In 2010, something unusual happened: while I was at Barnes and Noble, one of our endcaps featured two novels written by Japanese students. That doesn’t sound altogether
unusual, does it? Well, these
MicroBlogging Novel
A new phrase has been born of this idea: microblogging
novel. A microblogging novel is the publishing of a novel is small,
set-character-length increments. For example, microblogging through Twitter is
in 140-length increments, and microblogging through Facebook is set in
300-character-length increments.
Flash Fiction
Now, in the creative writing world, there is something
called Flash Fiction, which is a story-length or novel-length idea written with
extreme brevity. Generally, Flash Fiction is considered to be a complete story
that is written anywhere from 300-1000 words. Flash Fiction, however, is not a
segment of a story or novel that happens to be 300-1000 words. It can’t be a
piece of a novel, it can’t be part of a story, it can’t leave any questions or
“loose ends.” A Flash Fiction story must contain an entire story arc
(beginning, exposition, driving question, rising action, climax, falling
action, and denouement) within the 300 word and 1000 word boundary.
Storytellers know that it’s not always easy to do, and love to rise to the
challenge.
Is MicroBlogging Flash Fiction?
Writing a novel on Twitter could be Flash Fiction –or it
could just be a novel. When a writer sets out to microblogging, they have
already made some kind of declaration that the following posts (sometimes they
may even venture to estimate for how long or for how many posts) are fiction.
Now, Ernest Hemingway once said he wrote the shortest story at six words –“For
sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”- but few authors set out to write stories that
short or stories that can be contained in 140 characters. To that end, the
writer of these Twitter stories can take as long as he or she needs to in order
to write them. Maybe once a week the writer will post the next chunk of the
story. Maybe the writer attempts this project much like Julie Powell’s Julie and Julia where she blogged about
a Julia Child recipe every week for a year. The breadth of the project can be
as long as the writer sets for his or herself, and to that end, MicroBlogging
does not have to be considered Flash Fiction. After all, Flash Fiction defines
the length of the writing project once complete, not the writing of that
project. So if the writer sets out to write 1000 words max, then it is
considered a Flash Fiction project via Twitter, but if the writer sets out to
write more than 1000 words during the course of the novel-posting experience,
then it is not considered a Flash Fiction piece.
Why MicroBlog?
Some readers wonder “why bother?” Why bother microblogging
when the writer could just sit down and write a novel and have it published by
a traditional publishing house? Even the Japanese students –though they wrote
the whole novel by text messaging- did choose to have the novels published by a
publishing house and not through any web-based interface that resembled
self-publishing. The answer to this question may likewise be “why not?” We live
in an age now where anything is possible with the use of technology. No longer
is the novel-writing process limited to a pen and paper, to a typewriter, or to
a general word processor on a computer. Now we can use posts in Twitter, posts
in Facebook, blogs, emails, and even other tools like the “Notes” app on a
smart phone. You could choose to type of a scene in a note document and then
Share it via text message or email. If you use the Evernote app, your text is
synched to other notes that you’ve left for yourself on your computer, making
it easy to keep the information together (if you wanted to assemble the
manuscript after it was complete). Evernote also gives you the ability to Share
as a text message or an email, and also to Share on Facebook, or other social
media options. Sometimes novelists need different options to be able to find
the right way that works for them, and now with Twitter, apps, and technology,
novelists have every option at their disposal.
Modeled After the Serial Novel
Some readers might think it really bold to write your novel
with the whole world watching. In truth, that idea might even be scary to the
novelist that is writing. What if a plot hole develops? What if you want to
change something? What if you write yourself into a tangent and get stuck?
(This is why sketching an outline might be a good place to start so that these
public problems don’t happen.) Interestingly, this is not the first time that
the idea of a developing serial novel has been popular. In fact, during the
time in which serial novels were popular, authors has no idea that 150 years
later, there would be such a thing as Twitter. Charles Dickens, author of Great Expectations, A Christmas Carol, Tale
of Two Cities, and several more famous and award-winning novels wrote these
famous works by publishing them serially. Every week for sometimes two years at
a time, Dickens would publish another chapter to the story. Novel writing to
the Victorians was very much like watching television is to us today: when the
end of the story was coming, everyone knew it, and they put their lives on hold
until they could have resolution for the end of the story.
Same Idea, Different Medium
Serial novels to the
Victorians were the same as television is today, and not so different from the
new Twitter novel told in a serial fashion. These are all the same because humans
love to hear stories about other humans, no matter how the story develops, no
matter how much of the story they get at a time. Do I have a Twitter? No.
