The required readings for this week:
n Steve Buttry, (August 2009) “Riveting Twitter
Narrative of Robotic Surgery at St. Luke’s” http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2009/08/31/riveting-twitter-narrative-of-robotic-surgery-at-st-lukes/
n Andrew Fitzgerald (October 2013), “Adventures in
Twitter Fiction, Ted Talks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6ZzmqDMhi0
n Alena Smith, (October 2013), “Literary Parkour:
@Hourse_ebooks, Jonathan Franzen and the Rise of Twitter Fiction,” Grandland, http://www.grantland.com/blog/hollywood-prospectus/post/_/id/89096/literary-parkour-horse_ebooks-jonathan-franzen-and-the-rise-of-twitter-fiction
Excapite, (April 2013), “Facebook, Twitter and the new
Fractal Narrative,” http://excapite.blogspot.ca/2013/04/facebook-twitter-and-new-fractal.html
Because I disagreed with Alena Smith on Fractal Narratives blog post, I will dedicate my response this week to this reading.
ReplyDeleteFractal narratives as described at http://fractalnarratives.org/help/ seem to be an odd narrative format relying on hypertext. Based on Smith’s blog post, a fractal narrative seems to be one where each sentence can stand alone, but that new layers of narrative can be added between the first and last sentences of the story. Based on my experience with Twitter and Facebook, we cannot write fractal stories on these mediums because they are linear in nature. You cannot go back and edit postings on these platforms to change the times when they were published unless you delete everything that came after the post you’re trying to insert new content after. To me a fractal narrative is a form of hypertext fiction.
Smith writes that by using social media and clicking through several links that we are participating in fractal narratives. I can see this to be true, BUT there are no authors writing the narrative, we as users are creating the fractal narratives. Furthermore, I would argue that these “social media enabled-story experiences” are DIFFERENT each time and for each person. Almost everyone can relate to seeing something on Facebook whether it be a recipe or animal video and then we continue clicking around to find out where to buy certain ingredients, reading about the animal breed, until we’re reading something else random and we wonder where the 20 minutes went. I would consider that we are all "authors" of our own fractal narratives online, and that everyone’s phenomenological experience is unique but it is the behaviour that is similar.
On the other hand, I think there is potential in Twitterature because like the fractal, it is made up of short sentences, but it is still linear. Another type of narrative that has gained popularity, originating in Japan (2003), is the cell phone novel. Here is a link to more information about cell phone novels: http://www.textnovel.com/keitai
Andrew Fitzgerald TED talk was very interesting to listen to. All his examples of how fiction can be developed in twitter were new to me.
ReplyDeleteOf particular interest to me, is how he compares Twitter to radio with the purpose of illustrating how different media create their own form of narratives. Just as radio opened the door to different styles and voices, such as radio soap operas in Spanish (it doesn’t get tackier than that!), Twitter is allowing for creative expressions to form while taking advantage of the inherent qualities of the medium. Accordingly Fitzgerald says that in Twitter there are “creative people experimenting with the bounds of what is possible in this medium.”
When addressing the changes that this “Twitter fiction” format asks from the reader, he uses the example of the New Yorker to illustrate how in this format the reader does not decide the reading pace, it is actually up to the author to do that. Despite anticipation or curiosity, readers have to wait until the author posts the next part of the story. I find this shift very interesting because it’s like a change in the balance of power change.
I would also like to add another potential challenge for the reader, and that is the need to quickly learn to recognize what is fiction from news. Most of us use Twitter for news (from friends, local news, world news) and it might take some getting used to, to find fiction in the middle of the news twitter feed.
One of my current favorite hashtags in Twitter is #SundaySentence. The idea is that on Sunday’s people tweet their favourite literature sentences of the week. I love words and lately I find myself anticipating this feed. Does this count as Twitter Fiction? Hope so.
Hi Andrea - great point about recognizing fiction from news on Twitter. How can we tell what is real from fiction (or flexible identy). Even if the news story is realy, Fitzgerald points out that some authors are now putting a litterary twist on the news - so even if the news story is true, isn't this embelishing a bit?
DeleteYes it can get confusing. Also, I tend to scan twitter (not fully read every tweet) which lends it self to even further misunderstandings and misinterpretations. I guess with time we get used to distinguishing who posts fiction and who posts news in our twitter feed.
DeleteI too found Fitzgerald’s comments on how new mediums can define new formats which in turn can alter and ultimately define new stories, quite interesting. Digital media is changing the traditional structure of storytelling. It welcomes creativity and encourages people to push and go beyond set boundaries. The use of flexible identities, anonymity, and blurring between fact and fiction is taking storytelling in a whole new direction which I’m sure will also eventually lead to a completely new medium.
DeleteThere are so many interesting examples of creating narratives on Twitter - the possibilities seem endless! More specifically, the idea of “tuning in every night at 8 p.m.” to learn more about the unfolding story (similar to storytelling on the radio) is absolutely fascinating. When used for storytelling, radio and the Twitter platform are similar in so many ways but also very different. The one-to-many nature of radio broadcasting is much different to today’s many-to-many broadcasting online and via Twitter. As noted in The Guardian article Has Twitter Given Birth to a New Literary Genre: “...the best fictions on Twitter are forged from connectivity.” It’s the connected nature of the platform that make Twitter narratives incredibly different from their spoken and printed counterparts.
