For our second interview, we’re glad to talk to Small Stories who recently published the first Wave fiction on Feedbooks (Bathrobe Guru), but also two collections of nanofiction (Small Stories, Uncollected Stories) and Twitter novels (Eating Grass, What It Means).
I write microfiction using the tag ‘Small Stories’. I have always conceived of my work existing within the digital domain. I have championed short form writing and mobile reading / writing on digital devices such as ereaders and mobile phones.
Hello Small Stories, you’ve published collections of nanofiction, wrote several novels on Twitter and you’re now experimenting with Wave. Do you believe that each medium requires a unique approach to fiction ?
Hello, Hadrien. I think the essentials of storytelling never change – the need to hook people with a compelling scenario that requires an outcome, empathy with a character, all that stuff – but yes, each format does require a particular approach or mindset. With Twitter novels like What It Means, for example, it’s more about emotion. With microfiction such as Uncollected Stories it’s very stream of consciousness. And with Google Wave Fiction it’s about the participation of other wave members. Although each format has it’s own particular quality they all require an open mind and passion to make them succeed.
Most fiction on Twitter seems to focus on very short fiction. With your twovels (Twitter + Novels), you had to create a plot with very short sentences (140 characters). How did you handled this task and do you have any recommendations for other authors using this format ?
The Twitter novels (twovels or tovels) are a real buzz. You’re right, they do need a plot to work over a number of consecutive tweets. My twitter novels have between 2,000 to 3,000 words in total spanning hundreds of tweets.
I either plan them out in my head or use Outliner, an iPhone app. The writer needs to think about the plot in advance because you can’t edit tweets once they’re posted. If you delete a tweet you are effectively cutting out a chunk of the story and you can’t insert that back retrospectively.
It’s also notoriously difficult to read fiction on Twitter because you have to read it back to front. That’s why it makes total sense to produce a Feedbooks edition afterwards, so that your readers can get it the right way around.
It’s also remarkably easy to get lost and forget where you are while writing a story. I would recommend using something like the Birdhouse app, which allows the writer to edit tweets offline or try and get momentum going using something like Tweetdeck on a desktop computer.
Altering the pace or creating a change the tone is challenging. For many writers it will feel like driving a Formula 1 car on a normal road. The chances are you’ll stall before you hit 200 miles per hour.
I’m most proud of What It Means – which is written from the point of view of an eighteen year old. The format, the text message type style, the emotion and mood all seem to come together to convey this guy’s world. I have some more Twitter novels in the pipeline!
Finally, it’s a lot of fun creating Twitter versions of your own longer form writing. It’s a great learning exercise. The golden rule is to rework the whole story from the ground up because converting a novel directly into Tweets doesn’t work well. Eating Grass, for example, was based on an 80,000 word novel I wrote (which took me seven years to write). Ironically, I prefer the 2,700 word Twitter version!
Traditionally, it’s been much harder to publish short fiction than novels, do you think that the balance will change with e-books and digital distribution ?
I’ve always championed shorter formats. To my mind there’s something powerful about expressing a story with simplicity and brevity – each word seems more important and imbued with magic. So yes, I would love to see this happen.
The Internet has changed so many things without us being aware. People often see it in a negative context and talk about falling concentration spans but I see it as something positive. People expect a story (information if you like) to be presented in a more vivid and clearly set out way.
We live in a culture of headlines and bulletpoints and yet we all still demand that our content is both engaging and fascinating – we expect it to be presented – packaged – more efficiently. This, I believe, is influencing the way we expect stories to be presented as well.
Getting short fiction published is tricky. It’s really difficult to market a novel with one story let alone market a book with twenty stories! The fiction market is a strange beast.
The truth is that no one really knows what’s going to happen in the future. Some things change some things remain the same. I use an iPhone but I still walk around in handmade leather shoes.
Your collections of short stories are very popular at Feedbooks, I guess that this is a good sign ! Do you use social networks to promote your work or do you believe that most of your readership somehow stumble upon your work (in our most popular or new releases lists) ?
