Twittories.wikispaces.com - Twitter Short Stories

Short stories are by nature, short. In fact Hemingway once penned a story in six words. It should be no surprise that we now have the 140 word short story, aka Twittories. Yes, now Twitter has become a medium for the output of fictions (and not simple lies that we oft may jot down for kicks, but actual crafted things with some literary intention behind them). This is meant to be a group effort. Each single entry must contain no more than 140 characters (typical tweet number). From there, other users add their own story fragments until the whole thing is completed with 140 entries or 19600 characters. While the stories may not win any Pulitzers they can be quite entertaining—think haiku-esque pulp fiction. The first work is entitled “The Darkness Inside.”

“Twittories are stories composed 140 characters at a time by a diverse group of collaborators using Twitter to submit their entry.”

Crowdsourcing plus Twitter is not a bad idea. The proliferation of light comm and short attention spans means that these shorts could work very well. Who knows, perhaps there will be some actual gems produced. I think the minimal effort required and the enjoyment of creating part of a piece of fiction will have many pitching in to the cause.

Is there any sort of editing? Are entries screened? Will this be just a fad?