ReplyDeleteI also love the idea that there are multiple ways to experience Twitter narratives. As a reader, you can choose how fast you move through a text, however the reader doesn’t have control over when the content is released, thereby building suspense on Twitter. Additionally, the reader can scroll back through the story and can interact with the characters, as well as interact with other readers about the story. I also love the concept of fictional characters engaging with the real world. In the West Wing example in Andrew Fitzgerald’s TEDTalk, the fictional characters each had their own Twitter account and regularly commented on real world events and politics. I think that this is a brilliant, non-conventional character development method that blurs the lines between fact and fiction. Typically, writers have a very limited capacity (especially in a television narrative) to develop characters in any way that is outside of the direct plot line. For die-hard fans of any given show whose characters exist on Twitter, this can provide them with amazing insight into the character’s back story and help to develop a richer narrative on-screen. The only problem that this creates is the ability (or inability) for the author to manage and maintain the authenticity of their characters online. For example, anyone could create a Twitter account for a given character for a TV show (let’s take Dwight from The Office, for example) and begin to tweet as them. After a quick search on Twitter, I found no fewer than eight accounts for Dwight K. Shrute’s. It’s very difficult, if not impossible, for NBC to control the user names and content for their show’s character, which can create issues in brand authenticity and character portrayal online.
To speak further about the Twitter storytelling medium, it’s exciting for an author to have so much flexibility with the format. For example, they can present the story as a series of tweets that happen at the same time every day or happen consecutively over a few short hours, or they can break down the stories by chapters or episodes, and/or the story can continue forever or have a clear ending to the narrative. Twitter fiction also facilitates amazing new opportunities for authors (known and unknown) to experiment and reach a global audience. Twitter cuts out the middle men - the literary agents - from vetting the authors for the publishers, potentially licensing the rights to turn their stories into books, plays or movies.
My final comment for this week is regarding twittercasting surgeries based on the information provided in blog entry from Steve Buttry. Yes, I agree that Twitter provides a unique real-time format for people to ask questions and to keep family members informed during surgical procedures, however, what happens if something goes wrong? Do you really want to find out that your loved one won’t make it via a 140 character line of text for the whole world to see? Where is the line drawn from an innovative execution of a narrative, to downright demeaning and insensitive (especially in a surgical storytelling capacity). I personally think that this application of storytelling on Twitter needs some refinement before I will stand behind it.
Diana, you make a really good point about what if the surgery suddenly goes wrong. Do you stop the feed and hence loose its authenticity? what about legalities? the fact that you have this record of every step the surgeon did might make it a lawyers feast afterwards. If it was someone I knew or loved I would certainly not like to find out via twitter at the same time as the rest of the world.
DeleteWho reads Twitter narratives?
ReplyDeleteI thought the blog post by Steve Buttry was interesting and helps explain who reads Twitter narratives. He writes about St. Luke’s hospital live tweeting an operation. The hospital explained that: “We wanted to use this surgery Twitter-cast as a way to provide people with information that was educational and pertinent”. I think this type of twitter narrative – real time information is extremely valuable. The fact that the family members of the patient also were kept up to date with the progress allows for instant access to information and communication as never before. Along with the fact the others following this Twittercast were able to ask questions to the doctors and receive answers during the surgery really adds to the importance of experiencing an event like this in real time. This is an interactive way to participate in an important and/or educational event.
What might twitter narratives do that print narratives don’t?
ReplyDeleteDuring his TED talk Andrew Fitzgerald said something interesting – that the reader normally controls how to quickly to move through text, but on Twitter, the author controls when they release the information or story, and this adds to the narrative suspense during live tweets. For authors, the advantage to using Twitter is they get quick feedback from their audience as they release pieces of their stories, unlike print narratives.
Fitzgerald also discusses authors using Twitter as a production mechanism – creating a work of fiction only using Twitter allows for spontaneous creation. Twitter allows authors to have fictional characters (flexible identity) engage with the real world, in real time – this is not something that is possible with print narratives.
In response to the question: what might twitter narratives/fiction do that print narratives don’t:
ReplyDeleteIn reference to @Horse_ebooks, I think the short answer is 1. Twitter narratives do not resemble a book: rather they are a unique format to what the platform of Twitter is; and 2. Twitter narratives draw the reader into the unique Twitter experience itself rather than tell a traditional book-type story.
I excerpted this from: Alena Smith, (October 2013), “Literary Parkour: @Hourse_ebooks, Jonathan Franzen and the Rise of Twitter Fiction:
“In a laudatory Atlantic piece, which called @Horse_ebooks “the most successful piece of cyber-fiction of all time,” critic Robinson Meyer writes, “@Horse_ebooks was a fiction … It was about the network and it took the form of network.” In other words, @Horse_ebooks was successful as fiction — specifically, as Twitter-fiction — because it both effectively deployed and meaningfully responded to the medium of Twitter itself. In the end, the impact of the work remains intact despite, or indeed because of, the revelation of human authorship. (Or, as@harveyspecters put it: “i didnt know horse_ebooks was supposed to be a bot i thought it was supposed to be a real person, it was funny either way.”)
The fiction @Horse_ebooks wove was not the kind we typically find in books. The intention was not to tell a story but rather to involve us in an experience — an experience that could only exist on Twitter and, indeed, is reflective about ethical quandaries that arise specifically when humans are engaged with Twitter. (How do we know if we’re interacting with other humans when we can’t see them? What if they are robots? What does it mean to “follow” a robot? Are we becoming robots ourselves? Et cetera.)
To be successful, a work of Twitter-fiction (or what I might suggest we dub “Twitterature”) does not have to function as a prank or ruse in the manner chosen by Bakkila and Bender for @Horse_ebooks. What is essential is that it utilizes, and meaningfully responds to, the form of the network.
And there are all kinds of ways in which writers are doing this. Great Twitterature, as it turns out, abounds. But to discover the new literature of Twitter, you can’t go looking for something that resembles a book. You can’t expect the old kind of art to be what works, or matters, on the new platform”.