I’m interested in what a writer can do with Twitter, the micro-blogging service that only allows 140 characters per post. I’ve seen a few people use it for posting short poems. Last weekend I decided to see what might be done in prose.

Here are four tweets I put up:

• Henry Hassler has a stack of unopened bills in his hand. The new Escalade exacts a stiff toll. A bead of sweat rolls off his broken nose.
• “It’s sold, that’s all you need to know,” says Hassler, with forced finality. He squints at the Creative Director. Silence empties the room.
• It’s Saturday, aka putt for money day. But will Hassler’s custom-fitted clubs be enough against scratch-golfer/drinking buddy, Rowan Perry?
• Emerging from the 19th hole, our heroes head straight for their lap dances. “Here’s to Saturday night in America,” says a happy Hassler.

I don’t know that I’ll stick with it. But it seems to me there’s the possibility here for a new literary form. However, there are some issues to think through. One, the posts won’t be read in sequence (in fact, I flipped the order above so they would be in sequence). To me, this means each post has to stand alone; yet add value to the whole. I’m thinking there might be 200 or more narrative bursts in any one story, and that ideally they could all be reshuffled like magnetic poetry.

[UPDATE 6/23/08] I picked up the narrative thread on a Twitter page dedicated to this story.