Experiments in style: Social media version
The story as told in a series of tweets
Introduction
One of the things I’ve been trying out is reworking a piece of text into completely different styles. A full exposition and explanation are given here:
Today’s version takes the form of social media updates (specifically, Twitter).
First, though, here is the original text on which these experiments or transformations are based:
The original (template) text
In the middle of the night, I woke up (if you can call being semi-conscious being awake), walked purposefully towards the door to go to the bathroom — and almost knocked myself out.
The reason was that in the twin states of entire darkness and semi-somnambulance I was facing in a different direction from the one I thought I was facing. As a result, instead of walking through the door, I tried to walk through the wall.
The next few days brought nausea and headaches. After much prevarication I went to Accident and Emergency, where I waited petrified among people for whom “social distancing” means not quite touching you, and who wore their masks as a chin-warmer.
An hour and a half later I emerged into the twilight, secure in the knowledge that I had nothing more serious than mild concussion. I failed to do much writing, but I was pleased to have read a further 17% of my book.
Social media version
Well, what do you think? Please do leave a comment. I used this fake tweets generator to create the images. That app also lets you create a fake Twitter ID and Twitter name.
I’m maintaining an index of the styles in which I’ve written this story. Finally, if you don’t subscribe, why not? You know it makes sense.
Curious how my perception changed with this style experiment! I have read the original many times now, and have always thought it was a cute, funny slice-of-life thing you might write in a letter to a friend. But, to me, when presented as a sequence of tweets, it just sounds like someone needs to get a real life. And the sad little tweet "I am reading a book," that has 329k retweets and 209 likes! Sounds like a LOT of people need to get a real life. Why do tweeters always sound so terribly lonely and needy to me?. ( I wonder if my comments make ME sound lonely and needy....?) PS Check out Bill Adler's Terms of Service story today. I'll bet you could write your story as TOS!
You have an amazing following on Twitter. 414,000 likes on those posts. It must feel amazing having all that support. (I really enjoyed this exercise. It highlighted the way social media can make an event of mundane moments.)