Twitter Novel 'Small Places' Gets Nod For Innovation In Christian Science Monitor

The novel in microform. Not a new concept. That's called flash fiction. But the use of the social media tool Twitter for original literary fiction landed me a nod for literary innovation in an article appearing in both print and online versions of Friday's edition of the Christian Science Monitor.

The article, "The Novel By Tweet: The microblogging site, Twitter, launches into serialized fiction for bored cubicle dwellers," is by Matt Shaer, formerly of the Boston Globe.

Shaer writes, "Nick Belardes believes in brevity. He hews close to that hallowed maxim, beloved by middle school English teachers and old-fashioned newsmen alike: Keep it simple, stupid."

Well, I do believe more in brevity than ever. And in a twitter novel, you have 140-character limits. So I have to pay attention to constraints.

It's an artform that I started learning in college in the mid-1990s. My writing was too long-winded. So a professor had me writing 150-word summaries of entire history books. That was tough going. But those exercises paved the way to my success today in writing a short-form continuous-thread twitter novel.

I asked Matt Shaer why he was interested in writing about Twitter books. "I write a good deal about books – for the LA Times, for the Globe, for the Monitor – and in the face of seriously sinking readership, it's always a happy thing to stumble upon a hopeful trend," he said.

Read the full article

"Small Places" Twitter: www.twitter.com/smallplaces

Easy Read: First 200 Tweets

Related article: "The Novel By Tweet: The microblogging site, Twitter, launches into serialized fiction for bored cubicle dwellers,"

Related podcast: Nick Belardes, magic realism, bugs and 9/11

Related article: A Bug’s Life on Twitter - Interview with Twitter Novelist Nick Belardes

Related article: A Discussion Of My Twitter novel, 'Small Places'

MySpace site: www.myspace.com/twitterbook

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