This is an essay of sorts prompted by Remittance Girl’s discussion of Persona and Twitter Culture and Creativity; how people act and interact on the social media site, and how it serves in and of itself as a creative medium. I’m not used to writing essays like this, so I beg your indulgence. And for the most part, all writing I’m talking about is not just fiction, but erotic fiction specifically. I really don’t know if that makes a difference, but I think it does.
I’ve composed extemporaneous short works of fiction “live” on Twitter – as in writing and tweeting on the fly in 140 character chunks. One example is Wrists. I’ve also “performed” writing that was composed, and at least partially edited offline, then “twitterized” – split up into chunks of 140 for the explicit purpose of tweeting – and tweeted one at a time by copy/paste/post. My ongoing novella Blood Tint, for example is tweeted part by part before it appears here on the blog. There are definite difference between the two types of writing, I think. Then there’s a third, hybrid writing type I’ve done which is much more interactive. I’ll call it writer-tag where one person tweets one bit and another responds. I’ve had some really fun Haiku and story collaborations with several other writers (e.g. Castle Walls, My Bloody Valentine, Dinner of Two writing with @AislingWeaver, @remittancegrl, and @MichBek, respectively).
Writing on the fly, you’re conscious at least some of the time of the Twitter character limit – I think it alters how one writes, even though you’re perfectly able to over-type then cut and paste into the next tweet, the action itself is an interruption to the flow of writing unless you are careful to meter yourself to have breaks of commas or dashes or periods as tweet-breaks. I’m also, I think more raw. There’s no going back to correct typos, or rewrite something that started going the wrong way – you just have to deal with it. That can make things messier, but it has an odd liberation to it as well. When you’re writing away from twitter, you’re not fettered by the character limits at all. And you can choose where you break up your sentences/paragraphs when you twitterize the text. I know that in BT, for example, I try to break tweets at commas and periods when I can, and sometimes will intentionally make a much smaller sentence to end something at a more dramatic point. That’s mechanical stuff that affects style, and possibly substance as well, of composition, and differentiates between live and performed writing on Twitter.
As for the interactivity of writing on Twitter, I think it plays a role, but I don’t know how big. For one example, I’ve held off on tweeting BT parts when not enough people I know – those I’m most interactive with – are online, because I know I’ll get some response from them when I tweet. For BT, seeing people Retweet or mention it when I start or am in process of posting is a real boost, but it doesn’t change the course of the story there and then. On the other hand, comments in aftermath of tweeting (And then blog posting) a given part _have_ affected subsequent pieces of the story. Seeing live response is definitely part of the why of out, though. It’s like looking into the audience and seeing that they’re paying attention. The one time I remember tweeting out a part when very few people I knew were around, it felt kind of lonely and ungratifying. I don’t know if Blood Tint would look the way it does at all if I weren’t tweeting it as I do. I don’t know if I’d be writing it at all if I weren’t doing it this way.
For live tweeting of something, it’s a little different. I pay less attention to the audience, though they’re often the reason I’m live-tweeting at all. I’m too busy trying to find and form the ideas and words and get them down to interact, or even acknowledge much. The exception is the interactive writing stuff – like Haiku and tag stories. Those are unique creative interactions, which feels like what I imagine improv performance to be.
For the most part, except for the senryu/haiku, Tweeted story fiction/flash/poetry, in my mind, can’t just be on Twitter, where the stream will wash it away once the immediate audience has seen it. I think it has to be set somewhere like a blog, so I or others can return to it. Twitterfic marked by hashtag, or searched for diligently in someone’s stream can unearth it in perpetuity, but otherwise it is very much like street performance – catch it while it happens or miss it forever. Unless someone – the author usually – records it. That’s definitely a personal preference – I’m betting there is a true Twitter performance art ideal somewhere that holds the washing away by the stream is essential, but that wouldn’t be writing, to me. Writing stays.
As a reader, I find that reading twitterfic a second time in blogged form gives added nuance, and added enjoyment to the reading. It loses the ‘live’ participatory feel, where I know I’m reading at exactly the same time as others, but I gain time to savor the words, and read at my pace, without the interjection of other tweets, and without the lag of my reading software’s refresh rate.
I believe that writers with different numbers of followers give/get/feel different things. Imagine writing live to 10, 100, 1000, or even 10,000 people. It’s got to be different knowing, at least in ballpark estimate, how many people are ‘watching’ you. When I tweet a story, I hope that maybe a dozen specific people are looking, but imagine up to 2 or 3 times that may be. I get a nice handful or two of responses, and sometimes direct message comments. I imagine that someone with a quarter of my followers, unless they were all good friends would get much less response, and someone with four times my followers would get a virtual flood of comments.
It’s also the case that your audience – at least some of them – know you. Depending on how much “you” you put into your Twitter persona (and how well followers might know you through this and other media – or even, heaven forbid, in the flesh), some of the people reading you live and possibly commenting are doing so with a level of intimacy most stage performances can’t achieve.