Social networks have their place but it’s easy to spend too much time promoting your work online and not write anything new. There comes a point when you have to refocus on the creative process. It’s all about the quality of the stories.
I believe my writing appeals to a particular audience but I can’t say I know how to reach them. I’ve tried to reach that audience through blogging but it’s a lot more hit and miss than people care to admit. It’s not just about numbers, it’s about the quality of the people you can attract. When I posted a short story (which I thought was great) I might only get 100 readers or so for it, but a random novelty photo could get me thousands of hits.
Feedbooks is by far the most useful way I know of attracting people to my work. Having your ebook on the front page and at the top of Feedbooks lists does help! Feedbooks is a great place to share and discover new writing because it attracts a quality readership.
You’ve been experimenting with Google Wave very recently and decided to include other writers/readers while working on Bathrobe Guru: they provide feedback and suggestions about the plot mostly. Are you happy with this experiment ? How do you find the right balance between writing as a live performance and the need to create a story that someone can appreciate outside of a Wave ? Will you try something new for your next Wave fiction (co-editing for example, rather than involving the other participants in the decisions about the plot) ?
Once again it’s a case of focusing on the unique strength of the particular format. Google Wave is a collaboration tool so it makes perfect sense to use that feature and encourage other wave participants to take a lead in deciding what is going to happen.
Writing Bathrobe Guru has been fascinating and exciting. I only hope the resulting story is as enjoyable for the readers as my experience was writing it. Google Wave Fiction hints at a whole new world of storytelling possibility and blurs the line between author and audience.
I just write as I always write and ignore the fact that people are watching. And yet I do feel different somehow because the audience is there. It’s actually a nice feeling. The collaboration is a fun challenge and the ‘live’ aspect a bonus but I hope the writing works as a finished story – that’s the most important thing for me.
Being able to co-edit a story is what originally attracted me to Google Wave. Hotel Kaiser, for example, is a collaboration which was created using Google Docs. I’m certain it would have worked better with Google Wave. Collaborations are huge fun but both writers need to be on the same level and it can be frustrating waiting for then to finish the next section. It is amazing when they take your ideas places you never imagined!
You pay a lot of attention to the covers of your book: for most of your publications on Feedbooks, you tweaked them several times and a graphic designer created the cover for “What It Means“. Do you believe that in a digital world, a cover is still as important ? An author might not have the right skills to design a cover, what would you recommend in this case ?
I enjoy the challenge of trying to create a visually arresting graphic to stimulate interest in the text. My wife is a graphic designer and thinks that ‘tweaking’ is the sign of an amateur! That’s probably true because I don’t plan the covers like a professional, I just play with them.
Publishers use many devices to attract interest in the text from elaborate book covers and special editions to author book signings, TV and radio appearances, posters, competitions and adverts. It’s all about attracting potential readers. If you can get people to talk about your work this also stimulates interest. This is especially true if there is a debate or controversy surrounding the writer or story.
I think the visual look of things is just as important in the digital domain as elsewhere, if not more so. It’s only a matter of time before screen technology overtakes print. I remember when digital cameras had maximum resolutions of 320 x 240 pixels and people said they would never be as good as a 35mm film camera. Now of course we know that’s nonsense but many people still believe screen technology will never be as readable as paper. It’s just a matter of time…
For my most recent Twitter novel, What It Means, it just so happened that a graphic designer, Ryan Price, was reading the story while I was posting it to Twitter and he enjoyed it so much he offered to do a cover. I was delighted with the result.
If a writer doesn’t have artistic flair I’d suggest they get in touch with friends or family and try to find someone to help – perhaps someone knows someone at art college or through Facebook or Twitter?
Find Small Stories on the Web: http://sites.google.com/site/smallstoriesproject/
On Feedbooks: http://www.feedbooks.com/userbooks/recent?user=15148
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