Twitter Crossover Fiction
Some time ago I wrote about the popularity of Japanese novels scraped from chat rooms and read on cell phones. Now it's come to Twitter (which people access on cell phones, too). Barry Yourgrau's piece on Salon explains:
Hey, I'd like to see a synopsis of my daily soap, Days of our Lives, in the lower right corner of my Foxfire screen. Hear me, NBC!
There is the "Twiller" movement (Twitter thrillers) and "Twitter Wit" and "wine blogger Gary Vaynerchuk, whose now 300,000-plus Twitter following got him a million-dollar deal. But the Twitter-to-book route is still in infancy." Yourgrau offers three original keitai shosetsu from "I-Mode Stories", but greater value, I think, is the information available in the responses to the article.
Ladies and gentlemen, load your loglines!
Keitai shosetsu, the so-called cellphone novel, has been touted (in the pages of the New Yorker, among other places) and reviled (by Japanese literati) as the first narrative mode of the txt msg age -- the herald of a written-word future bent by wireless telecom's powers.Enthralled by the medium, Yourgrau has experimented with a variety of short fiction. Now he thinks Twitter is ripe for such a crossover, partly due to the fact that it is not a teenage phenomenon:
Social interactivity is again a key; doubtless many (most?) users are drawn merely by the possible thrill of Tweeting with undisguised celebs. But beyond this there's emerging energy in the creative potential of Twitter's 140-character micro-format. (Quillpill, one of the new U.S. "cellphone novel" Web sites, also uses a 140-character per post limit.)
Hey, I'd like to see a synopsis of my daily soap, Days of our Lives, in the lower right corner of my Foxfire screen. Hear me, NBC!There is the "Twiller" movement (Twitter thrillers) and "Twitter Wit" and "wine blogger Gary Vaynerchuk, whose now 300,000-plus Twitter following got him a million-dollar deal. But the Twitter-to-book route is still in infancy." Yourgrau offers three original keitai shosetsu from "I-Mode Stories", but greater value, I think, is the information available in the responses to the article.
Ladies and gentlemen, load your loglines!
Labels: fiction, technology, writing
posted by Georganna Hancock M.S. | 6:45 AM
3 Comments:
Honestly, I can't wait for Twitter to die. Haven't we writers and educators been bemoaning the starving attention span of the younger generations who are weaned on 30-second commercials? Why in the world are people so attracted to 140 character posts? Even a huge majority of role-playing enthusiasts scream for multi-paragraph posts. In addition, I suspect Twitter continues to encourage the text-speak or L33t speak that has become so common and yet reeks of the continued de-evolution of our language. Language is meant to benefit communication, not hamper it!
I'm sure I'll get yelled at for it, but it boggles my mind to understand the appeal of Twitter.
I remain lukewarm regarding Twitter. I post, sometimes, and stay in contact with a few bloggers. Sometimes. On the way to work this morning, I watched a woman reading something on Kindle. About 6 other commuters were reading the real thing--books!
Yeah for books!
I like the way Twitter forces me to clarity and concise expression of thought. I've seen no L33T, or even texting (let alone sexting). Must be the people I hang out with ...
I don't like the fact that I am, as Nathan Bransford decried, tending to drop articles.
a
.....an
..........the
Post a Comment
<< Home