Future Fiction

It's not enough for writers to sit alone in their rooms and produce brilliant work these days. Now they have to perform in public and promote themselves on every social network imaginable to get noticed. But what if writers use social media for more than just marketing, and start using it as a literary form of its own?

At Shareable, Paul Davis takes a look at some imaginitive fiction projects online where writers extend their fiction to take advantage of the medium, including Laird Harrison's Children of a Future Age project. Harrison wrote a traditional novel to tell the backstory of his protagonist, Adrienne, then augments that with a blog purportedly written by Adrienne as she discovers her huband's infidelity. Laird plans to adapt the story on the blog based on reader feedback and advice to the fictional Adrienne. The whole story then is a combination of the two formats: the more formal novel introduction and the evolving present on the blog.