How Social Media Shaped My Writing

Some of my favourite writers are very small. Their stories fall and nestle inside my fragmented time. Their little faces press against my screen. My writers live in my phone, and I live among them as Roppotucha, as I wait for the bus, or procrastinate on great big things that need to be done. My stories are 280-characters long, minus the magic hashtag.

The magic hashtag is #vss365. It was founded a few years ago by an international community of creative writers. The original members still monitor the game; they assign volunteer hosts to give the daily prompt (currently a two-week position), extinguish occasional fires, whatever those might be in a game that’s played by thousands around the globe, and generously share and comment on players’ stories. One edited collection of vss365 stories has already been published. It also inspired various offshoot projects, such as the marvellous, Written in Hope, featuring a long story woven out of tiny tweets by two writers who met, I believe, through the game.

The vss365 prompt is a single word that must be used and tagged in your story. This game and this community are the reasons my experience of social media has been wonderful – there has been nothing but tiny stories and comments about writing in my feed for many years. It has transformed me as a writer. In a shrinking space, you learn to grow your words. You learn to trust your readers to understand you. Here, for example, I have a story that hints at several levels of the past for the readers to intuit:

The storm came at night, after we ate black biscuits. After we hid our future at the bottom of our coffees. Full of darkness and #laughter, stray cans and smashed bottles. And I said: I know you, but I can't let you in. He said: then why are you outside?

I‘ve always enjoyed small spaces when it comes to writing; in my other life I specialise in academic writing. For years I have been teaching my students that good academic writing is about learning to express your ideas in fewer words. Style and professional vocabulary simply follow. However, writing micro-fiction is more than changing syntax to adjust the word count. It’s about a deeper relationship with your readers (my readers, the giants peering with their crystalline eyes at my tiny shape inside their phones). I do not have a chance to explain the background, to spell everything out, so I have to trust their imaginations, even when it comes to unusual situations:

The last king who fought the #termites is rotting on an anthill. Every day, we find new ways to surrender. But has all this been in vain? Haven't we at least learnt defeat? Haven't we mined any joy? Haven't we dug into the foundations? Bit on the heart of hard things?

When I see likes, I am glad – someone has understood, or else language has done its trick and created something that can be understood in another way that is also relevant to me. 

When I started playing vss365, I used to think hard of a possible plot to match the prompt word. It worked, but the process felt stilted. Later, I found a way to write tiny stories to distil my emotions. I noticed how feelings often translate into plotlines. The writing became less artificial; the prompt word helped or was simply absorbed by the story. 

I also use social media to air out a few sentences from my longer pieces, using the #wip tag. This helps to break the occasional loneliness that comes with writing without a local writing community. I also ask for advice. Writing Getting by in Tligolian, for example, was a tricky process. It began more as a catering job: I followed my character along the streets of what felt real in my head, and I made sure to create opportunities for her to eat (apparently I’m not the only writer to do that) At the point when the story was almost done, it snagged, I couldn’t finish it. I asked for advice, and one of the vss365 writers suggested that a change of form was coming, that the piece would have to be re-shaped in a major way. 

What was needed was for the space to shrink, for me to stop running after the character, and to look after her in smaller chapters. Getting by in Tligolian became a novella in flash, meaning that every chapter is less than 1000 words, and some are as tiny as my vss365 stories. 

The world of social media swells with correct and incorrect information, repetition, opinions and arguments. Yet, within it, there are magical communities, supportive readers, and stories that delight the heart. 

Roppotucha Greenberg is the author of Getting by in Tligolian a Novella in Flash published by Arachne Press November 2023 She speaks three languages fluently and has tried to learn six more. Roppotucha has lived in Russia, Israel and now Ireland. Arachne Press has published Roppotucha’s stories in Solstice Shorts Festival anthologies Noon, and Time and Tide.