Orpheus Corpse - Building a Twitter Serial

I've been following cellphone novels for a while - there was coverage last year of their popularity in Japan - and wondering what the hell to do with them. Short-chapter, high energy serials sound great, as does the privacy cellphones and e-readers allow; I'd have no idea how to write a steamy teen romance or vampire porn, but they're clearly growth industries in a world that has no need for embarrassing book covers any more.

(ok, I have some ideas on vampire porn. But others have better ones.)

If I were laying bets, I'd say the twin explosions of Twitter and Amazon's Kindle 2 will foster 3 layers of serial fiction reading:

* 'Normal' length novels downloaded to e-readers, with even more emphasis on series titles
* Short-chapter serials on e-readers and cellphones, little chunks of 500-2000 words downloaded several times per week (the Kindle's online store and distribution pricing aren't well set up for this at the moment, though other E-readers are)
* REALLY short-form serials based on the 140 character twitter limit.

None of the forms or devices are new, and none of this is mindblowing futurism on my part. But the worm has clearly turned on public interest in paperless fiction. Forms that were in the basement are now up for grabs on the display floor. All of which led me to Orpheus Corpse, and the question of just how visceral, funny, and readable you can get at 140 characters a pop...

My North Carolina buddy Russ Pitts of the Escapist is about a month into his Twovel, or Twitter Novel: after a self-admitted rocky start it's firing well on a diet of guns, marriage, drunken shenanigans, and blood... all good stuff, and a great lead to follow. In building Orpheus Corpse I tried imagining each Tweet as a panel in a graphic novel, which helped with pacing and focus (and suggested a couple of places to look for ideas, including The Invisibles). A few things became clear fast: punchy dialogue rules, long descriptions don't, and 1st person works better than 3rd. Instead of keeping people interested between multi-thousand word chapters, every damn character has to count, which is great discipline.

The plan is to release 2-3 updates per day on twitter.com/orpheuscorpse, keep the whole thing collected on this page, and see how things go. If you like it, or don't, send in comments via twitter or the blog: it'd be great to have the story shaped by its readers. So here we go on the Twitter Serial of nightmares, magic, and chocolate...