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Giorgina Paiella - Temporality Exercise

Page history last edited by Giorgina Paiella 7 years, 1 month ago

            I am interested in Twitter fiction (“Twitterature”) and how it makes us reconsider the temporality of traditional, printed literature while also contributing to studies of electronic literature. Twitterature can take the form of poetry, 140-character writing challenges, short stories, and novels, but one of the most common forms is the tweeted short story, which was especially popular a few years ago. Author Jennifer Egan released her short story, “Black Box,” over Twitter in 2012 and David Mitchell released his short story, “The Right Sort,” over the platform in 2014.

            Twitter fiction alters our conception of the temporality of a literary medium, authorship, and readership. While a work of literature takes a number of months or years for an author to write before being published, distributed, purchased, and then read by consumers, Twitter literature modifies this trajectory. Authors who tweet out their fiction make decisions about how their work will be released; while Mitchell released his work in bursts of twenty tweets at 7am and 5pm each day for a week, Egan released her story by tweeting for one hour from 8-9pm and then continuing to do so at the same time each night for ten days. By tweeting in set windows, readers knew when to expect the next part of the story, not unlike tuning in to a radio or television show at a set hour. The Twitter platform also favors brevity and can therefore influence authorial style and editing decisions, which is reflected in the simple, prose poetry style of Egan’s story. The temporality of the reading experience within the genre of Twitter fiction also changes depending upon whether the story is consumed gradually or read all at once after the entire story is published. I’ve included two screenshots to illustrate this contrast—one of Egan’s story published online by The New Yorker after the entire story had been released over Twitter and Mitchell’s story in progress in tweet form.

            Twitter is a platform that encourages conversation and response, so I am thinking of the ways in which a text released on Twitter is read and how comments and responses shape that reading. Not unlike marginalia, are these elements factored into the piece itself, viewed as an intertext, or simply ignored? I am also considering how Twitter literature influences our consumption of literature and the way it is marketed. Unlike most traditional texts, Twitter is a free platform accessible to anyone with Internet access, but authors often use Twitter literature to promote and generate buzz about their upcoming novels or other work that will be released on the market.

            While Twitter fiction challenges our intuitions about the temporality of literature on a relatively new social media platform, certain aspects of the process are also present in older media forms throughout history. Many authors have written flash fiction far before the digital age, for example, and the suspense that comes from releasing a story gradually shares a lot in common with oral storytelling and genres like science fiction.

 

 

Excerpt of Jennifer Egan's "Black Box" published on The New Yorker after release on Twitter:

 


 

Excerpt from David Mitchell's "The Right Sort" released on Twitter:

 

 

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