Cloud Atlas novelist David Mitchell publishes new story in Tweets on Twitter

The award-winning author wrote 280-tweet tale of boy tripping on valium.

15:22 15 July 2014

David Mitchell, the award-winning author of Cloud Atlas took to Twitter this week to tell a new short story, The Right Sort. The tale about a boy tripping on his mother’s valium pills will be unveiled in Twitter’s 140-maximum-character bursts for the next seven days. This move follows the footsteps of other authors including Jennifer Egan and Neil Gaiman who also experimented with the social network in the past.

The novelist, who set up a new Twitter account, @david_mitchell, said: "The story is being narrated in the present tense by a boy tripping on his mother's Valium pills.

"He likes Valium because it reduces the bruising hurly-burly of the world into orderly, bite-sized 'pulses'. So the boy is essentially thinking and experiencing in Tweets.

"My hope is then that the rationale for deploying Twitter comes from inside the story, rather than it being imposed by me, from outside, as a gimmick.

"Usefully, the Valium also lets me walk that 'Turn of the Screw' tightrope between the fabulous and realism: maybe the supernatural events are really happening, or maybe they're just chemical phantasms."

The first tweet, which went out at 7am on Monday, was:
"We get off the Number 10 bus at a pub called ‘The Fox and Hounds’. ‘If anyone asks,’ Mum tells me, ‘say we came by taxi.’" — David Mitchell (@david_mitchell) July 14, 2014