Writing on Twitter is weird
Dec. 12th, 2020 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbird[Link to thread on twitter, as I'm using Twitterisms for best effect]
Writing on Twitter is weird.
It has its own rhythms, and its own phrasing, and in a way, every tweet is a paragraph...
...even when technically it's two.
Not to mention what tweet breaks do to you. And character limits. Each step of your progression of thought has to fit within them, whether you like it or not.
And it _really_ encourages short, punchy stops.
It's a little like journalism writing in some ways. It promotes short sentences with lots of subtle recapping, lots of making sure that if someone comes into the middle of your thread, they have enough idea what's going on to pull in the rest of the context, whether it's up...
...or back down.
Aheh. But most of all...
...it's all so very first draft. You don't get to go back and make edits, at least, not very far, because you'll break the thread. You don't even want to delete _any_ tweet, even the last one, because you might break Twitter threading. And that's bad.
It really forces you to plan your writing differently.
The informality is freeing, but the inability to revise is a real constraint. It's get it right (or right enough) the first time, or throw it _all_ out and start over, and who has time for _that?_
I know that some people write their tweetstorm threads (like this one) in advance, to get around this whole issue. I don't. I've tried it once or twice, I'm not a fan. I'm writing this live, right now.
I think I do it this way _because_ it's so unlike my usual writing. It's entertaining, like a puzzle box. It makes me think differently about writing than usual, and I think that's good.
But when you take it over to a longer-form media, it _really_ does not hold up as well.
Which is why when I post this stuff over to Tumblr - which I do, when I think it's good - I do it in screencaps, then post the text as a transcription.
It works better that way. My interaction numbers bear that out _quite clearly_.
I think because you get the tweet breaks.
That's not really an option on Dreamwidth. I kind of consider that an archive anyway, so I'm fine with it.
But while I don't bother making corrections on Tumblr (where I have the largest audience), I _do_ make them on Dreamwidth.
Because on a blog, wow, a dropped word or a missing letter turning one word into another word ("them" becomes, say, "the") just _leaps_ out at you.
I don't think that makes writing on twitter _bad_, mind you. It's one particular form. It exercises certain parts of writing, while ignoring others.
But it has a _lot_ of limitations and a _lot_ of constraints and I sure as hell wouldn't want it to be my _only_ form.
And the oddest part - the part I really don't get - is why posting screencaps of my writing here to Tumblr gets so much larger an audience _on Tumblr_ than _here_, on the original threads.
I mean, that's just bizarre to me. Yes, I have more followers there - about twice as many.
But on election night I wrote a thread on the peak Trump map. Then I screencapped it over to Tumblr.
Twitter: 47 likes and retweets. 2375 impressions. For me, that's a lot.
Tumblr: 18,613 likes and reblogs. North of 400,000 impressions - I have to make some assumptions to get that second number, but they're reasonable.
All on a post made of _screencaps_, copied from _twitter_.
And I look at that difference and I just go...
What
_the_
fuck.
That post was exceptional, _but still_.
So when I say "writing on twitter is weird," I mean, _writing on twitter is weird_.
Still, I do it. Partly because it's puzzlebox writing and that's fun, but partly because once in a while... I end up with numbers like _that_.
But _only_ when it's copied somewhere else.
Weird.
Twitter is...
weird.
Writing on Twitter is weird.
It has its own rhythms, and its own phrasing, and in a way, every tweet is a paragraph...
...even when technically it's two.
Not to mention what tweet breaks do to you. And character limits. Each step of your progression of thought has to fit within them, whether you like it or not.
And it _really_ encourages short, punchy stops.
It's a little like journalism writing in some ways. It promotes short sentences with lots of subtle recapping, lots of making sure that if someone comes into the middle of your thread, they have enough idea what's going on to pull in the rest of the context, whether it's up...
...or back down.
Aheh. But most of all...
...it's all so very first draft. You don't get to go back and make edits, at least, not very far, because you'll break the thread. You don't even want to delete _any_ tweet, even the last one, because you might break Twitter threading. And that's bad.
It really forces you to plan your writing differently.
The informality is freeing, but the inability to revise is a real constraint. It's get it right (or right enough) the first time, or throw it _all_ out and start over, and who has time for _that?_
I know that some people write their tweetstorm threads (like this one) in advance, to get around this whole issue. I don't. I've tried it once or twice, I'm not a fan. I'm writing this live, right now.
I think I do it this way _because_ it's so unlike my usual writing. It's entertaining, like a puzzle box. It makes me think differently about writing than usual, and I think that's good.
But when you take it over to a longer-form media, it _really_ does not hold up as well.
Which is why when I post this stuff over to Tumblr - which I do, when I think it's good - I do it in screencaps, then post the text as a transcription.
It works better that way. My interaction numbers bear that out _quite clearly_.
I think because you get the tweet breaks.
That's not really an option on Dreamwidth. I kind of consider that an archive anyway, so I'm fine with it.
But while I don't bother making corrections on Tumblr (where I have the largest audience), I _do_ make them on Dreamwidth.
Because on a blog, wow, a dropped word or a missing letter turning one word into another word ("them" becomes, say, "the") just _leaps_ out at you.
I don't think that makes writing on twitter _bad_, mind you. It's one particular form. It exercises certain parts of writing, while ignoring others.
But it has a _lot_ of limitations and a _lot_ of constraints and I sure as hell wouldn't want it to be my _only_ form.
And the oddest part - the part I really don't get - is why posting screencaps of my writing here to Tumblr gets so much larger an audience _on Tumblr_ than _here_, on the original threads.
I mean, that's just bizarre to me. Yes, I have more followers there - about twice as many.
But on election night I wrote a thread on the peak Trump map. Then I screencapped it over to Tumblr.
Twitter: 47 likes and retweets. 2375 impressions. For me, that's a lot.
Tumblr: 18,613 likes and reblogs. North of 400,000 impressions - I have to make some assumptions to get that second number, but they're reasonable.
All on a post made of _screencaps_, copied from _twitter_.
And I look at that difference and I just go...
What
_the_
fuck.
That post was exceptional, _but still_.
So when I say "writing on twitter is weird," I mean, _writing on twitter is weird_.
Still, I do it. Partly because it's puzzlebox writing and that's fun, but partly because once in a while... I end up with numbers like _that_.
But _only_ when it's copied somewhere else.
Weird.
Twitter is...
weird.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-28 10:24 pm (UTC)I seem to rely too much on being able to edit.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-28 10:52 pm (UTC)(Which is madness. Utter madness.)
I do think it's done me some good, though. I also do a lot of editing and revision, but I'm finding in at least some cases, I have to edit less when writing elsewhere. Essentially, I think I'm doing that editing before I even write.
But that's only true when I'm willing to have that Twitter feel in what I'm writing. I've edited a few of those telltales out, here, because I didn't want them in this reply. I've tried to keep it twitter-ish without going full-bore Twitter writing.
If that makes sense. I think it does.