I shot off a quick tweet yesterday asking if anyone had seen people using Twitter as a platform for fiction. Greg Cohn responded:

@ andrewparker: http://twitter.com/zombieattack been meaning to blog it!

I’m beating Greg to blogging it ;)

I really dig this. It’s a piece of fiction that is being written one Twitter message at a time, and it is updated about once a day. The story is two brothers leading a quiet life that is rudely jolted by a creeping illness that develops into a zombie attack. The 140 character limit enforces tight and terse sentence creation. Each tweet hits hard, and echoes like a solo gunshot. Here’s a quick taste for those not interested in clicking through the link:

We hear screaming and then gunshots a few cells down, people running in and out, people crying. Everything is out of control! 02:25 AM May 02, 2007

After a few minutes things start to quiet down. Two bodies are dragged away, and in comes 3 people in suits, they carry cleaning products. 03:56 AM May 02, 2007

Matt and I Wake up to two guards pulling us up. The move us to an office where a middle age man starts to question us. 08:02 PM May 02, 2007

Sure, it’s a bit overly dramatic, but it’s amazing how much imagery the authors (there’s supposedly two authors, Matt and Greg) can convey in just 140 characters.

I love how flexible/malleable Twitter is. There is such a wide range of use cases, and I’m glad Zombie Attack is adding fiction to that long list.