle. Indeed, the permalinks to Holt's tweets are not active anymore, so the story only exists in its aggregated form. 

A screenshot of Holt's story on Penguin Press' Storify.

Holt’s story was part of the Twitter Fiction Festival and hosted by Penguin Press. In the finished project, an editor from Penguin has aggregated the content into a Storify page. Should the editor be getting credit for their role in the story’s creation?

I agree with Slate’s David Pierce that:

"In most ways, the Story Time Twitter reading experience is awful. You’re waiting for tweets, as the author painstakingly tries to contort a long story into some indeterminate number of 140-character chunks. Tweets get lost in your timeline unless you’re vigilantly paying attention.”

Though I'm a transliterate reader, I find it difficult to follow a narrative without an aggregated story. Therefore, Twitter fiction presents a problem of accessibility: not all readers have the time/means to enjoy the story live. Typically, I tune into the Twitter story well after it has unfolded. Take for example, the tale of Aziah King (NSFW). I would venture that this aggregation is counter to Twitter’s nature as a place for brief texts written quickly in a casual manner. 

As Rita King puts it, "Twitter story experiments aren’t shackled by the linear requirements of paper”. Though I applaud the progressive nature of Twitter stories, I still cling to narratives in print. This recalls our reading of How the Page Matters by Bonnie Mak. To me, the stories still ends at “the edges of the cognitive space” of the page (p. 13).

In Andrew Fitzgerald’s TED talk "Adventures in Twitter fiction", he provides an intriguing graphic of Twitter interactions. This web is so wide, it is impossible to extricate any one user or story.

Reviewing @magicandrew 's TED talk https://t.co/PwQjs4xzN5 Fascinated by graph of verified #twitter users #NMN pic.twitter.com/ZLhoNzXiiG

— Gwyneth Dunsford (@gwynduns) January 27, 2016

I think this graphic is an apt metaphor for the multimodality of Twitter. In contrast, print fiction is distinctly one dimensional. That said, print media is innovating and expanding its boundaries.

It makes me think of the early 2000s, when newspapers tried to garner more web traffic by starting printing QR codes alongside stories. Little coded boxes would appear next to the text, encouraging readers to scan the code and connect with further information online. This technology was cumbersome at best: you had to download a separate app to read the codes. Of course, now QR codes are somewhat redundant thanks to advances in near field technology (NFC).

References

Holt, E. (n.d.). @ElliottHolt's #TwitterFiction Story (with image, tweets). Retrieved January 27, 2016, from https://storify.com/penguinpress/elliotholt-s-twitterfiction-story

King, R. (2013, May 22). How Twitter Is Reshaping The Future Of Storytelling. Retrieved January 27, 2016, from http://www.fastcoexist.com/1682122/how-twitter-is-reshaping-the-future-of-storytelling

Mak, B. (2011). How the page matters. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Pierce, D. (2016, January 22). Gather Around, Folks, for the Brilliance of Story Time Twitter. Retrieved January 27, 2016, from http://www.wired.com/2016/01/gather-around-folks-for-the-brilliance-of-story-time-twitter

Fitzgerald, A. [TED]. (2013, October 11). Andrew Fitzgerald: Adventures in Twitter fiction [video file]. Retrieved January 27, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6ZzmqDMhi0