Saturday's Derision

The Twitter Novel: Fashion or a Fad?

An Argument Against The Twitter Novel

It took DSM a long time to embrace Twitter. The micro-blogging service sounded inane, brimming with words spewed hastily to readers that barely read. Reading a sentence online is different than reading a sentence in a book. Even the most acute readers are influenced by the machine. A particular haze descends. Words march by like uniformed soldiers. Our eyes gloss over. Twitter is the king of gloss. Reading on Twitter is like riding a tall water slide, watching the landscape zip by. Sure, you can see the rooftops and the clouds, maybe even a distant plane moving across the sky. But it takes sheer determination to separate the joys of being on a water slide and the challenge of registering clearly an image — and with that image a thought, and with that thought an opinion.

Herein lies the problem with Twitter as a medium for the novel. People are not logged on to read a novel. They have glossed over eyes, they are searching for tidbits, laughs and quick news fixes. They are not prepared to engage with a writer and distinguish the beauty of a perfectly executed sentence, or stop their ride on the Twitter slide long enough to consider deeply what it is they have just read.

Twitter is a handicap for the novel. The disjointed scenes, the ambling dialogue, the splintered development are pitfalls in a novel’s progression.

But handicaps present opportunities.

Here is an opportunity for a writer to highlight the medium’s limitations, to work among and then transcend them. Twitter is the prison novel, carved on a cell wall using a piece of glass. But the cell is self imposed and the jagged piece of glass is a smooth keyboard. Heroism and ingenuity are lost. What is gained?

How to Write a Twitter Novel

The 140 characters allowed in a Tweet provide for the writer a chance to condense his words, allowing them to grow in power and poetry. It is a modern version of the haiku, which undoubtedly invigorates the writing process. A noble pursuit. But we are of the mind that Tweeting a novel is more about using the latest, most popular technological service as a means for exposure and less about the merits of prose. It is a marketing tool, not an advance in the craft.

Gifted writers use Twitter. We are not suggesting the service is menial. Twitter provides an outlet for real time news, for gossip, for trends and insights. Twitter has the power to revolutionize journalism. But Twitter also suffers from character conflict. It does not know what it is. The argument goes that Twitter is whatever you want it to be. That’s great. But an information maelstrom is not the place for brick and mortar novel building.

Twitter vs. Pen & Ink

Rest assured. New, better communication systems are being developed. Soon, Twitter will be forced to define its character. Writers that Tweet their novel today might one day look back and cringe.

Or perhaps not. After all, it’s a personal choice. We, however, believe the best method of novel writing is one that’s been employed for hundreds of years. It is a private, grueling affair, but one whose rewards, when all the work is done, deserve preservation.

It’s necessary to consider feedback. Twitter is a way for writers to listen to what their readers want. And while such insights shed light on the writing process they do not enhance the writing. Be mindful of creative writing’s earliest lesson: Write what you know. And write for yourself.

Thanks for your time. Be sure to follow Dark Sky Magazine’s Twitter account.

— Kevin Murphy