Exercises in Brevity: Twitter Fiction

“Four basic premises of writing: clarity, brevity, simplicity and humanity.” – William Zinsser

Feel like an impromptu writing workshop? Hop onto Twitter.

Many writers have already been using Twitter to create fiction for years. Author, screenwriter and director, Paul Feig, started hosting Twitter Tales and TPlays years ago. Neil Gaiman not only encourages hours of short stories when he has the time, but has actually used Twitter to crowd source his short fiction. Earlier this year, Norton Publishers re-enacted "The Canterbury Tales" via Twitter. These are just a few examples of how fiction thrives in this short format.

If you’re a writer and you’re not on Twitter, it’s easy and free to sign up. If you do, I promise, no one will make you tweet about what you’re having for lunch. It is not the banal social media site some make it out to be. Twitter is a great medium to connect with other writers, publishers, agents and those in the literary world. It’s also a great way for writers, a generally hermit-like bunch, to connect with other people who are also working alone at their computers. Novelist Colson Whitehead puts it best:

“I used to think that I was the only one hunched over a keyboard in soiled pajamas, rummaging through the catalogue of my failures and intermittently weeping. Now, I open Twitter and see that I am not alone. I am part of a vast and wretched assembly of freaks who are not fit for decent work and thus must write, or wither. I am fortified by their failures, and I hope they take succor from mine.” (For more on that, read Colson Whitehead’s hilarious and passionate defense of Twitter.)

Twitter is what you make it to be, and if you work at it, it’s a great way to connect with other literary folk and a way to practice brevity, developing your voice and your connection with others.

So, in light of all this, every Friday afternoon, we’re going to run #HHFiction, a Twitter-hosted writer’s workshop. It will be on Twitter, in its customary 140 characters and it will be a fun way to exercise your storytelling and writing while forcing yourself to work on one of the writer’s most elusive goals, brevity. Here you have to think about Twitter as forcing you to think about word count. Try not to use text speak. Try to use the right word to get the story across. It can be serious, whimsical or hilarious (as this #tplay from Paul Feig illustrates).

If you choose to take part, sign up or use your existing account, use the hashtag, #HHwrites. Once you post your short fiction, you can click on the hashtag, or type HHwrites into the search window at the top of the Twitter page, and you’ll see other works of fiction. We’re try to retweet some throughout the afternoon, so you can also see a few stories pop up on our page.

Every week a new prompt will be chosen. We’ll let you know what it is via our Twitter and Facebook accounts and give you a half an hour heads up when it’s about to begin. Hopefully, this will be a fun way to bring a little fiction workshop to wherever you are: at home writing, in the office, in a park or on a bus bench waiting to go home. Feel free to follow others who are participating as well! Build your literary community, practive brevity and most importantly, enjoy yourself.

Hope to see you there!

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