Rod’s been exploring writing fiction with Twitter, exploring its “office-desk rather than kitchen-sink realism“. He goes on:

Or rather: I wanted to start from that realism, because no-one, when they write “running” on Twitter, is actually running. They’re reporting after the fact, announcing an intention, or fabricating. Which is the second interesting thing – Twitter’s performativity. Twitter is as much theatrical performance as conversation. Un-realism.

So: a story empty of character and reasonable plot, and a blank-sheet MacGuffin. A story for an audience of 85, and a tentative use of direct messages that only a few of the audience will receive.

I didn’t know it was happening until it was, if you get my drift; messages from a commute slowly turning into narrative as the day went on. Seeing it all joined together is both a revelation and a dilution: a story laid out, but divorced from the trickle that made it so compelling.

(Rod also tips a hat to my Twit 4 Dead bots, which is very kind of him. I’ve slowly been poking at a new set of zombie-hunting narrative bots; the new ones have a few new features to enable better storytelling – notably, the ability to have responses specific to one another, rather than only specific to the situation. The main use is so that they can tell Ellis to shut up, but I’m thinking I’d like to apply the acting framework to an original work. That might be a long way off, though. But: thoughts worth jotting down).