examples of micro fiction? twitter stories?

http://www.physorg.com/news164613015.html

"I'm doing 140-character stories on Twitter," said Basu, one of scores of authors, poets and other creative types who are downsizing their literary talents to the limited format of the hot micro-blogging service.

"I call them Twisters because everything on Twitter has a stupid name," the 42-year-old Basu told AFP at the 140 Characters Conference, a two-day talkfest devoted to all things Twitter held in New York this week.

"Each story has a beginning, a middle and an end," said Basu, a Canadian, who readily acknowledges that he has developed a greater following on Twitter than for his more traditionally published works.

"I'm now at over 6,000 followers on Twitter," the Montreal-based Basu said. "I published a book of short stories last year and that was with a small press so maybe 2,000 people bought the book.

examples:

"They went out hunting. They killed some large mammals. Later they saw the animals butchered. And one by one they ordered salads that evening," reads one of Basu's Twisters.

"The marriage didn't survive the honeymoon. They acknowledged the majesty of their mistake. But they remained together. Because of the gifts," goes another.

Using Twitter to tell a story

As part of my Seer project I have decided to use twitter and social networking sights such as face book to tell part of the story and flesh out the Heath , the world of JJ jones the SEER and lead character in my transmedial narrative. As part of this process I have begun to explore in more depth the way in which twitter and other social networks have been used to tell stories up to this point.

Following a conversation with my step son an avid user of social networks it became clear at the very outset I needed to decide exactly how I would be using twitter and what part of the narrative it was best suited to carry. Some of the points made by my son included comments on the instant nature and yet ultimately transitory nature of twitter. Its almost here now and gone tomorrow nature. The fact that if heavily used the twitter feed does not in fact store tweets in the long term and so unless the tweets themselves are moved to another medium ie a blog and stored once the tweet cash is emptied the story is gone and so cannot be reviewed.

Different types of twitter story:

Hews stories:

Chilean Earth Quake:http://mashable.com/2010/02/27/chile-earthquake-twitpics/

Interesting blog entry which begins a discussion about what role twitter actually plays in telling international news stories. What is clear is that twitter allows individuals to upload instant images and there response to a dramatic situation , what is not clear is the ability of twitter to provide an authoritative narrative as regards events. SO in case of chilean earth quake although lots of dramatic images of damage and sadly terrible loss is that really a narrative of events?

One comment on the article said the following:

“I feel far too much space is given these useless tweets. They have no journalistic value. Most of them are just repeats of other information. There is no way to verify any of them, and many of them are just advertisements for real estate agents, etc. What is the journalistic value of two dozen "OMG"s? News is news, rumors are rumors, and anything uncorroborated is just that: a rumor. There may be some value in being inundated with rumors, and some may enjoy the sense that they are sharing the event by sharing in the confusion, but I've yet to find any useful information. There is an earthquake. There is much destruction. Everyone in the Pacific should head for high ground. Now repeat those three sentences endlessly.”

In her blog titled “ storied Career Kathy Hansen’s in the entry titled “Telling stroies with Twitter http://astoriedcareer.com/2009/04/telling-stories-with-twitter.html Kathy reviews some of the ways in which twitter has been used to tell stories of the more traditional fictional type. 2 which particularly interest me are :

• “Twitterers have also retold other familiar stories in 140-character bursts. Last fall, some 600 participants retold War of the Worlds with 1,500 tweets. As Xiaochang Li reported, these tweets captured “what they envisioned to be happening around them as various events within the original narrative unfolded, so that as the tripods touched down, people were encouraged to generate local narratives and fill in gaps in the story” (more here). She also noted that “Public Domain” tweeted Moby Dick, in this case a literal rendering of the classic.”

I find this particularly interesting as a way of extending the narrative life of the characters within the heath and allowing for audience participation. This may well be something that I explore in more depth once I get the characters established in the comic book form.

A side issue that has also come to mind at the moment is , have I chosen the wrong way to tell JJ story , should it be a movie and a comic or simply twitter feeds and a comic.! Is this a world that should be populated using twitter as the main medium !!! I am using film as a way of introducing the characters and setting the scene , is this actually the way that I should do it, or is it more interesting to explore social media as the way of setting this whole world up!!! I really need to explore this idea and come to some conclusions pretty quickly.

