Terribly Tiny Tales: All You Need Is 140 Chars

All you need is 140 characters to tell your story- this is what Terribly Tiny Tales believes in. Quite popular on social networking channels, Terribly Tiny Tales is known for putting up stories which are relatable but so short that it is astonishing as well as amazing. Students of SRCC College were fortunate enough to have a brief workshop with Terribly Tiny Tales where they were taught how to actually work on creating a tale which is very short but apt and connectable.

Terribly Tiny Tales, which is an initiative by the story telling agency- Not Like That, is a small group of people, who may or may not have a background of writing, coming from different walks of life and it is solely because of their efforts and time that has made it so popular. “Our aim for doing such workshops is to share with aspiring writers and people who love us to tell what it takes to write a TTT and also to inform people that now we are living in the time of smaller attention spans and as communication students and writers generally we have to respect people’s time. There is so much of distraction that if I write something long then people might not even read but if I say it in just a line or two, in few minutes we can notice likes and comments flushing in.” says Anuj Gosalia, Co-founder, Terribly Tiny Tales.

Terribly Tiny Tales workshop at SRCC, Delhi

Moving on to the workshop, Anuj began to talk about the guidelines on how to write a TTT and also informed the students on how important it is to look at the process of writing a story worth reading rather than looking at the end product. The basic guidelines for writing a TTT are:

• A story within 140 characters

• Must not be an abstract musing or poem

• Must convey passage of time

• Must have a beginning and an end

• Must include a character

• Must be written around a word which is the title of the tale

For example here is a piece written by Chintan Ruparel called Whisky:

Man walks into a bar.

“Whiskey, large”

A boy walks out.

Anuj Gosalia, Co-founder, Terribly Tiny Tales.

Anuj further spoke about how observation (observe the word you want to write on), internalization (to look for stories within your memory) and construct (condensing the matter into something that would stay with you and you believe in it) are important for writing a terribly tiny tale. Also, it is important for the writers to associate words with various things.

“Use any word that you choose to write on.Take the word to as many places as it can go and read what your interpretation about the word is.”

The next issue writers have is how to express in just 140 characters? So the solution is to keep the content sharp and to the point and keep working on it till you condense it into something that would stay with you and you believe in. “Do not settle on one thing- write more draft and push yourself. Intent is easy but construct takes a lot of effort. Weave your memory around a word and try to keep it as real as possible because that’s when people would be able to relate to It.” articulates Anuj.

Continuing, Anuj spoke about how someone can send in their entries, “On our website we have a submit form where people can write their stories and the ones which are really nice would be portrayed. There is no specific word but internally we all write on words that are suggested by readers.”

Terribly Tiny Tales’ members at the workshop

Talking about why they have limited writers, Anuj said “To maintain a certain type of quality and build a community amongst the team and to be more in control of the creative product because the bigger it gets the more you lose control of the product. We would invite more people to write but it would take time.” Further speaking on why he thinks TTT and their workshops have become a talk amongst the different age groups, Anuj expressed, “I think the fact that they connect with the content of the workshop and that they aren’t long and boring (as we believe) makes it really interesting. We make it participative, interactive and it makes us happy that we meet a lot of interesting story tellers through such workshops and (giggles) also how our jobs are constantly at threat.”

Apart from giving us a treat with words, TTT also provides goodies, one of which is a customized T-shirt on which you can ask TTT people to write a message from your side in their style for someone special.

By the end of the workshop not only did the students learnt how to write the shortest tale ever but they also practiced the art right on the spot.