If Twitter has taught us anything, it's that a lot can be said in just 140 characters. Jokes? Check. Breaking news? Check. What you ate for lunch today? Check.
But can you write the next great piece of literary fiction on Twitter?
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We were wondering that very question after reading this month's MashableReads book, B.J. Novak's story collection One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories. Throughout the collection, Novak explores the funny side of life in stories that are sometimes as short as the length of a tweet.
Inspired by Novak's pithiness, we asked readers to write a short story in a single tweet for this month's MashableReads challenge. Submissions ranged from quippy tales of millennial misadventures to poetic musings on love and death. Our favorite submissions won signed copies of One More Thing or the chance to participate in our MashableReads Google Hangout with B.J. Novak. Check out the winning submissions and some of our favorite runners-up, below:
Book Winners:
Exiting the bank with a backpack of untraceable currency, Waldo and his dog lost themselves in the crowds. They were never found. #mashreads— Ethan Brown (@TheGeoDynamo) April 16, 2014
Road trip. Only asphalt & scruffy trees ahead. I close my eyes & watch the sunlight dance to the beat of The Strokes on the radio #mashreads— Adrienne Klein (@Adrienne_Klein) April 20, 2014
The magician spent many nights making his pretty assistant vanish but it was the magician's wife that finally made her disappear. #MashReads— Dustin Batt (@dustinbatt) April 21, 2014
They'd met in the kitchen. Married in the parlor. She'd miss the house, but lit the match anyway. #MashReads— Matt Shipman (@ShipLives) April 15, 2014
The Narcoleptic Bank Robber was apprehended without issue in the lobby of 1st National today. All money recovered on the spot. #MashReads— LuTang (@LuTang) April 16, 2014
It felt uncomfortable, like putting on a shirt a size too small. He looked across at his old human body, now no more than a husk.#MashReads— Marc Phares (@marcphares) April 19, 2014
Hangout winners:
"What is this?" asked the little girl, flipping over the dusty pile. "It's a book," said her mother, "Sit here, I'll show you." #MashReads— BannockburnSchoolLib (@mrs_garneau) April 16, 2014
She desperately wanted his attention. He desperately wanted a slice of pizza. A millennial love story. #MashReads— Paige Blawas (@PEB5050) April 16, 2014
Runners-up:
The poet died. They put him in the ground. Night fell & a word-tree rose from the grave, poem-leaves trembling on thin branches. #MashReads— James Knight (@badbadpoet) April 19, 2014
The defendant sat in silence for 3 hours. Frustrated, the prosecutor screamed "Admit the murder!" The horse responded, "nay." #MashReads.— Socrates (@sockismyname) April 23, 2014
It wasn’t some big, overt thing that brought us together—it was a whisper of a moment I nearly missed. #MashReads— Pam Perez (@Pamela_Loving) April 23, 2014
A pearl of sweat slips down your spine. The air trills with the roll of distant thunder. You scan the horizon again, impatient. #mashreads— Michele White (@mdubs22) April 21, 2014
Corrosive swell lapped memory’s shoreline. Breakers fragmented the familiar horizon of recall. Alzheimers had beached him #MashReads— MarcNash (@21stCscribe) April 19, 2014
She rolled West in red mud. Sun burned his cobwebs. Putrid, beaten, she tore on. Dust that was mud. Sand that was dust. The sea. #MashReads— Caron Modern Media (@CaronModMedia) April 20, 2014
She held him. The small part that was well battled the giant illness inside her for enough time to just be his mom for awhile. #MashReads— michael chisum (@mdc1101) April 19, 2014
Paint by numerical value is the art of the future, Aunt Flossie said as she flicked cigarette ash onto the concrete. I nodded. #MashReads— Liberalibrarian (@Liberalibrarian) April 22, 2014
#MashReads Neither police nor my roommate believe someone broke in, made dessert, & left the kitchen a mess! The proof is in the pudding!— Travis Cantrell (@TCantrell2) April 21, 2014
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. People went to the bathroom without their iPhones. #MashReads— Kristian Benz (@kribenz) April 16, 2014
I can hear the quasars singing in the forest of the lines, songs of charm and strangeness. #MashReads— Voimaoy (@voimaoy) April 19, 2014
It cried for help. I held it in my hands. I ran for help. It was dying. Saw a drug store nearby. Luckily they had a phone charger.#MashReads— Saravanan (@kpsaravan) April 16, 2014
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