Why I’m inviting Twitter to write a novel with me

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash

It’s a big party, and everyone’s invited.

That’s the idea behind my latest experiment in serial storytelling. I’m inviting you to help me write a novel, one Tweet at a time.

Now, if you’re anything like me, your first question is probably: What the heck is “serial storytelling”, and why should I care?

Serial novels are already something that the internet has begun to dig into.

Serial storytelling has been around in different forms — being published in magazines in the past — but it’s experiencing a resurgence thanks to the magic of the Internet. So I’m taking advantage of that fact, and inviting you to help me write a novel by sending me one Tweet at a time.

Of course, this is not going to be your average serial tale. We won’t be crafting a story that unfolds one chapter at a time. After all, that’s not much of an experiment! We will be writing something more than just chapters — we’ll be crafting the entire narrative arc in just 280-character chunks.

But what exactly is this “serial Tweet novel” I’ve been talking about?

It starts out like so: “Down, down the hill. The windshield erupted in on her, and the wind and rain came flying through, scattering the papers sitting in the passenger seat.”

Come join in!