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The Rise of Twitter Fiction…………………………………………………………1 Twitter Fiction: A Shift in Author Function Hilary Hyman Twitter fiction, an example of twenty-first century digital narrative, allows authors to experiment with literary form, production, and dissemination as they engage readers through a communal network. Twitter offers creative space for both professionals and amateurs to publish fiction digitally, enabling greater collaboration among authors and readers. Examining Jennifer Egan’s “Black Box” and selected Twitter stories from Junot Diaz, Teju Cole, and Elliott Holt, this thesis establishes two distinct types of Twitter fiction—one produced for the medium and one produced through it—to consider how Twitter’s present feed and character limit fosters a uniquely interactive reading experience. As the conversational medium calls for present engagement with the text and with the author, Twitter promotes newly elastic relationships between author and reader that renegotiate the former boundaries between professionals and amateurs. This thesis thus considers how works of Twitter fiction transform the traditional author function and pose new questions regarding digital narrative’s modes of existence, circulation, and appropriation. As digital narrative makes its way onto democratic forums, a shifted author function leaves us wondering what it means to be an author in the digital age. Twitter Fiction: A Shift in Author Function Hilary Anne Hyman Twitter Fiction: A Shift in Author Function Hilary Anne Hyman An Undergraduate Honors Thesis Submitted to the Department of English at Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Honors in the Major April 18, 2016 Thesis Adviser: Vera Kutzinski Date Second Reader: Haerin Shin Date Program Director: Teresa Goddu Date For My Parents Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge Professor Teresa Goddu for shaping me into the writer I have become. Her commitment to bettering my work fundamentally transformed the way I approach learning. I am overwhelmingly grateful for her continued support and desire to push me farther than I thought possible. I embark on my life’s next chapter thinking in a new way. Thank you. I would like to thank Professor Vera Kutzinski for serving as my thesis adviser. Her unwavering belief in my work instilled confidence in me even on my most discouraging days! Thank you to my parents and two sisters for fueling my curiosity and boundless ambition in all endeavors. I am honored to walk in your footsteps each day. Table of Contents Introduction: The Rise of Twitter Fiction…………………………………………………………1 Chapter I: Digital Experimentation in Jennifer Egan’s “Black Box”……………………………14 Chapter II: Twitter Fiction Production and the Author Function………………………………..28 Conclusion: The Future of Twitter Fiction………………………………………………………51 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………...54 Introduction: The Rise of Twitter Fiction Six years prior to becoming Twitter’s founder and CEO in 2006, Jack Dorsey wrote one word down on paper that would spark a social revolution: “status.” Dorsey envisioned a community of people buzzing short messages at each other in the same way taxi dispatchers and bike messengers did: Where are you? What’s up? What’s your status? (Taylor). Through these status updates, Dorsey wanted to give everyone—as stated in Twitter’s current mission statement— “the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers.” Today, Twitter encourages its 320 million users worldwide to “tell your story here” on a presently streaming newsfeed in “tweets” of 140-characters or less. The Twitter feed functions precisely as a messenger of dispatches from people, places, and things, enabling users to immerse in local, national, and even global conversation through “hashtags,” “retweets,” “likes,” and comments. The social platform has changed what it means to broadcast online, because anyone and everyone can connect and share content at any given second. At its inception, Twitter offered people a vast audience at their fingertips, connecting hundreds of millions of users at a single point of broadcast (“Adventures in Twitter Fiction”). A new method of storytelling, Twitter fiction, began to gain traction in 2010 with the creation of parody accounts and fan fiction. The parody account, a creative way to fictionalize Twitter’s user-base, manipulated the relationship between identity and user handle. When rumors surfaced that Rahm Emanuel would enter the 2010 Chicago mayoral election, writer Dan Sinker created one of the most successful parody accounts in Twitter history: @MayorEmanuel (not to be confused with Emanuel’s real Twitter handle @RahmEmanuel). As Sinker’s alias developed, the fake Rahm Emanuel ultimately turned into a sci-fi hero travelling through a fantastical city of 