Andrew Fitzgerald, a member of Twitter’s news and journalism partnerships team, gave a TED Talk called “Adventures in Twitter Fiction.”
We’ve embedded the video above–have you ever shared a short story on Twitter? Here’s more about the TED Talk:
He showcased excerpts of “Twitter fiction done right” by authors like Elliott Holt, who spontaneously created a narrative through the Twitter accounts of her characters, and Jennifer Egan, who used @NYerFiction to create episodes of Black Box, a novel she storyboarded into 140-character pieces. Twitter, Fitzgerald said, is not just a means of publication but one of production, as is the case with parody accounts like the foul-mouthed, sci-fi version of Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, captured in @MayorEmanuel, or “fictional characters that engage the real world,” like the accounts of the entire cast of The West Wing.
In the past, both Pulitzer Prize winner Jennifer Egan and novelist Elliott Holt have written stories on this social media platform. Many might argue that Twitter has helped to raise the popularity of short stories.
In 2012, the Twitter Fiction Festival took place over the course of five days. Last month, Twitter partnered with Six Word Memoir to host the Six Word Festival.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this post misspelled Holt’s name.