An experiment in twitter fiction

Very early on in my #fridayflash career, I wrote a story entirely told in tweets, based on the idea that if you looked at someone's timeline you are effectively reading the story backwards. The result which you can see here, had mixed responses. Some people felt I'd been a little too obscure with what had happened, others that it was very hard to read a story that way. I took the helpful critique and left it for a while till my good friends at Blank Media announced they were looking for submissions for a booklet to accompany their art exhibition "Inside". I re-jigged my Miss Piggy story, mocking up a twitter page to give  a bit more information about the other characters, who else she was following and what pictures she had recently posted. I was delighted that my story was selected (the first time I'd been paid!) and I floated the idea with the exhibition organisers that we could consider doing it live. They felt that was an interesting idea, but too much to organise, but ever since, I've been itching to do something similar.

It was on my game plan for next year, but the announcement of the first twitter fiction festival seemed to good an opportunity to miss. The festival takes place from 28th November to 2nd December. Submissions are required by 15th November.

So my proposal is this:

I will create a Miss Piggy like character  on twitter (I think the realmisspiggy is alas, now taken!).  You can be involved in two ways.

If you want to get involved as a writer, you can create your own character to interact with mine. In the two weeks before the festival we will speak to each other on twitter building up a network of relationships and discussions. Every now and then my character will be referring to her son in disparaging terms (as she did in the original story). Something will happen at some point during the festival which affects them both. Your characters can either be sympathetic or appalled at my character's response. I'd also like someone to play the part of the son who can give an alternative point of view.

If you want to get involved as a reader - you can be yourself, follow all the characters and interact as and when you wish.

We'll draw it to a conclusion on the Sunday & I'll then try and reproduce it on a specially created blog if it isn't too crazily out of control.


It's quite possible the twitter festival will reject the submission, so if it does and people are still interested, I'll find a good time for us all to do it next year as I'd originally planned.


Please feel free to invent your own characters, here's a little bit I came up with on characters for the story.

jollyjenny2 Jenny Hastings


I’m a kid at heart, up for all sorts of jolly japes…



laser_light Bob Morgan

DJ by night, Rock God by day, I follow the music wherever…



2nd_handman Harold Steptoe

Obsessive fan of all things Steptoe, handyman in my…

  So far we have two writers interested and two signed up.  If you are  interested please DM me your email on twitter and I'll sign you up.   Here's to an interesting experiment!