1. Touching The Void: Writing ‘Twiction’
Wednesday, 19 September 2018

2. Learning Objective
To show a personal response to the characters in the text.
To show a grasp of context
To explore the subtext of a given situation within a novel – what are people really thinking?

3. Who TWEETS?:

4. What is ‘Twiction?’
“Twiction “is a story told in twenty ‘tweets’ or less (usually from the main characters perspective – or imaginary Twitter feed!) Each ‘tweet’ is a maximum of 140 characters and is a short update of what they have been doing – think of it like a chapter in a book – but can reveal so much about the character!

5. What Questions does this raise?
Read the following six words which Ernest Hemingway claims is his greatest ever story:
‘For sale: baby’s shoes, never worn.’
In pairs, write down a list of questions this would prompt the reader to think about.

6. Feedback – Hemingway’s Best Story?
What images did this give you as a reader?
We can see what Hemingway is trying to say – it gives the reader countless questions to ponder and imagine the answers to in their minds!
'Micro-fiction' develops precision, efficiency and allows us to consider the effect of each aspect of our writing with careful consideration.

7. Starting your Twiction
The first way you can show your reader something about your main character’s (and other characters’) personality is by choosing a TWID for them (Twitter ID) which can be a combination of LETTERS and NUMBERS!

8. Choosing a TWID
For example, the character of the young girl who lies and is proud of it could WHAT DOES THIS SHOW US ABOUT HER? She might want to change her name late rin the play – what might she become? What might Joe, Simon and Richard call themselves based on their personalities?

9. TWEETS – what techniques might Joe use?
Tweets give us an insight into a characters thoughts, actions, mood, situation; where they are, what they have been doing, who they are with and what they think about it ALL!
N.B Tweets are usually in the first person and are announcements/comments from the main character's viewpoint/perspective
Think of it as your character's VOICE! You are limited to 140 characters including spaces so don't be afraid to use abbreviations, emoticons and CAPITAL LETTERS to get your character's thoughts across.

10. Techniques of TWITTER…
MENTIONING someone: your characters can mention other people in their tweets and this can enable the reader to see more about the relationship between them –the openness of this function enables this! (Boreal might send: @coulterlady have you yet?)
Direct Message (conveyed by putting a D before the username) - can give insight into the relationship between different characters and is more private than 'mentioning' them. Privacy can be maintained.
Can you think of a Dark Materials scenario requiring Direct Messaging?

11. Hashtags – connect their thoughts!
Using the 'hash' key # marks a post as being in a certain group or relating to a certain theme. Posts that share the same hashtag can be listed and viewed together.
This can be quite useful for allowing us to see how a character feels about something that has happened, embellishing their thoughts on a particular situation by linking them to an abstract concept: #becauseitsthere might link the idea of climbing mountains.

12. PAIRED TASK:
What features of Joe’s narrative style lend themselves to TWEETING? Look again at the “icicles” passage: “Icicles. Thousands of icicles. Stiff, giant glass fingers. Some were forty or fifty foot in length and slowly but constantly dripped and dripped again into the crevasse below, the distant hollow sound echoing through the desolate mountainside. It was frighteningly cold.”
How might this look as a TWEET? Write it together characters…

13. FEEDBACK:
Let’s hear a selection of your tweets.

14. Starting out: HWK Choose a main character to write…
Begin to plan your work of twiction using this template – on the VLE.
TwictionPlan.doc
TwictionTemplate.doc
REMEMBER: the best tweets sum up the emotional response to an event – they do not describe the event itself!