[1]Twitter changed the way we communicated. With the popularity of the medium gaining new heights, tweeting is now thought of as a literary practice. Therefore, the social media site is all charged up to hold its first Twitter Fiction Festival.
The five day fest that starts on November 28 is inviting creative writers to transform the way stories get told on Twitter.
“We’re looking for new, creative, exciting ideas that will push the bounds of how we tell stories on Twitter,” says the online submission form. The Twitter Fiction Festival will take place entirely online, based on the #twitterfiction hashtag.
Twitter has already hosted “experiments in fiction,” which include Jennifer Egan’s Black Box, Teju Cole’s Small Fates, and Dan Sinker’s @mayoremanuel.
While some feel that the idea to have an online fiction fest is nice and Twitterature is not impossible in today’s time, others doubt its practicality.
In this world of microblogging, the art of expressing in 140 characters is very crucial and not everyone can do it, says author Rajeev Jhaveri adding, “Any app is good enough to tell stories. Keeping the app or audience in mind, the length of story can vary. Social media can be a good platform to tell stories.”
Vikrant Dutta, author of The Dark Rainbow seconds, “Literature can have many forms and with the advancement of technology there have been different formats in which it is expressed. Twitter, being a powerful and much used medium, can truly enhance the relevance of literature. It would also give a live interactive opportunity to writers who are not able to attend literary festivals for any reason.”
We are living in a world where the attention span of an average person is diminishing each day. Twitter can actually make story-telling interesting with its 140 character cap. “While Twitter may never be the best medium to share stories, I guess it will help start a new era in literature. Also, one can do some amazing creative experiments. Twitter is like a auto editor which forces you to limit your story to small chinks of 140 characters, so you need to work a lot more to make every tweet add up to your bigger story,” says Karthik Naralasetty, who has just started his online venture Hulala.in.
But the flip side would be that people who missed a couple of tweets may not be able to follow the whole story.
“Twitter is a place where ideas may be planted but developed in other mediums. However, if organised well, authors can produce something magical at the fest,” says author Halima Sadiya.
Links:
[1] http://archive.asianage.com/vikrant1jpg-439