Tales in Twitteratti

Rowena Orejana reads between the lines of an innovative writing contest.
In five minutes with Paul Brown he will shoot all preconceptions of a stereotypical librarian to pieces.
Manukau Libraries' Outreach co-ordinator is funny, energetic and engaging. It's no surprise that he would come up with a lively, innovative competition.
"Twext Tales: a very short story competition" is Mr Brown's brainchild. It's the first competition of its kind in the country - storytelling in 10 chapters with 140 characters in each chapter.
"The technology was just sitting there and we were trying to look at something that is a little bit outside typical thinking," he says. "We're trying to get communities involved in storytelling."
 Twitter fiction is not yet as big in this country as it is elsewhere in the world. Mr Brown says this is an opportunity for libraries to engage people, not just as a lender of books but as a repository of the public's literary efforts.
"It's not just so that we can put up our hands and say, 'Hey we're cool, we're funky, look at us', but to see: if there is there potential out there. Maybe we've got creative people who don't want to take on the onerous task of going through a writing development programme and then write a story.
"This is fast," he says. "It's a rapid access and rapid writing form."
Mr Brown says this could be a new genre in writing. 
"Writing and reading is developing and splintering so fast. The idea that you used to have an author who had a book published and  someone who read it, that chain is now broken up."
University of Auckland associate professor Lisa Samuels says any new artistic writing form is welcome.
"Twext tales sound like a letter-sonnet form, with 140 characters mirroring the sonnet's base form of 14 lines. Take that times 10 and it's a mathematical kind of fun. As one 19th-century writer, William Morris, wrote: 'You can't have art without resistance in the material'."
Ms Samuels wishes it came in the form of cooperation rather than in a competition.
"Prize culture puts people in a trumping relation with each other rather than in a generous relation," she says.
Mr Brown says the  competition aims to engage the public in a format they are familiar with. It may not produce the greatest literature of Western civilisation, but it's an easy medium for people who want to be writers.
Entries closed last Sunday and the winning piece will be announced by mid-September. First prize is an e-reader, Kobo.
As  judge  Mr Brown promises to take it nice and easy. "You know a good story when you read it because you don't want to finish." 
Quick look
To read the entries, see:
www.manukau-libraries.govt.nz/EN/ReadingReviews/TwextTales/Pages/Home.aspx