Ah, Twitter. The ultimate collection of hysterical celebrities, illiterate masses, and random clutter posts that have no apparent meaning or value. Of course, Twitter does have contributions to offer to the world; quick news flashes, a good platform for bouncing ideas off of like minded people, and some would even say a good source of memes.
However, most people, from what I have observed, do not expect anything of specific literary value to come from Twitter. This isn’t necessarily surprising, I mean, each tweet can only be 280 characters long. However, some people, like Tao Lin, believe that tweets have an inherent literary nature.
Tao Lin and Mira Gonzalez picked some of their tweets to publish in physical book form. But they didn’t stop there, they decided the cover should be faux leather, and that it should be silver and gold embossed. This book is very entertaining, but the important part is that it raises the question of the literary potential of Twitter. Despite Twitter’s limitations and quirks, can I also create something of literary value? I attempted to and, if I do say so myself, I believe I succeeded.
So, the point of this post is to talk about my story. You can read it on Twitter here. Or here. Or click here if you want. All the links lead to the same place. I just really think you should read it.
There were a couple options for writing my Twitter story, either writing one story that took place over multiple tweets, or writing multiple short stories that each had their own tweet. I chose to write a story that took place over multiple tweets, and then add another twist on top of that. I realized that if I wanted to make my story coherent, I would have to post each tweet backwards, so that when you are scrolling from the top down, it reads like a normal story. Then, I thought, “What if I wrote my story so that it could be read either way the user scrolled?” So, I attempted to write a story that was broken up into little segments, and could be read forwards and backwards.
Personally, I think my attempt was successful! I really like this piece of literature because I have never written, or seen, a story that can be read backwards and forwards (I wouldn’t be surprised if one already exists, but I haven’t read any). Interestingly enough, the restrictions and specifications of the Twitter platform, in my opinion, enhanced my story. Each tweet has its own separate box, so I didn’t have to worry about my readers accidentally combining portions of the story in their head, or skipping over parts while scrolling back up. The scrolling aspect of Twitter also helps my story, because scrolling back up the posts in a profile is much easier than flipping through a book backwards. I also appreciated the fact that each section of the story had to be 280 characters or less, it created a fun challenge for me!
If one were to accept the “Twitter story” as a genre, I believe that this genre does have literary value. Because of the unique platform Twitter has, it opens up new veins for creative aspects in stories, as you can see through my story. There are so many more options to be explored through this medium with writing stories. Using retweets and comments and such, you could essentially create a living dialogue in your story, for example. There are so many possibilities! I think the Twitter story is also valuable because people are spending increasing portions of their days on social media. In order for authors to continue spreading their works and ideas, they can post stories, or teasers to their stories, on twitter to try and reach a large audience. There is definitely a large market on Twitter, and it would be foolish to not take advantage of that.
I hope you enjoyed my story, and this blog post! Thank you for reading!
{Micah's (Digital)} Portfolio 