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In October, fiction writers and readers in the Twitterverse got all excited about the first ever Twitter Fiction Festival. It did happen and was... Twitter’s Fiction Festival – As it Happened

In October, fiction writers and readers in the Twitterverse got all excited about the first ever Twitter Fiction Festival. It did happen and was in fact launched last Wednesday and ended on Sunday. If you followed the hashtag #twitterfiction, you would have been all agog at the pretty amazing work the featured authors had to showcase. Of course, there were a lot of other people who used the hashtag even though they weren’t “official” Twitter Fiction Festival authors.

Fiction Festival

Twitter Fiction Festival

So how did the festival fare?

The author selection: from Greek mythology to Shakespeare

More than 20 authors were selected to officially participate in telling their stories for the Twitter Fiction Festival. You can see the complete list on Twitter’s blog, but I think my pick of the lot is writer Lucy Coats (@lucycoats), who retold 100 Greek myths in 100 tweets. How creative and interesting can you get? Here’s a peek into her tweets.

Twitter Fiction Festival

Lucy Coats Greek Myths Retold

That’s how you make good use of 140 characters! If you want read the full story, visit Lucy Coats’s blog.

If nothing moves you inside like Shakespeare, then author W.W. Norton’s (@wwnorton) tweets/RTs would have delighted you. Arguably not exactly writing his own fiction, Norton’s plan of action was to retweet classic lines from Shakespeare.

Another interesting author who participated in the Twitter Fiction Festival: Lauren Beukes (@laurenbeukes), who encouraged the community to provide suggestions – incongruous is the key – and mashed them together to tell a story.

twitter fiction festival recap

All languages welcome

While most of us use Twitter in English, we cannot ignore other users – more than we can count – who use other languages. It’s great that Twitter didn’t overlook them in organizing the festival, as some of the authors who were selected tweeted in other languages: French, Italian, and Spanish being some examples.

What’s next?

If you want more of the Twitter Fiction Festival, visit this page. And, if you want it to happen again, I think the guys at Twitter will want to know that, so speak up! You’ve got another year to prepare your plan for the next festival. You just might become one of the selected authors!

 

[Image via couriermail]