•  Adrift calls itself “serialized micro-fiction,” and presents “the story of a father trying to find his daughter- This concept of micro fiction is something that I have been groping towards , but until this moment have not known what it was called. Clearly I need to explore this concept of mirco fiction in more detail.

This author uses an RSS feed to tweat his story.http://www.ehow.com/how_2299272_twitter-using-rss-feeds.html

This is certainly something that I will be exploring over the next couple of weeks with the SEER I feel that this is perhaps the way I will go.

Interestingly Kathy also talks about the collaborative story telling and this was something that  originally felt may be interesting:

“Mr. Harder offers an attempt to collaboratively tweet a story (I get the impression that Adrift involves only one author.) Those who wish to collaborate on the story are instructed to “just reply at @storytweeting via Twitter, and their part of the story is added!” At the time I put together this post, the story had 27 writers and 32 entries.

“Ben” is behind a collaborative story writing project using Twitter, The Story So Far. You just tweet @storysofar to suggest the next line, and you can vote on whose line you like best by tweeting @storysofarvote and mentioning the user you want to win. At the end of the day the votes are tallied and the winning line is retweeted.”

http://www.misterharder.com/storytweeting/

This is something Tim Burton used recently

 http://www.burtonstory.com/connect.php

It suddenly just struck me that perhaps I am looking at this all the wrong way round , perhaps what I should be using twitter is as the connective cord between the different elements of the heath. Using its capacity to upload pictures and film , and then use its micro fiction to tell at least part of the story!!!! Fcuk revolution. What would that story structure look like. I now need to plan it out.

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/storytelling-for-business/

Although he did not really explore this in any real way , one of the issues that was eaised in this blog is the valocity of real time story telling!!! This started me thinking about issues such around the pace of a story and how that effects what you can tell and what it may mean for your audience or stroydwellers!

The nature of narrative in the age of networks.

http://jimbanister.com/?page_id=73

Storytelling vs. Storydwelling

The disparity between industries steeped in history and habit, and the “changed consumer,” which can be generally represented by the so-called Web2.0 movement, is a compound chasm… but I believe it can be characterized accurately and practically as a “change in narrative.”

If you can accept for a moment that the definition of *narrative* can be thought of as the “relationship between communicator or auteur with their intended audience,” then the disparity described above (and in the video) becomes clearer.

A “storytelling” narrative is necessarily one-directional. An individual or institution, however well-informed on the nature of the audience, packages a message– a story– in the form of 0:30 spot, television show, film, book, magazine article… whatever. It is a paternal, one-to-many kind of relationship that treats the “audience” as consumer– reader, viewer, listener, etc. The roll of the *creator*– individual or institutional– is to create the story… the message.

But what’s the role of the *creator* who created the game of chess? Or an MMOG? Or basketball? Or Facebook?

Their role is to create a WORLD– a themed framework with a set of social morays and rules (that, oh by the way, can be broken) within which audiences can and will do whatever they want… and then to watch that world, adapt to it, and evolve it. This is “storydwelling” form of narrative that requires the individual or institution to become world designer, world builder and world manager, wherein story *emerges* from audiences participation in that world. These are self-perpetuating engines of engagement.

Looked at this way, the creators of eBay, mySpace, World of Warcraft and team sports are of similar ilk, but vastly different from those who create film, commercials, tv shows, or print ads.

Storydwelling demands a completely different literacy than the ad industry is built around– a predominantly storytelling industry.

What about interactive agencies? Not quite. The best they’ve come up with are campaigns like Subservient Chicken, Elf Yourself, and an array of interactive apps that beget viral behavior. While brilliant in their own right, they don’t build permanently populated communities with their investment– a perpetual engine of engagement. And with the amount of money spent on ad campaigns, it’s a crime they aren’t *always* augmented with such an engine, that at the very least will provide long-tail value, and might resonate far beyond the exposure/engagement gleaned from the initial spark created by the core tv/radio/print/event campaign.

BTW– the storydwelling narrative process has been codified and can be taught, and executed with more predictability.

I stumbled across this whilst exploring twitter as a story telling platform and it really blow my mind. storydwelling rather than storytelling.Beautiful in its simplicity, this is very close to a definition of difference in the role of the transmedial writer and writer operating within a signal medium.