How do you express passion in 140 characters or less? Twitter-verse could become a new form of prose. But can it survive abbreviated text-speak? Can it be literary?
Many of the short, terse, posts going out over twitter are just blurbs. People reporting on their lives for anyone who cares to follow along. “Off to work.” “Stuck in traffic.” “OMG! My BFF ignored my IM. WTF!” After all, you only get 140 characters per post – including spaces and punctuation.
In a lot of ways twitter is like texting to a wider audience, and many fill their posts with acronyms and abbreviations borrowed from text messaging. Many actually post from their cell phones. It's an informal, no rules world of mass communication.
There are many artists and celebrities – musicians, actors, writers – who use twitter to post updates to their fans. “I'll be in Charlotte tomorrow. B&N at Arboretum.” And that's not the only promotional use. Some people spam ads and links. But twitter has better uses.
Twitter is the simplest social network interface out there. Little one line messages sent out to the world, and a world of messages in return. A simple concept, the potential of which is still being realized. A universe of short blurbs.
When given an open canvas creative people will create. Some will scrawl crap like you see in public toilets and some will make art. I see in twitter the potential for a new type of prose, limited only by the length of its lines.
What can you create in 140 characters? Flash-fiction, poetry, literary non-fiction? If you're a writer, this is your 30 second sound bite. What will you tell the world, and how will you say it?
Join me on twitter and create your own twitter-verse. No text-speak, no 1337 speak, just good strong prose. It's not easy, but it sure is fun.
Visit my page and see what I've come up with - then follow me, I'm still experimenting. If you're a writer I'll follow you and we can create twitter-verse together. I can't wait to see what you do with your 140 characters.
My first twitter-verse tweet:
“Sensual curves silhouetted. No details. Dark erotic shadow, teasing, enticing. Eyes strain for more, heart pounds to touch. Darkness.”
See you on twitter ;-)
max
- maxwell cynn
- I'm a novelist, freelance writer, amateur coder, webmaster, and Indie publisher who writes deliciously romantic speculative fiction and book reviews from a wide range of genres.
