It’s hard to remember what sharing personal news looked like before updating bite-sized interactions became the new norm thanks to Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. But the art of storytelling is hanging in there, even if the formats are changing.
For young entrepreneurs Anuj Gosalia and Chintan Ruparel, shorter attention spans didn’t have to mean the death of storytelling. However, it did suggest that the time had come to transform the art. In 2013, they founded what would grow to become one of India’s most subscribed social platforms by mixing the old and new to create Terribly Tiny Tales (TTT). The duo started by posting tweet-sized stories that catered to the blink-of-an-eye attention span that young people brought to social media platforms.
Today, nearly 2.5 million viewers a week are exposed to a series of short stories that TTT publishes daily on their social platforms. It’s a simple formula. First, readers contribute a word, then a pool of writers, each pick a key word of his or her choice and build a story around it. Imagine the exuberance and vitality of a graffiti post with a dash of poetry and a dose of cynicism. That’s an average TTT post. This exercise has grown from being a closed event to an open-curated one, and readers are invited to send in their submissions, although typically, only one per cent of the submitted content makes it through.
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What has proved most surprising to founder Gosalia is the way the TTT format became an instantly accessible fix to a large cross section of the population. This transcended the young and Internet-grazing college students and expanded to older generations of people, and those who don’t ordinarily spend time reading.
This phenomenon is something that Sharin Bhatti, co-founder of The Hive and Collab, can corroborate. Storytelling-related workshops, according to her, are a huge draw at the eclectic Bandra venue. “Young adults, young professionals, artistes across comedy, theatre and poetry and a whole lot of students come for workshops around writing, storytelling and publishing,” says Bhatti. “Recently, we have been attracting a few senior citizens as well who are seeking out newer mediums to narrate both fiction and non-fiction tales in a contemporary context.”
Under the aegis of Culture Shoq, the Hive has been doing events like Stories on The Big Mic where people narrate excerpts from their unpublished works, often accompanied by live critique, writing and publishing workshops by authors like Meghana Pant and Karishma Attari. They have also worked with Tall Tales Storytelling, run by Michael Burns, to encourage people to come and do dramatic readings of their penned tales. Here, the emphasis is not on micro fiction, but on a confessional, live form of storytelling. Since Tall Tales showcases first person, non-fiction stories that are told live and sometimes for the first time, it is quite therapeutic for both the listener and writer. Tall Tales is held monthly at Studio X, in Fort, followed by at least one encore show. In addition, they organise writers’ retreats and writing classes as well.
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There’s a growing audience for such events, and not all of those participating are writers. Varsha Rohra, an electronic and telecom engineer, may be a business analyst by profession but she follows TTT on Instagram and Facebook and has attended three TTT workshops at Mithibai College (during festival Lithomania), The Hive, and also at BKC during the Times Bandra Fest. Her favourite part of a TTT workshop is the writing exercise. TTT will conduct a workshop this weekend, as part of the Hive Community Festival, which will also explore the concept of micro-fiction. Tickets are priced at Rs 500. Terribly Tiny Tales: December, 20.
Time: 11am to 1pm
Venue: The Hive, Khar.
Website: bookmyshow.com. Write to story@talltales.in for Tall Tales Storytelling.
(Karishma Attari is a book critic and author of I SEE YOU )
The average TTT post combines the exuberance and vitality of a graffiti post with a dash of poetry and a dose of cynicism