Twitter is not especially well-known for fiction. But maybe that will change. Writers are embracing Twitter for the creative challenge imposed by its 140-character limit, for its real-time functionality, and for its interactivity. Twitterature, or Twiction, or whatever else you’d like to call it, is not just a means of reaching today’s ADD-raddled reader–it’s a new medium entirely, spawning new ways to create and interact with fiction.
So without further ado, here’s a short guide to try innovative and interesting Twitter fiction projects, past and present:
Electric Literature’s highly anticipated “microserialization” of Rick Moody’s novel begins today, and is definitely worth a read. Rather than chopping up a pre-written story into 140-character bursts as many other Twitter novelists tend to do, Moody wrote his novel Some Contemporary Characters expressly for Twitter and embraced the character limit as a source of creative inspiration. Each section of the novel comes every 10 minutes and lasts until December 2nd.
Last Bloomsday, two Ulysses enthusiasts took the novel’s 10th chapter, Wandering Rocks, and retraced all the events of that day on Twitter. Videogame designers Ian Bogost and Ian McCarthy registered 54 of the novel’s characters as Twitter users, who all Tweeted about what they were doing on June 16, 1904 at the correct fictional times. (Old project, since June 16 is long past at this point, but still worth a read. Here’s hoping Bogost and McCarthy will revive the project in some way next Bloomsday.)
Welcome to this week’s Free Book Friday, wherein we give you the best titles in indie publishing for the low low price of nothing. Congrats to last week’s winner Scott Kennedy for snagging a copy of Floodmarkers by Nic Brown.
This week, we are giving away a copy of Osama Van Halen by Michael Muhammad Knight.Amazing Ayyub, an Iranian Shi’ite skinhead, and his sidekick Rabeya have hijacked Matt Damon, demanding that Hollywood depict Muslims in a positive light—”just one movie where we’re not these two-dimensional al Qaeda stereotypes.” But Damon’s concerned they’re playing into that same terrorist paradigm and furthering a neo-conservative perception of Islam. Meanwhile, Ayyub embarks on a mission to rid taqwacore of a Muslim pop-punk band, Shah 79. Along the way he makes himself invisible, escapes punk-eating zombies in a mosque off the desert highway, runs into some psychobilly jinns, and finds himself face to face with his creator, the author…a riotous journey of enlightenment. (But not all hilarious: At the end of the novel, Knight is decapitated by Rabeya.) You can read an excerpt of Osama Van Halenon the Soft Skull Press website.
"Come over here, Sugar - and type me something sexy."
In my sophomore year at NYU, I was writing a feature screenplay that required two types of scenes that I had never written before – the fight sequence and the sex scene. Since I had less experience in the former, I decided to tackle it first (ha) and get it over with. The fight sequence turned out to be incredibly detailed. It was different, interesting and moved the story forward. I proudly brought it into class that week and we did a read-through of the scene. My predominantly red-blooded, action-movie-loving, male classmates really got into it. They physically reenacted the scenes and asked me if personal experience inspired any of it. I shared the story of the one fight I had ever been in: at thirteen, a girl slapped me across the face with a spoonful of ice cream to impress the boy she liked. Long story short, I won the fight and we were banned from our local Häagen-Dazs.
Armed with the confidence that my classmates had given me, I returned home to write what I thought was the easier half of the ordeal – the sex scene. After typing hours worth of blush-worthy, shuddery scenarios and being overly conscious that my classmates may associate what I wrote with my personal experience (or try to reenact it), I ultimately rejected it all and opted to have my characters simply enter a bedroom and shut the door. I know… I totally wussed out. I rationalized that implication and cliché was the way to go. A screenwriter or even a playwright writes with the knowledge that their work will be seen. If your actors are hot enough, who cares that the sex is clichéd?
So what does sex look like as a novelist? Read more »
Old News: Some of the greatest writers in the world were drug addicts, alcoholics, and totally depressed out of their minds. New News: Someone decided to scientifically figure out why.
University of New South Wales Psychology Professor Joe Forgas has done a lot of research around the whole “are sad writers are better writers?” debate, and has decided that bad moods could actually get you closer to your Ulysses-esque masterpiece.
According to Good.is, when Forgas made people watch either a funny movie or a film about Cancer, the people who watched the depressing stuff “produced arguments that were more concrete and therefore more persuasive than the happy campers.” Read more »
Aaaand to help get you through the rest of the week (which I guess is today, with Thanksgiving and all), your pick-me-up. This has been making the rounds for a few days now, but I don’t care. Because it’s awesome. If you’ve seen it already, watch it again: Read more »
Remember that amazingly awesome computer game Oregon Trail?
