A platform of storytelling that is just now coming into its own as a storytelling medium is Twitter. Twitter’s constraints are evident, as 140 characters only give one so much space to get a point across. However, there is another, less obvious component to tweeting a narrative that is especially important: time.
Unlike movies where the audience can experience the action at their leisure a Twitter narrative gives the author more opportunities to play with the event each installment creates, playing with this phenomenon to spur a different kind of interaction with the text than one can get with a blog. Twitter invites direct response by the audience in a way that other media do not Twitter breaks the fourth wall by inviting the audience to reply, simply by using the platform.
Transmedia storyteller Caitlin Burns has posted a terrific list of ways that people have used Twitter to tell fictitious stories. Definitely worth checking out. (via Jeff Gomez)
I’d add one more, by the way: the mass reenactment of War of the Worlds.
