A writing festival started this week in NYC. It’s called Twitter Fiction Festival and it’s got a gathering of writers presenting their stories in microburst style. And not shlub writers. We’re talking names like RL Stine and Alexander McCall Smith.
I love this idea. I think the primary reason I love it is because I get a feeling of completion with every fiction tweet I make. The craft of writing is a tough one and when you’re putting together a large novel with a large cast of characters, multiple sub plots, and moving timelines, you can get quickly swamped by the intricacies and lose the enjoyment of writing. With such short fiction as fits in 140 characters, you craft by way of interference the beginning, middle, and end. Something in there is going to be concrete. The rest is implied and up to the readers mind to fill in with details.
The other reason I love it is because it fills a creative need at a time when I don’t have a lot of free time right now. I’m prepping part four of How It Ends for release, and editing the crime novel I finished, and there’s always a ton of things to do at home and at work. So the idea of jamming out a “full” story in 140 characters is appealing and refreshing. And tough. After all, with such a short amount of space, you have to make every word, every punctuation mark count.
I’ve been throwing out 140 character stories for the last two days. I’ve decided to gather them on this blog, under one roof as it were. There’s a new page in the blog starting today which contains all if my Twitter fiction to date. There’ll be periodic updates as I continue to write in 140 character spurts. For now, please enjoy the current crop. Leave some feedback if you’d like, which ones you liked, which you didn’t, what works and what doesn’t and why. I’d love I hear from you.
Scott C Lyerly 