Microblogging a novel!
In my post Brainstorming a modern Novel of Letters I asked
I’ve heard of authors having their characters use social media to promote a novel, but I can’t find any examples of an entire story told this way. Have you heard of anyone doing it?
and it turns out my Plurk friend Renegade was planning to do just that.
R. Alexander Spoerer is writing his SF novel Calling Home in 140-word bites of dialogue, live on Plurk and Twitter! Here’s how he introduces his project:
Dialogue is powerful. It’s one of the best tools a writer has in their arsenal to convey emotion and feeling. Think of the last novel or story you read. What were the parts which moved you the most? It was when the characters were speaking. The author manipulated the words coming from the character into a stream of emotional strength. You knew how the character was feeling because they told you so in their own voice.
With this in mind, the idea for Calling Home popped into my mind. A story entirely told within the confines of a damaged ship’s system status messaging and emails. Each character would have their own Twitter and Plurk account, and communicate with each other through those accounts only.
It’s a brave project and he is planning to run it over at least a couple of months. This is the information you will need to follow the story on Twitter and Plurk:
Hastag: #chh
http://twitter/ISSMontserrat
http://twitter/JFCAllen
http://twitter/JFCSandeepPlurk
http://www.plurk.com/user/CallingHome
Or you can follow the story on the Calling Home archive page on Tumblr. And please spread the word.
Good luck, Renegade. I wish you success and lots of fun!
rspoerer said,
August 18, 2008 at 11:08 am
Thank you for blogging about the story, and I hope you enjoy it. I hope this is the first of many new projects I will be doing utilizing Social Media. There’s such a rich and varied landscape of services out there and the amount of people reading them daily is staggering.
As writers we need to explore new mediums, and Social Media is one which has its own peculiarities and rules we need to learn and follow.
Calling Home is a great first effort, but I believe there will be even better stories coming out on Social Media. With the amount of great writers out there, it’s only a matter of time.
David Bridger said,
August 18, 2008 at 11:12 am
Indeed! In fact, Jane Chin and I are working on the early plans for something right now.
rspoerer said,
August 19, 2008 at 10:08 am
Oooo, really? I’d love to see what you two come up with! I am sure it will be great.
David Bridger said,
August 19, 2008 at 10:14 am
Thanks! We’re at the earliest stage right now, exchanging our first thoughts. I know this will sound weird to some, but I’m really looking forward to the months of planning ahead of us.
sideon said,
August 19, 2008 at 6:44 pm
I’ve serialized short stories into a semblance of an arc of a novel… except I let domesticity and non-fictional writing take the fore of my focus.
It’s exciting to think of all the millions of stories that are told each day, formally and informally, via the social media (texting, IM, IRC, blogs, Facebook, Myspace, etc). Maybe I’m slow to technology (which is funny, because I work in the field of technology), but my good old fashioned sensibilities like formality and structure.
David Bridger said,
August 19, 2008 at 7:06 pm
It is exciting, isn’t it? All those stories!
I think the dialogue-only structure Renegade uses in Calling Home is perfect for microblogs.
Teresa said,
August 19, 2008 at 9:07 pm
This sounds like so much fun. I love the projects that people come up with using social media tools!
David Bridger said,
August 19, 2008 at 9:21 pm
I do too! It really is putting the fun back into online life.
veronicaromm said,
August 19, 2008 at 11:45 pm
you made it to the front page again. Go David.
The Renegade Plurk Project: Calling Home - A Plurk Novel | BrilliantJENI said,
August 20, 2008 at 4:49 am
[...] Related articles on the blogosphere: David Bridger writes a great, detailed article on Calling Home from the perspective of a fellow writer- Calling Home. [...]
David Bridger said,
August 20, 2008 at 8:21 am
So did you, Veronica. Same day too. Go both of us!
theoart said,
August 21, 2008 at 5:39 am
Very original. Love the concept. Wish I had the time (and writing talent) to do it myself.
David Bridger said,
August 21, 2008 at 7:53 am
He has a great idea, doesn’t he?
rspoerer said,
August 24, 2008 at 12:06 am
It’s great to read all these comments. I hope once this project is over I can leverage what I’ve learned for new projects. But for now, I’ll keep going with Calling Home.
Thanks to everyone for reading!
R. Alexander Spoerer
http://www.renegadesanctuary.com