Mosman Readers

"Book lovers never go to bed alone"

Give people 140 characters and they'll take a mile

Like any other kind of literature, Twitter lit — or Twitterature, to borrow the title of a recent book that condensed literary classics into tweet form — has its strengths, rules and tropes. Twitter is pure voice, an exercise in implying character through detail and tone. Halpern's inaugural @shitmydadsays tweet is so economical that it should be taught in writing workshops: "'I didn't live to be 73 years old so I could eat kale. Don't fix me your breakfast and pretend you're fixing mine.'" Instantly, we know how old Dad is; we know he has a fine-tuned b.s. detector; we know he is fond of pleasure and not of rabbit food; we can infer that his breakfast-fixing adult son has moved in with him. All in fewer than 120 characters, including quotation marks.

Great article in Time magazine on writing adapting to technology - Twitter Lit: A New Creative Outlet