By Willie Gordon Suting
In Twitter, politicians engage in verbal warfare, but literature also finds expression from young writers. The microblogging website was launched in 2006 with the first Twitter novel appearing in 2008.
The origin of the portmanteau term “twitterature” is hard to determine but it was popularised by microbloggers. Since then, the phenomenon has been discussed in arts and culture sections of several international magazines and newspapers. In addition to “twovel” (Twitter novel), the terms “twiction” and “tweet fic” (Twitter fiction), “twiller” (Twitter thriller), and “twitstery” (Twitter mystery) also exist.
Twitterature has been called a literary genre but is more accurately an adaptation of various genres to social media.The writing is often experimental or playful with some authors or initiators seeking to find out how the medium of Twitter affects storytelling or how a story spreads through the medium.
Twitterature includes 280 characters of various genres, including aphorisms, poetry and fiction written by individuals or collaboratively.
For example this piece of twiction post written by Robert K. Blechman, @RKBs_Twitstery
“WillumMortimus Granger was beside himself. In fact when his body was found, the top half was right next to the bottom”. Such pithy writings are brevity-demanding and context-diminishing employing precision and restraint.
Aphorism: “The most effective way to learn is by devoting oneself to a single subject for months at a time. Its opposite is school”. Aaron Haspel, @ahaspel
Aphorisms are popular because their brevity is inherently suited to Twitter. People often share well-known classic aphorisms on Twitter but some also seek to craft and share their brief insights on every conceivable topic. Boing Boing magazine has described Twitter as encouraging “a new age of the aphorism”, citing the novel aphorisms of Aaron Haspel.
Poetry: Haikus are brief poetic forms well suited to Twitter; many can be found using the hashtag #haiku. Other forms of poetry can be found under other hashtags or by “following” people who use their Twitter accounts for journals or poetry. For example, the Swedish poet and journalist GöranGreider tweets observations and poems using the Twitter handle @GreiderDD (GöranGreider).
Fiction: Twitterature fiction includes 280-character stories, the retelling of literary classics and legends, twitter novels, and collaborative works.
280-character stories refers to fiction that fits into a single tweet.An example of these stories are those written by Sean Hill @veryshortstories or Arjun Basu@arjunbasu. A number of twitter journals dedicate themselves to the form. In 2013, The Guardian challenged traditionally published authors such as Jeffrey Archer and Ian Rankin to write their 140-character stories. The Guardian then featured their attempts. Literary classics and legends are retold on Twitter, either by characters’ tweeting and interacting or by retelling in tweet format. In 2009, Alexander Aciman and Emmet Rensin published Twitterature: The World’s Greatest Books Retold Through Twitter.
In 2010, a group of rabbis tweeted the Exodus, with the hashtag #TweetTheExodus. In 2011, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the English game company Mudlark tweeted the story of Romeo and Juliet.
The twitter novel is another form of fiction that can extend over hundreds of tweets to tell a longer story.Twitter novels can run for months, with one or more tweets daily. Context is usually maintained by a unique hashtag. Searching by this produces a list of all available tweets in the series. Some serials are posted in short updates that encourage the reader to follow and to speculate on the next installment.Examples include Small Places, written by Nick Belardesin 2008 using the Twitter account @smallplaces:
“I’ve grown to like small places. I like bugs, bug homes, walking stick bugs, blades of grass, ladybug Ferris wheels made out of dandelions”.
Another example is Executive Severance, written by Robert K. Blechman using the Twitter account @RKBs_Twitstery. Executive Severanceis Book 1 of The Twitstery Twilogy, the first live-tweeted Twitter comic mystery which began on May 6, 2009. The Golden Parachute, Twitstery Twilogy Book 2 appeared in a Kindle ebook in 2016 and I Tweet, Therefore I am the concluding Book 3, was released early in 2017.
Traditionally published authors such as Jennifer Egan and David Mitchell have also attempted the twitter novel. Jennifer Egan’s Black Box, first published in about 500 tweets in 2012, and David Mitchell’s The Right Sort, first published as almost 300 tweets sent over one week in 2014.
The author of a Twitter novel is often unknown to the readers. The Twitter account name can be a character in the story or a pseudonym. This anonymity creates an air of authenticity.
Neil Gaiman coined the term “interactive twovel” for an experiment in involving his Twitter followers in collaborating with him on a novel. This was conducted with BBC America Audio Books. The first tweet from Gaiman was: Sam was brushing her hair when the girl in the mirror put down the hairbrush, smiled & said, “We don’t love you anymore”.
Then he invited his readers to continue the story under the hashtag #bbcawdio. The result was published as an audiobook under the title Hearts, Keys and Puppetry, with the author given as Neil Gaiman & Twitterverse.
With every youth owning a smartphone today, anyone can write and post twitterature. Technology has made it easy for amateur writers to find artistic self-expression through tweets. The form allows the person to be creative-minded. It is one of the most popular in the world of social media garnering a huge fan following. The brevity employed makes it challenging for the writer. But is worth it considering many microbloggers have made a name for themselves internationally with their writings through tweets.
(Photo: Google Images)
