MOST CREATIVE STORIES ON TWITTER

Telling Stories on Twitter is tricky. Space is limited. Attention spam also. But there are some creatives who cracked the code and do a fantastic job with stories on Twitter. Here are my favorites:

Following @RealTime WWII  is a must. This year the twitter feed is called "WW2 Tweets from 1944". Historian Alwyn Collinson writes tweets as if today would be 1944 - in the middle of World War II. He started the project in August 2011, 72 years before Germany invaded Poland. Every day you can read what happend this day 72 years ago as if you would witness the day live. For example March 9, 2016 Collison tweeted: "Red Air Force bombers have hit Estonian capital of Tallinn, aiming for German forces occupying city- 757 people dead". The Oxford grad promised his 3000.000 followers to tweet until the end of the war August 1945 - this will be August 2017. @RealTime WWII is brilliant usage of Twitter and wonderful innovative storytelling to bing history to life and make it more relevant - especially to a young audience.

Most of the time Twitter is about latest and breaking news. But the #TwitterFictionFestival 2015 is a proofs that Twitter also works for fiction. This authors kick off your imagination with hundreds of short stories. With words and visuals. Check out the website #TwitterFictionFestival 2015 and find wonderful love stories, wired crime stories, poems and parody - from bestseller authors, New York Times journalists and beginners. Read tips and tricks to start your own story on Twitter. And have fun with the Tweed-Generator - creating mini-stories with 3 phrases. Give it a try.

Florian Meimberg is famous for his "Tinytales". Odd stories written with no more than 140 characters - and in German (!). Of course fans of Tinytales also bought Meinmberg´s book "Auf die Länge kommt es an". Here are two examles of this super-min-short-twitter-stories:

• Er grinste verlegen: „Sorry, Leute. Ich wusste nicht, dass hier jemand wohnt.“ Columbus drehte sich um: „Segel setzen. Wir fahren wieder!“ (He smirked shyly: "Sorry, folks. I did not know that someone lives here." Columbus turned around: "Set the sails. We move on.")
  
• Der Tunnelbau ging gut voran: Er musste jetzt ungefähr unter der Berliner Mauer sein. Noch etwa ein Jahr. Im November ’89 würde er flüchten. ("The tunnel looked pretty good: they must have been under the Berlin wall now. Only one year to go from now. They will be able to escape in November ´89".)

Storytelling on Twitter: A revival of Shortstories? Well, Twitter seems to be a wonderful creative canvas for fiction. And a new challenge for storytellers as there are new rules coming along with social media:

What´s new for Storytelling on Social Media? 3 Things

Realtime Feedback: authors and storytellers get live and in real time feedback. They can - and have to - adjust a story according to the interest of their fans and readers.

Neverending Story: Stories don´t have to end. They can go on and on as the beauty of this format is - similar to games - the neverending story.

The Audience has an Audience: The author is no more the only authority on a story. Recipients can and should be invited to support and co-create a story. And as the audience know exactly about its own audience there are some readers who are enthusiatic and motivated to write their own version of a story.

New rules - new stories. Social Media brings new forms and new ways of storytelling. The future of storytelling will be fun and exciting, don´t you think?