Bringing fiction to life on Twitter

New Delhi: Twitteraties, now have a unique opportunity to showcase their storytelling skills. From March 12 a five-day virtual writing celebration called the ‘Twitter Fiction Festival’ will be held entirely on the social networking site in which anyone can join and tell stories.

Organised by the Association of American Publishers and Penguin Random House, the second edition of the festival will see a showcase of authors from across the industry crafting fiction on Twitter. The festival was first held in 2012, when authors and everyday people from around the world submitted their fiction ideas.

Storytellers created characters, crowd-sourced plots, used imagery to convey narrative, and crafted multiple handles to weave together tales in real-time. Throughout the festival award winning and best-selling authors will also be tweeting fiction alongside 25 contest winners.

As part of the festival, Random House India writer Meghna Pant, author of "Happy Birthday and Other Stories" and "One and a Half Wife", will be retelling the Mahabharata in 100 tweets from Thursday.

Using a collection of screenshots from a variety of films, writer Ankur Thakkar will be recreating a Bollywood movie through visual tweets. As in every Bollywood movie, there will be dancing, love, heartbreak, and comedy. But unlike any other Bollywood movie, this one will be entirely on Twitter.