One last thought – and possibly the most relevant to the essay RG’s that inspired all this: If one wants to create something interactively that’s not any of the three types I’ve talked about – such as a story where the audience really helps choose the definition of the characters or direction of the action, the audience size, responsiveness, and personal familiarity with the author are all going to affect the writing. And probably there are more factors still that I haven’t thought of. It’s a huge world of creative potential. I’ve enjoyed exploring it so far – both as reader, writer, and perhaps ‘interactivist’, and look forward to continuing in all three roles.
This being an essay about interactivity, I’d love to hear what other readers and writers have to say. Do you read or write fiction on Twitter? What are your experiences? What do you get out of it on either side? –M
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Ah, what a lovely read!
I agree with you wholeheartedly about the different flavours of creation with the written word. I remember my first live ‘writing performance’ well, I was wracked with nerves, but hell was it ever thrilling and a format which one cannot find anywhere else; I’ve been pursuing its’ pleasures ever since and _strongly_ feel it’s performance art. It also, at times, feels like I’m exhibiting my sexual self to ‘The Twitter’ ~ well, what can I say, I like that too!
I also think it’s very brave of erotica writers to expose themselves (ourselves?!) in such a way; to write the erotica that many of us who are connected on Twitter write is, in and of itself, sticking ones head above the parapet; there’s darkness and perversion in the erotica I read amongst the Twitter authors that I don’t see as much of elsewhere. I think we take it one step further and push those boundaries even further again in terms of the media we use, moving into podcasting and multimedia work too; podcasting being a favourite of mine as evidenced on this very site :-) But, I’m a big fan of pushing ones own boundaries, as long as it feels safe; then push and expand oneself as far as one can, realise one’s full potential…
It’s an exciting space to be in with exciting people, a community (of pervy erotica writers) within a community (of pervs) within a community (on Twitter). Thanks for generating further discussion on it in an engaging way.
Lilith
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Thanks, Lilith. I mentioned at the top of my post that I was talking about erotica specifically in my essay. Without that stipulation, it would read similarly, but I wonder how true it would be. In erotica, there is a definite desire to affect the reader in specific ways – in most cases to arouse. I suppose most writing can be said to have the purpose of affecting the reader, but I think the engagement that erotica writing asks for even in simple ‘static’ words on a page is different. And I think it brings a different level still to the interaction in a medium such as Twitter.
I agree with your ultimate point; question; if we (erotica writers) are moving into the realms of interacting with our readership, which is at times now an audience, in much more interactive ways, becoming more ‘personally’ involved in it, where else can it go? What is the next Twitter? Your thoughts?
Yeesh – that is a very good question. I think it depends greatly on how the technology of communication evolves. I never imagined Twitter during the age of Bulletin Boards. What could be next? Vidter? The grandchild of Second Life? I can’t even guess how it will work, much less how smut will look on it.
Heh… I’d like to venture some guesses that move past the interface we currently have with computers and into virtual reality, _now_ we’re talking… Imagine the possibility of creating a sensory experience for another person without actually having sex with them; that is to some degree what we do now and _I_ see no difference in extending that to _all_ the senses. Of course, there are possibilities I can’t even imagine, but, I’m excited about them.
In answer to your last question–I gave twitterfic a try, but it felt off. I actually have a second piece that I prepared for twitterfic, but never actually posted. I obviously see your twitter fiction, but to be honest, I just skim it. I’ve found it very difficult to immerse myself in something that’s a line, a break, an icon, header text that has nothing to do with the story, some hashtag text, and then another line. It’s just too much garbage between the actual fiction for me to be able to enjoy it.
Twitter to me is just a chatroom that’s always there.
I can certainly understand that. I think that one must filter Twitter like anything else. If you watch TV from across the room, your brain is doing a remarkable job of screening out everything but a degree or two of solid angle from your visual range – a lot of which could be quite distracting. I see the focus needed to parse a twitterfic out of the stream to be something similar. But a) it can be hard to get used to, and b) it can feel staccato and removed if you’re not immersed. Those are some of the real challenges of creating on social media.
You wrote that you felt that twitter fiction had to, ultimately, get stored elsewhere or it would be ‘lost in the stream’. What interests me, to a certain extent, is accepting the fleetingness, the ephemeral quality of the medium itself and working with it instead of against it. We know that storytelling has changed radically through history to accommodate new mediums. And conversely, that the mediums have been adjusted to accommodate storytelling. For me, the interest is in exploring how stories can be told within this medium, and if we can breach the one-way barrier of writer to reader. For me, the possibility of allowing the follower responses to affect the story is intensely compelling. Are we creating a new type of storytelling, or is this just TV with a few more nobs. That’s what I wanna know.
It’s true – I think it’s a quirk of mine. Conversations are different, but if writing ‘disappears’ it feels like a loss to me. It is a place where writing crosses live performance – because a performance also disappears into memory of the audience attendees. Well, except those performances that are recorded in video or audio for posterity or broadcast or sale. So perhaps that’s a parallel.
Your questions are truly intriguing. Twitter is many, new and different things, but lots of them are half formed and ill-defined. I think the search to answer your questions will be both illuminating and creatively exciting.