Comments on: Electric Literature Vol. 3: Twitter Fiction Featured in Lit Mag

By: George

George — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 12:25:05 +0000

I think in order to make a “twitter novel” work the format has to be changed a little. This piece of twitter fiction I found is really interesting: http://twitter.com/jaynakamura Basically the premise is that a celebrity living in the year 2045 is tweeting backwards in time to 2010. So it is not a regular narrative, but it is still fiction. Really interesting!

By: Icy Sedgwick

Icy Sedgwick — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 10:41:27 +0000

They’ve been publishing Twitter novels in Japan for a good few months now. There’s been a trend toward ‘micro fiction’ in this country too for a while – there’s even a website dedicated to ‘mobile interactive fiction’. I guess you have to keep with the times.

By: Erik

Erik — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 23:06:01 +0000

The entire issue is great, and for what it’s worth, I almost didn’t want to like the Moody piece, but like any good story, I think it will suck you in. There’s a lot of subtext created by the spaces between the tweets that fill it out surprisingly well.

By: sherrie

sherrie — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 19:27:00 +0000

I am a traditionalist, which means I’ll die one day and my opinions will go with me.

I like a magazine to be a magazine, a book to to be a book, and a Twitter feed to be full of short, pithy statements and helpful links – and not necessarily tell me a story. My favorite Tweeters offer me daily commentary on politics, wine, food, crafting, etc – in some way, their commentary becomes a narrative with a voice, but nobody’s attempting Tolstoyian feats of storytelling and I appreciate that. A book of Tweets? Why not just go open up my laptop and type a simple URL and read them there.

By: HPL

HPL — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:50:33 +0000

I dunno, Gary…I gotta disagree. Big beefy paragraphs are nice, but given all the nontraditional reading we do these days, I think a book like this is an interesting way to push the boundaries. It always pisses me off when people say “no one reads anymore” because let’s face it — our parents write emails, tweets and comments on blogs like total morons. Why? Because we’re more literate than they are, due to our constant tweeting, commenting, emailing, etc. Perhaps it’s counterintuitive, but it’s true.

By: Gary

Gary — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:15:34 +0000

This sounds like a horrible idea, but I am interested to see if they can actually pull it off. Maybe I’m just a traditionalist who likes to see big beefy paragraphs. Sure you can convey a thought in a 140 characters, but will it compel me to read the next 140 characters?