T-book#1: about synthesis
I take and share with you this news from Il Post about the first experiment of micro-fiction made by Twitter.
Andrea Maggiolo is a writer and created Micronarrativa, a project born on Twitter where in 140 characters had been created stories of ordinary people. The idea had been taken from a Vanni Santoni’s work called Personaggi Precari and now it will be published in a book by the independent publisher Libellula Edizioni, with illustration of Riccardo Guasco.
100 words, 140 words, or 3 minutes, if we’re talking of movies: everything seems a competition to concentrate stories in less time and words than usual.
Since Facebook and Twitter entered in our lives, I think our way to communicate changed.
Everything started earlier, with Internet. The fact is that we spend a lot of time online, we have an immediate need of communicate things, and we have all the tools to do that. Few words, few time, and lack of attention. During a marketing seminar, a couple of years ago, the professor told us that posts on our corporate blogs should be no longer than a screen shot. Readers are tired and they can’t stand, in many cases, a longer conversation.
In my work experience this is not so true. And it’s impossible to speak about some topics in few words. I always loved synthesis: I consider it a sign of a clear thought through words. But I studied literature. And the infinite nuances of words and the architecture of text is amazing and fascinating, and it’s gift of the writer to the reader.
Simplify is a good point for everthing, because it pushes to the roots of any image, problem, story. It’s also, in a case of a book or of an article, an important economic element you have to take into account while you’re wrinting.
Sometimes synthesis is a way of writing, a style, a form, just like happens with haiku. In this case, less words are used to evocate sensations, feelings, places or anything else, and the search of the right word is a very difficult and high practice, and every word chosen is used in its inner and deepest sense and sound.
I haven’t an idea, a position regarding these experiments with words. These are scattered thoughts.
I think that languages can’t be controlled. They simply evolve together with society and human needs, and they are defined by their use and the medium. For this reason, I am asking myself how much these kind of short stories are a literary exercise and how much are a virtuosity of the writer, trying to apply rules of the online medium to the written, on-paper one.
I’m curious to see how the new media and social networks expecially will influence the writing practice. This Micronarrativa is interesting under many points of view: writing, language, topics. What will happen next?
