Writers are now Facebooking and Twittering in character, but finding it a very time-consuming task, writes FIONA McCANN
‘I WALKED IN on my son having sex. Battling the urge to pull my eyes out.” That was Jane Moore’s Facebook status update on December 12th. It didn’t take long for her sister, Elle Moore, to reply: “My nephew the stud. LOL.” Their ensuing exchange is the stuff of routine sibling banter, the kind you’d expect to see on the Facebook wall of any thirty-something Dubliner.
Except neither of the Moore sisters are real people, rather characters from a book by Irish author Anna McPartlin, who is finding new ways to connect with readers through social networking sites and blogs.
“I suppose I’m trying to give the book a bit more of a life,” she says, pointing out that a highly competitive book market makes it harder and harder for writers to reach readers.
“The whole social media element has become a buzz word, and I wanted to investigate it and see whether it would be something I could do in the future, and whether there would be an audience for it.”
Jane has 24 friends, only three of whom are fictional characters, so there are clearly some real readers out there, eager to keep up with her comings and goings, and to be updated on her musings through a video blog also posted on Jane’s Facebook site and on the book’s website, sowhatifimbroken.com. McPartlin found an actor to play Jane in the short video segments, while others allowed her to use their images as the characters’ profile pictures.
She also introduced some of her characters to Twitter, but found it hard to get followers. “If people sign up to listen to them in cyberspace, I’ll continue it. At this stage it’s about getting a following.”
This proved less of a problem for Elizabeth Woodville, the fictionalised version of the one-time queen of England, as created by author Philippa Gregory in her bestselling The White Queen. When Gregory signed up her character to Twitter, "elizwoodville" soon had 787 followers interested in her updates on royal shenanigans, even though they were based on events that actually unfolded in real life some 500 years ago.
“The future opens before me like snow melting. Will I see my daughter on the throne that was mine, my son named as Richard’s heir?” These are Woodville’s words, as tweeted on August 16th last year, and though anyone with a passing knowledge of British royal history could have answered her question, she still had hundreds of Twitter followers tuned in for the six days of tweets, all of which were written by Gregory.
Another literary character who has made a Twitter name for herself is Laura Ingalls Wilder, though given that her namesake, the author of the Little Houseseries, died in 1957, it's less clear who is behind her resurrection in this 21st-century format.
HalfPintIngalls, as she calls herself, maintains a 19th-century take on the modern world, with tweets about her chores, school, family and the social mores of her time, to hilarious effect: “Just a courting tip, fellows: a girl needs space sometimes! No, really, if her hoopskirt’s more than 5’ in diameter, GIVE HER SPACE.” Occasionally, her observations get a 21st-century twist: “My land, something called the APPLE TABLET just came here from the future and did all my chores!” she tweeted on January 26th, as all the world was abuzz with the imminent release of Steve Jobs’ newest creation.
Though the real Laura Ingalls Wilder may have been too early for social networking, plenty of modern-day writers have seen its potential, and are tweeting in their own voices, among them Booker prize winners Aravind Adiga and Margaret Atwood, Irish writer Eoin Colfer and Anna McPartlin herself, who has a Twitter account in her own name.
Given that writers have been using social networks to promote their work and interact with readers and friends as long as such opportunities have been around, it was only a matter of time before their characters followed suit. Other authors who have created Facebook accounts and Twitter feeds for their characters include Iain Hollingshead, whose Facebook page for Jack Lancaster, from his book Twenty Something: The Quarter Life Crisis of Jack Lancaster, brought him 91 friends, while a quick Facebook search unearths a page for Holden Caufield and one for Hamlet.
The latter examples are clearly manned by fans, which may account for their longevity in the high maintenance world of Facebook.
For authors intent on Facebooking or tweeting in character, however, it can be a time-consuming task.
“I have four [Facebook] accounts,” admits McPartlin, who has to monitor each account and post updates and interactions in each separate voice, not to mention two Twitter feeds.
Her hope is that the hard work will have benefits, not only in marketing terms, but also for committed readers, hungry for the stories to continue past the final page. “A lot of people say they hate closing the book and losing the characters, so maybe they might think now that they can go online and find them.”
