Hello there, and welcome to the home of the Sunday Short Message Story Service! That name’s a bit of a mouthful, I know, but the idea behind it is pretty simple so don’t worry.
If you’ve come here from my @MondayStory Twitter feed you might be a bit confused. What is this thing? Is it a Monday thing or a Sunday thing? Well, first it was one, and now it’s both, but the two are slightly different. Let’s start with the Sunday bit.
Every Sunday since November 2008, using my mobile phone, I’ve been writing and distributing a really short story. From the start there’s only been one rule: each story has to be no longer than a single text message, i.e. 160 characters. I’ve written well over one-hundred of these stories, and they’ve been sent out to a steadily growing list of subscribers all over the world. Some of the stories are thrillers, some of them are romances, some are historical and some are fantastical. Some of them are tragic and some are whimsical; a disproportionately large number are written in the first person, but that’s only because “I” is a very short word and space is at a premium. All of them are completely fictional.
And now they’re going onto Twitter! Albeit in an abbreviated form: Twitter’s 140 character limit makes the 160 character restriction of an SMS seem positively luxurious. So much so that I’ve long thought it couldn’t be done – but now I’ve decided to give it a go. That’s where the Monday bit comes in.
Every Monday, from now on, I’m going to cut down Sunday’s SMS story however I can and put it up on Twitter. This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop doing the SMS stories: only that each story will now exist in two forms. The Twitter version will be available to anyone, of course – but the full-length SMS version, well, if you want to receive that you’ll need to give me your mobile (cell) phone number.
Now, I know that giving your phone number to some guy on the internet sounds pretty dubious, and there’s really not much I can do about that, other than give you my word: if you trust me with your phone number I will never, ever use it for anything other than sending you a story every week, and very occasionally sending you related news or updates. I will never share your number with anyone, no matter how nicely they ask me. And here’s a sweetener: if you like, and if you don’t mind also giving me your email address, I can send you a Word file containing all the stories I’ve written since November 2008. Every single one. Or not, of course – that’s optional.
In fact it’s all optional. You may prefer to just follow the Twitter feed, and that’s fair enough. Or you may like to know exactly how the Twitter stories differ from the SMS stories before committing to the “real deal”. So if you’ll indulge me just a little longer, I’ll demonstrate how a Sunday SMS story gets cut down to a Monday Twitter story.
Here’s one of the original stories:
Ida’s 1st day of school ended in a bomb scare. A hoax. Kids ran gleefully to the police cars; Ida told Inspector Cobb “School’s the most exciting thing ever!”
That’s 157 characters. To fit it into 140 characters or less I’d change it like so:
Ida’s 1st day of school ended in a bomb scare. A hoax; Ida told Inspector Cobb “School’s the most exciting thing ever!”
That’s only 119 characters now, and as you can see it’s still essentially the same story – but what it’s lost is those kids running gleefully to the police car: that little bit of the colour that fleshes out the scene. Here’s another example:
The train bends ahead of itself. I’m taking the slow route to Sydney, going all that way just to sing about home. My wife’s sick of it – that’s a song now, too.
That’s the full-length version, 160 characters exactly. If I was cutting it down for Twitter it’d look like this:
I’m on the train, heading to Sydney the slow way, going all that way just to sing about home. My wife’s sick of it – that’s a song now, too.
There, a bit of tinkering and it’s 140 characters. And that’s how it’ll be: if you just want to follow the Twitter feed you’re still going to get a complete story every week, but if you subscribe to the SMS service you’re going to get a story that’s just a little bit more vivid.
So, how do you subscribe to the stories? Easy! Just send me an email letting me know what your phone number is, or even better send me an SMS – and by the way I'm in Australia, so if you’re not in Australia don’t forget to let me know what your country code is, or if you’re not sure what that is just tell me what country you’re in and I can figure it out for myself.
Oh, and one last thing – you might have noticed that little PayPal button on the bottom there. So far I’ve been sending the SMS stories out for free, and I’d really like to keep it that way – but on the other hand, it does cost me money, and the more people who sign up for it the more money it’s going to cost me. Mobile phone plans are competitive so I’m not breaking the bank, and I’d really rather not charge a subscription fee if I can avoid it (though I can't rule it out for the future) – but if you feel like sending me a little donation to help me out, well hey I’m not going to complain about that! It’s entirely up to you.
Whichever way you choose to follow them, I hope you enjoy the stories!
- Harry Saddler
- Harry Saddler
To subscribe:
email - sms.stories@gmail.com
SMS - 0450 148 240 (+61450 148 240 if outside Australia)
