Ho Bloody Ho, a Christmas Tale

As the nights grow cold and the days grow short I find my mind turning to more seasonal matters and the creation of little Christmas treats. No, not mince pies or gingerbread stars, but a gift served in 140 character helpings, a new twitter novella for all who care to follow, entitled @HoBloodyHo —it even has flashing lights on the profile pic (when viewed on twitter itself).

This Yuletide story follows the eventful days and bitter thoughts of a man to whom life has not been kind, struggling to find kindness within himself while working as a shopping centre Santa.

Don’t worry it’s not slushy or sentimental; Dickens it isn't.

The tweets will begin being broadcast from Mid December (The exact date has yet to be finalised) and will run right up until Christmas. The story will unfold as a series of tweets by the main character Jim.
After my original experiment with this format for the @BadHairDaze story, first broadcast in April 2010, I’ve learnt that, not only does every tweet need to contribute to progressing the story or characters, but they need to be regular –at least 4 a day. To create a story arc that works over the time period along with the usual 140 character limitations of twitter is both a challenge and an accomplishment for me. Once I start broadcasting the story I cannot stop, or take time out until it is finished. With @BadHairDaze this was a major commitment and I was tweeting from laybys on car journeys even several days from my laptop at wireless hotspots during the London Book Fair. This time round I’ve learnt the benefits of scheduled tweeting via Tweetdeck and I intend to put up each day’s tweets in advance.

Currently the writing is running a little behind schedule, I’m about a third of the way through the process and more than a little nervous about getting it done and edited before it goes out. However, here is a selection of tweets from the work in progress as a twitter trailer.

Tuesday 9.00

Got in this morning, and some joker has messed with the sign overnight; rearranging the letters to say: SATAN’S GROTTO. Like it.

Tuesday 9.30

Wish we could keep it as Satan: Been bad this year, little Johnny? No presents for you then and your immortal soul’s gonna burn in hell. 

Tuesday 15.30

Keiley does all the wrong things for me. I can’t believe she's only 18 –it's the elf outfit, it shows all her bumps too effectively.

Tuesday 16.15

I can't bloody believe it, one of the little SOBs just peed on my lap, I don't have spare trousers issued for such eventualities.

Tuesday 16.30

A quick rinse under the tap in the gents and a towel on loan from Keiley and I'm back in business. Trousers are still wet. #HoHoNo

Tuesday 19.00 

Got to travel home with damp trousers, I'm not looking forward to it; it's perishing out.

Tuesday 20.30

Called Rita’s to speak to the kids. Robby was out again, but Jin was in –we spoke for about a minute; she wanted to watch some TV programme.

The story will be broadcast from mid-December, start following to catch the first tweets as they come out. @HoBloodyHo a Christmas gift to all of twitterdom. Now that’s got to be better than a mince pie.

The Twitter Short Story -delivery in progress

This is my second blog about twitter, it's getting to be a habit. If anyone has been following my twitter feed, they will be aware that I'm in the process of delivering a story, Bad Hair Daze, via twitter. Yes, I'm doing it to promote my work, come on, I'm not that innocent, but I'm also doing it because I enjoy playing with new formats and exploring how they can be used. (It's how I got into writing software reviews for magazines like Video Age). The question is, could twitter be a viable delivery tool for short, or episodic storylines, or will it remain the preserve of Haiku's and links to news items?

I'm now into my second day as a twitter novelist (Okay, short fiction writer), so far it could best be described as a learning experience. Bad Hair Daze is a romantic comedy, following the day to day life of Zel, a 24 year old features writer on Hair Magic Magazine. The story is written in a form of diary style, with Zel updating the reader about the events in her day in real-time, as a series of tweets. As a writer this has thrown up a number of challenges, the most obvious being twitter's 140 character limit for each tweet. Frustratingly, this also includes spaces, so lots of short words can be just as bad as long ones. The art I needed to learn was to make each tweet: stand alone –without the need to run onto a second–, still have meaning in itself, and still be able to drive the story forward. The second issue I needed to look at was time. Each tweet must be sent at a particular time, to coincide with Zel's day and the events that are apparently unfolding in real-time. For me, apart from that fact that it plays havoc with my concentration, it has meant getting creative with the means of sending tweets. Normally I can use the computer to send tweets, but to tweet when not at home has necessitated the use of my phone to send them through SMS text messaging. There have been one or two technical difficulties to overcome with this; including switching provider, because my original one didn't work with twitter. I'm also the first to admit I'm useless at tapping out text messages on the phone keypad. To get round this, I send the tweets as text messages using Skype, from my computer to my phone, in advance; it is then a simple matter of forwarding each message to twitter at the scheduled time.
All this should have been fine; it worked during my testing, but yesterday's experience highlighted a couple of issues with the use of my phone. The first being that, for no reason a could tell, it split one of my tweets. I sent it as one text, but it appeared in twitter as two consecutive tweets. The second issue (and lesson learnt) is that, the final tweet of the day lost the last word, appearing in twitter as:
'Evelyn stood right next to me in the lift, touched my hair, and said she liked it in this colour, but it would suit me better shorter. C …'. The last word should have appeared as 'Creepy'. What I had failed to take into account was that mobile phones can deliver more than 140 characters, and my tweet was actually 142; an oversight I should have checked before it was sent to my phone. By the time I realised, parked in a lay-by on the A35, there was really nothing I could do.

I hope that I can work around any future glitches, as I will be relying increasingly on my phone during the London Book Fair next week. Just to be on the safe side, though, I think it will be wise to seek out as many wireless hotspots, for my laptop, as I can.

Aside from any technical problems, I hope that the flow of the story will start to come through as the tweets progress and any idiosyncrasies of the medium will be forgiven as merely a kind of realism to the delivery of the story. I still intend to see the story through to it's conclusion on the 30th April, and hope that those who follow it, find it an interesting and engaging way to experience a narrative. It remains to be seen if it will be worth repeating the experiment, although I do have a longer, and more gritty, story which I may deliver towards Christmas. I may even consider writing another episode to Bad Hair Daze, if this one isn't a complete disaster.