Can you write a ghost story in no more than 124 characters?
Stuart Neville, author of The Twelve (which I reviewed on The Book Book the other day), is running a little contest. The occasion? That book’s publication tomorrow in the US, called here The Ghosts of Belfast. Following is a brief description of the rules/guidelines (for more information see Neville’s Web site):
- Compose a ghost story no more than 124 characters in length.
- By midnight, October 31, Post it in a Twitter tweet, with the hashtag #GhostsOfBelfast.
- Sit back and wait for the adulation and/or prizes to roll in.
All right, it’s not that simple.
For starters, obviously, if you have no Twitter account you are (as the rude abbreviation says) S.O.L. If you’re in that position, you have one, maybe two options:
- Enter it as a comment to this post here on RAMH. I’ll tweet it for you. Since I’ve reviewed his book, I hereby disqualify myself from winning. Should your entry be a winner, I’ll put you and Neville in touch with each other. The drawback to this option: anyone on Twitter who’s following the hashtag will think I wrote your ultra-short, although they’ll know better by the time the contest is over.
- Neville says in his guidelines (emphasis added): “Each of those [winning] tweets will be re-tweeted by me and the good folks at Soho Press (or linked to a special page on my website if they’re too long).” This implies to me that he’s willing to consider stories which exceed Twitter’s maximum tweet length. The drawback to this option: you’ll have to figure it out on your own and/or wait for Neville to clarify. Or not. :)
Update: On reflection… no, he’s not saying the entries can be longer than a tweet’s allowed to be. He’s saying that when he and Soho Press re-tweet the winning entries, they’ll probably be longer than a tweet may be because of extra text which Twitter adds to a re-tweet. (And no, I can’t believe adults actually talk like this.) So you’re stuck: either use Twitter to get credit for the story, or use me to front for you. It’s gotta be Twitter.
As I said above, I myself am not actually entering the contest. But here’s an example of what an entry might look like:
Old guy at the bar glares at you, at anyone who dares to sit nearby. Don’t take it personally; he’s been there since 1843. #GhostsOfBelfast
[Hat tip to Moonrat.]
This sounds like fun! I might enter.
Even I can’t write that short. I’ve found I definitely have my lower limits and they’re longer than you might suspect.
I don’t have a Twitter account, nor do I wish to. Twitter is blocked in China anyway.
However, in a spirit of competitiveness…
What drew him to that dreary graveyard day after day, he never knew until at last he found the stone with his name on it.
Sometimes ReCaptcha tries to cheer you up…
lovelier midafternoon
Two of my favourite words, unexpectedly combined!
And now – really spookily, given the subject of Stuart’s book! – we have seer IRA.
Another one:
The perfect man, she thought. He walked her home. They kissed by moonlight. And then he showed her the spot where he died.
Darc: I thought this particular writerly flystrip might catch you (thinking of your “five-second fiction” masterpieces on Twitter).
Squirrel: I’ve found that once I’ve written something short(ish) which says what I want it to say, I can’t chop a whole lot of it to get it to a specific maximum length. BUT if I write with a maximum length from the start, it’s much easier.
And anyhow, I bet your average length is way shorter than most of the rest of ours!
Froog: I’ll post those two entries this weekend. (I myself like the second. Especially that there’s nothing about their actually talking.)
You have a gift for attracting reCaptcha word pairs drenched in meaning.
(Oh, and I’ll fix up the typo/meta-comment for you soon, if I haven’t already by the time you see this.)
How about:
Riding at midnight, one of her favorite times, she was caught off guard by the lower branch. But it was all right as she glanced back and realized she’d passed right through it.
cynth: Excellent entry. Just one thing… needs to be shorter! (So-called “Twitfic” may not be a major — even a recognized — genre, but writing it sure enforces the short-and-sweet rule. :)