TweetHeart
TweetHeart is a Twitter novel, written entirely in tweets, published 140 characters at a time, live on Twitter. It is the story of Zoe, a bright but troubled young woman living on the streets of Berkeley, California, who becomes estranged from her family and friends. She starts communicating with them again only through Twitter, opening a window into her dangerous and mysterious life - sharing her experiences through a real-time, online diary.
The story began on 1/11/11 and ended on 11/11/11. There was no outline and no rewriting, so TweetHeart was raw, live and rough. I wrote between five and 12 tweets each day, usually in the morning hours, all written from Zoe's point of view, as if she were the one tweeting. I often wrote it on my iPhone, from the very streets where it takes place. It was the first Twitter novel of its kind: a story written on the fly, in the voice of a tweeting protagonist.
In the end, there were more than 1600 tweets, equal to 150 pages of writing. They are all archived here, in the order they were sent.
More than 1000 people all around the world experienced TweetHeart as it happened - reading the novel as it was published - by following @TweetHeartNovel on Twitter. More than a thousand others followed it on this website. The project attracted international media attention and loyal readers from the Bay Area to Budapest, from Manila to Moscow.
And yes, for those who are wondering, Zoe is based, loosely, on a real person. My longtime significant other fell into a spiral of substance abuse, mental illness and homelessness. She did not survive it. TweetHeart is a fictionalized account of what she went through. I started wondering, what if she'd been part of the social network generation? How might that have changed her experience? The story is heavily fictionalized - but it is based on real life events and emotions.
The story began on 1/11/11 and ended on 11/11/11. There was no outline and no rewriting, so TweetHeart was raw, live and rough. I wrote between five and 12 tweets each day, usually in the morning hours, all written from Zoe's point of view, as if she were the one tweeting. I often wrote it on my iPhone, from the very streets where it takes place. It was the first Twitter novel of its kind: a story written on the fly, in the voice of a tweeting protagonist.
In the end, there were more than 1600 tweets, equal to 150 pages of writing. They are all archived here, in the order they were sent.
More than 1000 people all around the world experienced TweetHeart as it happened - reading the novel as it was published - by following @TweetHeartNovel on Twitter. More than a thousand others followed it on this website. The project attracted international media attention and loyal readers from the Bay Area to Budapest, from Manila to Moscow.
And yes, for those who are wondering, Zoe is based, loosely, on a real person. My longtime significant other fell into a spiral of substance abuse, mental illness and homelessness. She did not survive it. TweetHeart is a fictionalized account of what she went through. I started wondering, what if she'd been part of the social network generation? How might that have changed her experience? The story is heavily fictionalized - but it is based on real life events and emotions.