"Constraints drive innovation and force focus," according to 37Signals in their popular "Getting Real" book. If that's true, then Copyblogger's Twitter Writing Contest, announced a couple of weeks ago, should have had writers brimming with creativity. The task? Write a short story in 140 characters. Not less than 140 characters, exactly 140 characters. That's no easy task, but the contest still fielded over 300 entries. Today, Copyblogger revealed the winners.
"Being constrained to exactly 140 characters will spark your creative juices and force you to focus stringently on word choice, sentence structure, and even punctuation," said Copyblogger's Brian Clark in introducing the contest last week, echoing 37Signals as he did. Luckily, it seems to have worked -- the winning entries are tightly wound, beautifully constructed masterpieces that challenge readers to fill in the blanks.
The winning entry entry comes from Ron Gould:
"Time travel works!" the note read. "However you can only travel to the past and one-way." I recognized my own handwriting and felt a chill.
The spirit of the Twitter Writing Contest is reminiscent of Hemingway's famous six-word story: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." It's said that Hemingway called those six words his greatest story ever, and two year's ago WIRED magazine brought together a group of best-selling authors to compose their own 6 word masterpieces.
Remember to check out Copyblogger for the other winning stories, and see Daniel Smith's blog for a slideshow of all 331 entries.
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Six words to fulfill a dream.
Live From Las Vegas
The Masked Millionaire
Posted by: The Masked Millionaire | May 30, 2008 4:27 PM
Wow, link love from the powerful RWW - thanks Josh! I am a long-time reader and loyal subscriber/fan.
This contest was really great and all the entries truly inspiring. I would definitely encourage your readers to grab a brewski and spend some quality time reading them over on my slideshows when they get the chance.
Daniel Smith
Smithereens Blog
Posted by: Daniel Smith | May 30, 2008 5:06 PM
By the way, your content seems to be duplicated word for word here: http://www.buzzya.com/2008/05/30/award-winning-fiction-in-140-characters/
Not sure if it's legit or not, just caught it on Technorati and thought I would let you know...
Daniel
Posted by: Daniel Smith | May 30, 2008 5:09 PM
Remember this newspiece? Novels Composed on Cellphones Topping Japanese Best Seller Lists. At the time, it inspired me to write: "We live in an age where [...] literary style is about cramming as much meaning as possible in 140 characters." in a blog post called (R)evolution of writing. I'm glad somebody did more than blog about the new (old?) literature.
Posted by: Felix Pleşoianu | May 30, 2008 9:54 PM
Along the same veine, you can tell everyone what made your day bad in less than 300 characters here : http://www.mybadday.net
It's actually quite fun and a similar site in France launched in january has built up a huge following!
Posted by: Philippe | June 1, 2008 1:18 PM
I loved the copyblogger contest and the writing it produced. Also, at the time I was itching for a little demo to try out development on google app engine, so I wrote a quick and dirty app inspired this contest - bravenewfiction.com
Posted by: britg | June 4, 2008 10:28 AM