Woven, a social fiction experiment

Hello everyone,

coming back from the land of the dead and of the 4-5 different jobs at a time to let you know about this project that I took part in.

Woven  has been created by the awesome people of 96 problems, who are also behind the writing app Rough Draft. It’s an experiment in social fiction: as reading and writing media evolve, so does narrative, and Woven tries to blend storytelling with the interactivity of famous SNS Twitter.  You can read more here.

Currently the app is under testing on Testflight, and will be soon released to the general public.
In the meantime, if you are curious about the story I wrote, it’s called Passed Away.
Before going into the plot, a couple of disclaimers:

– I could choose the story among a series of prompts that were proposed to us, so I cannot take credit for the plot development  🙂
– I only wrote the first week of the story. Other writers might continue with the story in the future, as I cannot guarantee that I will have time to collaborate in the future 🙁
– I get paid for it 🙂

As for the plot, I will freely cite from their newsletter:

How would you feel discovering the secrets of your good friend after they passed away?

You’d probably feel like Nicholas and Erica: confused.

You see, someone set up a memorial Twitter account for their late friend, Susan. At first they think little of it, but when the account starts to tweet some deeply private information, there’s cause for concern. Then come the insults. And the… lies? Her friends begin to wonder: who was Susan, really? Thus begins a search for the person behind this mysterious memorial account…

If you cannot wait for the app but you absolutely need to read my story because you love me :D, the Twitter accounts of the four main characters are publicly available here:

Susan Memorial
Nicholas
Erica
Taylor

If you also write in English and want to apply for Woven, please do so here: it’s a lot of fun! And since you’re at it, please use my Twitter handle as referral, dilettaeffe !
I had a pleasant experience with them and although some things here and there in the work flow could be improved, they are a young start up working hard on their writing projects, and the ideas for their software are great (really, go check their website). If you plan to work with them, I would recommend two things: one,  have plenty of time to write, as you will get precious feedback to modify your story into a better piece,  and two, be at least a bit tech-savvy, as you will have to work a lot through Excel.

You can also follow Woven on Medium, here. Aside from talking about their project, they also discuss other social fiction experiments around the web, so it’s a good place to be if you’re interested in the topic.

That’s all for today! Going back to my thesis,work-shaped hole