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I guess this will be the first of many public presentations I’ll be doing in my career as a writer. I just hadn’t thought it would be before the publication of my first novel.

I’ ve been asked to present at Blog Orlando 2008. I’ll be speaking about my social media novel, Calling Home, and will also be leading a discussion about Writing Social Fiction. I’m looking forward to it next Saturday and if any of you are in Orlando on Saturday September 26th, then please come on by and stop in on my presentation.

I’ll spend some of the time telling people about Calling Home and ideas behind it but then going into how to apply some of those techniques into writing your own social novel.

It’s gonna be a blast and I’m looking forward to seeing you there!

When you go to sleep, do you dream in Tweets or Plurks? Do you find yourself talking in sentences that would easily fit within a 140 character limitation?  Does your manuscript have a fine layer of newly accumulated dust?  If you said yes to any of these and you participate in social media, then you’re already addicted.

The good news is you don’t have to quit.  But you do need to curb your micro-blogging appetite.  Here are a some things you can do to hold back the monster:

• Use social media to keep track of your output: There is no better way to keep you from spending all your time on social networking sites than to sending out status messages indicating what little writing you’ve done.  Guilt can be an excellent tool if used correctly.
• Reward yourself with social breaks: If you work at home, the temptation to spend your entire day on social networking sites is incredible.  To mitigate this, give yourself 15 minute social breaks to go online and gab with your friends.  Keep an egg timer or watch with a chronograph handy to track your break time between pages.
• Set a writing schedule: 15 minutes not enough?  Then set a schedule that you will do nothing but write during.  Once you’re finished, you’re free to do what you want.
• Set a daily writing goal: Worried if you set a scheduled writing time you’ll end up doing nothing anyhow just so you can get back to social networking?  Set yourself a daily goal, whether it is words, pages or chapters.  If you don’t meet your goal, you don’t get to play.

The above tricks and tips will help you keep on target, but sometimes the best thing you can do is have an interesting project to write so you have a stronger desire to write it rather than whittle your life away 140 characters at a time.

I love Social Media.  I’m on at least five different services and spend way more time than I should on them, but I enjoy it considerably and have befriended many great people.  With as much enjoyment as I get out of these services I thought it would be great if could combine together two things I feel passionately about: Social Media and Writing Fiction.

But how do you develop a story in only 140 character bite sized morsels? You could write a longer piece and serialize it, or you could even write Flash Fiction which thrives in such small spaces.  Also, how do you develop characters in serialized stories when you use one account for both posting and comments?  I felt all those approaches left much to be desired.  What I wanted to see was a story, using Social Media where one character interacts with another using separate accounts.  And what’s more, I wanted the story to be science fiction.

The big problem with writing science fiction or fantasy is you usually need quite a bit of space to build your world and have your characters explore it.  Could this be done in 140 character pieces and still be a compelling read?  My answer is yes it can.  And the way to do it is by telling the entire story in dialogue.

Dialogue is powerful.  It’s one of the best tools a writer has in their arsenal to convey emotion and feeling.  Think of the last novel or story you read.  What were the parts which moved you the most?  It was when the characters were speaking.  The author manipulated the words coming from the character into a stream of emotional strength.  You knew how the character was feeling because they told you so in their own voice.

With this in mind, the idea for Calling Home popped into my mind.  A story entirely told within the confines of a damaged ship’s system status messaging and emails.  Each character would have their own Twitter and Plurk account, and communicate with each other through those accounts only.

After some refinement of the idea, I’m proud to announce I have started posting the individual Plurks and Tweets for the story.  Here is the information you will need to follow the story on Twitter and Plurk:

Twitter
Hastag: #chh
http://twitter/ISSMontserrat
http://twitter/JFCAllen
http://twitter/JFCSandeep
http://twitter/ISS_Safeguard

Plurk
http://www.plurk.com/user/CallingHome
http://www.plurk.com/user/Allen
http://www.plurk.com/user/Sandeepz
http://www.plurk.com/user/ISS_Safeguard

If you don’t have your own Twitter or Plurk account, you can get your own Plurk account by following this link and then click on the CallingHome link on my profile.  For a Twitter account, go and register here and then follow the accounts in the list above.

Don’t want a Plurk or Twitter account?  That’s a shame to hear, but I can understand.  If you still want to read the story, you can go to Calling Home’s Archive Page on Tumblr and see the story in the way it was posted.

This story will run for at least a couple of months, so feel free to follow and see what happens to our characters in the deep reaches of space.  For the time being, there will be twice daily updates, however that could change as things progress in the story.  Read and you’ll find out why….

Lastly, if you enjoy the story please tell your friends about it and spread the word on any other Social Media services you’re on.  If you’d like to see it posted to another Social Media service then email me and I’ll look into it.

Enjoy the story!