Sootfall

This literary work created on Twitter could be labelled in different ways— twitfic (or twiction), alternate reality game, netprov, e-lit, e-poetry, or performance— and each label would contribute to an understanding of what this is without wholly capturing what it is. Launched on February 4, 2013, this month-long creative event is now complete. From what I can reconstruct, Gaines, Gass, and the rest of the development team conceptualized the setting, plotted out a timeline, created Twitter accounts for its main characters and launched “Sootfall.” As people found out about the event through social networks, they were able to follow its characters or read the stories as they unfolded around the #sootfall hashtag, a means to identify tweets used in many, but not all entries, because one of the challenges was to make the characters seem real— and why would someone randomly tag their Twitter entries without a plausible reason? Eventually the tag became a tacitly agreed upon way for the characters to refer to the event which was to change their lives so substantially. Readers who wanted to learn more about a character who first used the hashtag could follow the characters and read the tweets previously sent from their accounts. (Source: Leonardo Flores, I ♥ E-Poetry)