Maybe it’s because I’ve been up too long, but to me it seems like the path to publication is a lot like the Oregon Trail:
You Load Your Wagon
How many oxen do you need? How many shotgun pellets?
When writing, the oxen are the projects you’re working on, and the shotgun pellets are your knowledge base. You can kill more buffalo (or squirrels/rabbits if you are in a non-grassy area) with more bullets. As a writer, you will be better supplied if you read widely, try writing in multiple genres to discover your best voice, and research individual publishers and agents to discover their needs.
And like publishing, sometimes it just takes that one ox to get you through to the next part of the game.
Bella was wandering through the forest, talking to herself as she went, till, on turning a sharp corner, she came upon two little men, so suddenly that she could not help starting back, but in another moment she recovered herself, feeling sure they that they must be real.
They were standing under a tree, each with an arm round the other’s neck, and though they had looked very nearly the same from far away, now that she was closer Bella could see that they were rather different indeed, for one of them very pale-skinned and had large, pointy teeth, and the other’s face was covered entirely in russet-coloured fur. “Oh, my!” Bella said to herself. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a stranger-looking pair in all my life!”
The little man with the sharp teeth stood very still, and if it wasn’t for his twin distractedly scratching his own fur—”As though he has fleas!” Bella thought with a shudder—she would have quite forgot they were alive. She was just inching her way past the pair, doing her best to keep well away from the flea-ridden one, when she was startled by a voice coming from the little man with the very sharp teeth.
“My name is Edward. And this is Jacob. Who are you?” he said. “And would you tell me, please, why do you smell so very good?” Read more »
Welcome to this week’s Free Book Friday, wherein we give you the best titles in indie publishing for the low low price of nothing. Congrats to last week’s winner Lilian for snagging a copy of From Kingsbridge to Carnasie by The New York Writers Coalition.
This week, we are giving away a copy of Floodmarkers by Nic Brown. Lystra, North Carolina: a fictional town full of very real people who survive the attack of Hurricane Hugo and then find their bearings in the aftermath—often in wild and hilarious ways. Read more »
Have zombies taught us nothing? Resurrection is just… never a good idea (unless of course you’re that guy whose resurrection resulted in the celebration of Easter).
Case in point: the musical television drama. If you didn’t know such a genre existed, it’s for good reason – these shows have incredibly short life spans and it really takes a very special person to stomach a single episode. In fact, I had pushed everything I’ve viewed of this genre into the same dark little closet in my brain that I keep bad break-ups and embarrassing moments. It wasn’t until a recent conversation I had with Julia that I remembered such a genre existed. Julia has quite a taste for the cop show genre. She (like many others these days) is also really into Glee, Fox network’s musical comedy. As a business school alumna, Julia understands the value of her time and doing things efficiently, thus pitched the idea of a musical cop drama so she and others with similar taste could save time by watching these two genres in one place. To her shock/horror/dismay/amusement, I told her that like most things in TV – it’s been done before.
Cop Rock. Yes, Cop Rock. If you’ve never heard of it before – it’s exactly what the title suggests. Hailed as one of the worst television shows of all time, Cop Rock’s greenlight continues to baffle us nearly two decades later (unless of course, you’re Peter Bowker and erroneously thought resurrecting the genre with Hugh Jackman may mean a better shot at success).
When Julia and I parted ways that night, we left the conversation with a lot of unanswered questions. Below is our iChat transcript of our attempt to wrap our minds around the existence of Cop Rock (with embedded videos for your viewing pleasure) and if or how this genre could succeed today: Read more »
Electric Literature’s highly anticipated “microserialization” of Rick Moody’s novel begins today, and is definitely worth a read. Rather than chopping up a pre-written story into 140-character bursts as many other Twitter novelists tend to do, Moody wrote his novel Some Contemporary Characters expressly for Twitter and embraced the character limit as a source of creative inspiration. Each section of the novel comes every 10 minutes and lasts until December 2nd.
Last Bloomsday, two Ulysses enthusiasts took the novel’s 10th chapter, Wandering Rocks, and retraced all the events of that day on Twitter. Videogame designers Ian Bogost and Ian McCarthy registered 54 of the novel’s characters as Twitter users, who all Tweeted about what they were doing on June 16, 1904 at the correct fictional times. (Old project, since June 16 is long past at this point, but still worth a read. Here’s hoping Bogost and McCarthy will revive the project in some way next Bloomsday.)
This week’s Free Book Friday is sponsored by 
A 1910 privately printed edition book of William Carlos Williams poetry, valued at $25,000…
Remember that amazingly awesome computer game Oregon Trail?
Have zombies taught us nothing? Resurrection is just… never a good idea (unless of course you’re that guy whose resurrection resulted in the celebration of Easter).
Newsflash: 
