Fiction goes Twittering

Writing in brief
As legend has it, Ernest Hemmingway once made a bet in a bar: the bet being that he can write a story in six words. Of course, he won the bet. And the story he came up with was very short, very crisp, and packed with understated pathos: “For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn”. Readers were stupefied.

Arjun Basu is no Hemingway, and he sits not in a bar but in his home. But today, decades after the original twister-writer had shot himself in the head, Basu taps out similarly pithy lines on his Blackberry.

Going by his status message on GoogleTalk — “Thinking of Twisters” — Basu, a Montreal-based editor, might strike you as a strange man. After all, who keeps obsessing about twisters? But Basu’s ‘twisters’ are not violently destructive windstorms — they are extremely short, short stories — all of 140 characters — that you put out on Twitter. They are grammatically correct, don’t use abbreviations, and even have the traditional plot, with a beginning, middle and end. So why the name ‘twisters’? Because they come with a twist in the tail. Or tale, as it were.

The pre-Twitter avatar of ‘twisters’ is more commonly known as ‘Flash fiction’ or ‘micro fiction’, and with the advent of Twitter, interest in them seems to be growing, especially online.

Websites such as Outshine (http://shineanthology.wordpress.com) and Thaumatrope (http://thaumatrope.greententacles.com) pay authors for such works, while Wired magazine in 2006 even published a collection of flash fiction.

Basu is one of the leading proponents of this genre of fiction on Twitter. And he has a sizeable fan following: over 7,500 follow his stories religiously. And each of his twisters is exactly 140 characters, not more, not less.

“A year ago, I joined Twitter just for the heck of it,” says Basu. “My first few ‘tweets’ (a post on Twitter) were as commonplace as ‘waiting in an airport lounge’ or ‘I’m starving.’” Then one day when he was thinking about how to expand his followers’ list, he happened to see a child reaching out for a cookie.

He was inspired to write this ‘twister’: The kid looks up at the candy bar and wonders how he can get to the caramel goodness inside without waking up the asthmatic narcoleptic cat.” He’s not looked back since, and these days, writes as many as five such twisters every day.

Back then, Basu, who works with Spafax, a media house that specialises in in-flight magazines, was struggling with his first novel. Now almost two years later, he has written almost 1,500 pieces of micro-fiction.

In between, he also managed to write a book of “normal length” short stories. “With my novel, I’ve often had to contend with writers’ block, but thankfully, not with twisters, considering how many I have written,” he says.

Basu is quick to defend his twisters against detractors who dismiss it as a trivial pastime not worthy of the attention of the literarily ambitious. “So what if they are only 140-characters long, it is challenging in its own way,” he insists. It takes him a minute to type out the story, but much longer to edit them, and of course, even longer to think of them.

“For me, twisters are a constant preoccupation. Even when I am at work or busy doing something else, I’m always thinking about it. And when I don’t, it exists in my sub-consciousness, the mind always ready to spot an idea.” He adds, “The most difficult part is to write it in 140 characters. It might seem easy, but not everyone can do it.” 

Recently, Basu was pleasantly surprised when he heard that a creative-writing teacher in Boston is using his twisters for classroom teaching. “Another teacher in Philippines is using them to teach English as a second language,” he says. His agent is also trying to secure a publication deal for a book of such twisters. 

“Many in the publishing world are aware of the Twitter phenomenon, but are unsure of how to tap into it. Given the recession, they are wary, but my agent is hopeful.” Meanwhile, a one-minute filmmaker has also come knocking, asking for the rights of one of his stories, which he wants to shoot for a one-minute film festival.

“I don’t worry about whether my twisters will get published. Or whether I can make any money out of it,” says Basu. “I’m too busy thinking of my next twister.”

Basu’s twisters
When he stroked her shoulder softly she felt it all the way in her toes. And she knew she would end up marrying him. Because she had no legs.
The air is fresh, the promise of something lovely in it, of magic. And then the wind shifts. And he is reminded he lives next to a pig farm.
Her body looks 30. Her face looks 50. Her hands look 70. And he looks like he doesn’t care. He might look 40, yes, but his mind is really 16.
As a child he delivered newspapers. As an adult he delivered bad news daily. Because he was a negative person. And the world’s worst surgeon.