Storytelling on Twitter

For those of you on Twitter, you may be aware of the recent explosion of Twitter stories or novels, sometimes called Twisters, that people are now writing. They are essentially 140-character, self-contained stories, usually amounting to about three or four sentences. They remind me a great deal of haikus, particularly in terms of the turn that these stories usually take in their final sentence. The format seems to lend itself to a two or three sentence set-up with a final sentence of resolution, typically leaning toward humor or tragedy.

A bit Shakespearean, now that I think of it.

Requiring about 120,000 words to complete my own stories, this might not be the ideal form for me, nor does it seem very profitable, but they are oftentimes amusing to read, and I frequently find myself detecting the seed of a longer, more traditional novel within many of them.

If you’re interested in reading some, you can follow Arjun Basu on Twitter. He writes them almost exclusively, and I tend to like a lot of his work.

Here’s my own attempt at a Twister, which I will also post on my own Twitter feed:

May. Christmas lights still blinking. Cheerios in her bowl turned to mush. The milk had spoiled. Mom had been dead for at least five months.