1 Chicago, attracting press attention and thousands of followers. A couple of years later, in 2012, an anonymous creative did something similar in experimenting with fictional politicians. This user created a parody account of the “invisible Barack Obama” that Clint Eastwood referenced in an empty chair at the 2012 Republican National Convention. @InvisibleObama, an internet sensation with thousands of followers, is still in operation today, continuing to humorously comment on politics and the current events of the world. As for fan fiction, Twitter users found ways to pay tribute to their favorite television shows and characters, reviving, for example, Aaron Sorkin’s The West Wing through fictional Twitter accounts for “Josiah Bartlett,” “Josh Lyman,” and “CJ Craig.” In the manner of their characters, each account offered their own political commentary on current issues, merging elements of fact and fiction (“Adventures in Twitter Fiction”). Parody and fan fiction accounts marked an important stage in Twitter fiction’s development, because they adapted the status update into a fictive form. These writers used Twitter beyond its intended scope, threading fiction into present reality. Though writers experimented before and after, 2012 marked an important year for the legitimization of Twitter fiction as a distinctive method of literary production and form. Two Pulitzer Prize-winning authors, Jennifer Egan for A Visit from the Goonsquad and Junot Diaz for The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, approached Twitter fiction in distinct ways; Diaz experimented with production, whereas Egan experimented with form and dissemination. Egan’s “Black Box” did not engage Twitter in its plot or production, but simply utilized its data feed and vast user-base. Moreover, “Black Box” was the first work of Twitter fiction published in conjunction with a leading publication, The New Yorker, legitimizing it as a developing from with worthy potential. Junot Diaz took a collaborative approach, asking his followers to develop a story together, each tweeting a line under the hashtag #WLRNstory to develop his opening 2 line: “The dogs hadn’t barked all week.” This leveled the distance between author and reader, utilizing Twitter’s connectivity to develop fiction. Also in 2012, Twitter’s Director of Curation Andrew Fitzgerald invited authors and ordinary Twitter users to submit their Twitter fiction ideas for a #TwitterFictionFestival, judged by a panel of publishing executives. For five days, writers submitted fictional works that took a variety of forms; writers posted images, utilized multiple account handles, and crowd-sourced their stories. So many users participated in the festival, that in 2014, The Association of American Publishers partnered with Penguin Random House to launch the second #TwitterFictionFestival and a third one in 2015. These two festivals showcased work of chosen authors for 24 hours a day, five days in a row. Authors spanning the industry premiered original fiction in the festival, catching the attention of tens of millions of tweeters worldwide (Twitter Fiction Festival). Another group of writers joined these authors, showcasing their pre-selected fictional creations. As in 2012, other tweeters were also encouraged to tell their own stories during these five days, using the #TwitterFictionFestival hashtag to participate. In all, the festival showcased 50 authors from 10 countries—bringing to light Twitter’s power to connect people all over the world, not only through news stories and personal status updates, but through creativity. The #TwitterFictionFestival not only offered Twitter Fiction fans and writers the opportunity to read new work from their favorite authors, but it introduced the genre to millions of tweeters. In its showcase of acclaimed authors, the festival legitimized Twitter Fiction—connecting Twitter fiction experimenters and fans, and, in its inception, defining the Twitter fiction literary canon. During this time fans began to republish Twitter fiction on stylized blogs, specific Twitter accounts, under the #twitterfiction hashtag, or on “Twitterzines”—online magazines dedicated to archiving the short fiction form. The #TwitterFictionFestival offered their own archive of 3 submitted fiction from the 2014 and 2015 festivals, enabling people to search by year, genre, or author to find a piece they were looking for. In 2015 it offered a Twitter fiction “generator” that randomly created sentences for users to tweet as inspiration. Still accessible today, the generator begins with a generic framework, “The password for the complimentary Wi-Fi is ___ 1989,” and if users click “randomize,” unique or trending phrases will fill the blank. If they desire a new subject matter altogether, users can click “new
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