Rod Mance's picture
Rod Mance from AR is reading All the time, every chance he gets March 10, 2013 - 10:19pm

I'm writing a story entirely in text, emails, Facebook messages, & tweets. The problem is that I don't use text shorthand well or at all. Does anyone know where I can find some help? I know the basics u, ur, txt, lol, & str8 etc just need more.

R.Moon's picture
R.Moon from The City of Champions is reading The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion; Story Structure Architect by Victoria Lynn Schimdt PH.D; Creating Characters by the editors of Writer's Digest March 10, 2013 - 10:50pm

Try reading Douglas Coupland's Microserfs. A lot of it is written in email and technology speak. I would, though, suggest not writing the whole story in text, emails, FB messages and tweets for fear of annoying your readers. The book above has a smooth blend of the tech speak and narrative. You can find a list of text abbreviations here: http://www.netlingo.com/acronyms.php

Courtney's picture
Courtney from the Midwest is reading Monkey: A Journey to the West and a thousand college textbooks March 10, 2013 - 11:42pm

I support the idea of writing a story entirely in electronic formats, but is txtspeak really necessary? I mean, look around this forum, and you see not much more than the errant LOL. I never email in txtspeak, and absolutely never tweet that way. I text that way, but only to people I detest and don't want to bother wasting time on -- seriously.

Rod Mance's picture
Rod Mance from AR is reading All the time, every chance he gets March 11, 2013 - 7:13pm

There's no way I could live with myself writing the entire story in txtspeak. So far I have 15 characters only 4 use txt speak exclusively.

Thanks for the information.

ReneeAPickup's picture
Class Facilitator
ReneeAPickup from Southern California is reading Wanderers by Chuck Wendig March 11, 2013 - 10:35pm

I keep reading this as "Help with massage styles" and I'm like "man... I could USE a massa--oh."