6 Ways Social Media Has Revolutionized the Ways Writers Tell Stories

Social media has undoubtedly changed the world for better and for worse. The worse effects of social media are difficult to ignore: easier spread of misinformation, feelings of divisiveness, and truly negative impacts on mental health, to name just a few.

But social media has also revolutionized (and is continuing to evolve) the way people create and consume content. No longer are stories relegated to traditional formats and media. Social media has given many readers and writers direct access to each other, allowing stories that never would have seen the light of day in the pre-social-media world to now flourish.

Whether this is good or bad is largely subjective. But, from an optimistic perspective (including my own), there is a lot to be excited about.

Here are a few ways that social media is changing storytelling.

New formats

Social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter have introduced new formats for storytelling, such as microblogging, “twitterature,” visual storytelling, and serial storytelling. Writers are using these formats to tell stories in new and innovative ways, breaking away from traditional storytelling structures.

For example, one of my favorite Instagram accounts, livinthefuture, is an account that visually tells the story of Liv, a girl who is stuck in the year 3000 after an accidental teleportation. (Well, at least the president makes everyone pretend it’s the year 3000.) Liv documents her future life via Instagram. Her Instagram is filled with photos of starfruit void syrup miasma cookies, Mousetrap With Guns (a game where the mouse has begun to revolt against the government and therefore must be destroyed), and the #1 hit in pop music, Meat Wreckage Facility (sound up). Liv’s Instagram account immerses us — her — viewers, in her new reality; to us, it really feels like she’s ‘gramming her life from some visually stunning albeit dystopian future. Her storytelling subverts traditional fictional storytelling structures as we know them by adapting to a modern communication format. My response: Woah.

More audience engagement

Social media allows writers to engage with their readers and receive immediate feedback on their work. This can be both positive and negative, but it offers writers the opportunity to adjust their stories and receive criticism and praise in real-time. This especially applies to social-media-based self-publishing platforms like Wattpad and Archive of Our Own.

For example, writers who post stories to Wattpad often release chapters one or two at a time. Wattpad has many interactive features, including a commenting feature that allows readers to comment on or react to specific sections of text. Many authors confess to taking their readers’ comments to heart; in fact, many authors do even more than this. Wattpad authors often leave notes for their readers, which can be found at the beginning of a story, at the end of the story, and at the ends of chapters. For example, Sarah Benson, a successful Wattpad author, leaves notes for readers at the ends of her chapters. The note at the end of the first chapter of her YA fantasy novel Born of Shadow says, “I hope you had fun reading this chapter. Let me know what you thought. I love getting feedback.”

Many Wattpad authors use their readers’ feedback to revise their story or to shape it as they are writing it. Sarah gives this advice to fellow Wattpad writers: “Directly connect with your readers and get a feel for what they are thinking and if the story is being read the way you intended it. The readers can often make helpful suggestions. For example, I added chapters from the Shadow Queen’s point of view in Born of Shadow because the readers asked for it. The story is much richer for it.” Without audience engagement, Born of Shadow would have turned out differently than it did. Sarah’s readers’ feedback shaped and enriched her story.

Wider accessibility

Social media has also made it easier for writers to share their work with a larger audience. Writers and readers alike — some who may not have access to traditional publishing channels — can find other writers and readers across the globe. Accessibility inevitably breeds more diversity. Wattpad, for example, hosts readers and writers from every corner of Earth. Their company website says, “The entertainment world is in an unprecedented period of disruption. The walls that kept storytelling in film, TV, and publishing something reserved for an elite few? They’re crumbling. People from around the world are picking up their phones and laptops, and creating their own narratives. And tens of millions of them are doing it on Wattpad.” Even more of these people are reading this diverse array of narratives, and this isn’t confined to just Wattpad.

Wattpad shares reader demographics with authors. My story, #GirlsShitToo, has been read by users in the US, Italy, the UK, Canada, India, Iran, the Republic of Serbia, and more. This is a feminist book that is finding its way into the hands of people across the globe, some who might not have been able to easily access such feminist content before the rise of social media sites like Wattpad. Reading work from writers outside of one’s geographic location and writing for a global audience has never been easier. Access to worldwide readers and writers is right at users’ fingertips.

Enhanced collaborations

Social media has made it easier for writers to collaborate with other writers, artists, and creatives. By sharing work and ideas online, writers can find like-minded individuals to collaborate with and create new and exciting projects. Sometimes, writers even collaborate with their readers!

For example, on October 13, 2009, an avant-garde project took place. Famous author Neil Gaiman tweeted the first line of a story, inviting other users of the Twitterverse to collaborate by creating the next sentences, one by one, until the story was finished. The project culminated in an audiobook script, which was turned into an audiobook. Sponsored by BBC Audiobooks America, the project was “an epic test to see if the Twittersphere can actually cooperate on a story.” This is just one of many never-before-seen collaborations enabled by social media.

Serialized Storytelling

Social media has also given rise to serialized storytelling, where writers release their stories in small, bite-sized chunks over time. This can create a sense of anticipation and engagement with readers as they follow along with the story and wait for the next installment to be released.

For example, YONDER is a downloadable app that offers daily serialized fiction. The company is working with several publishing partners to bring a wealth of serialized fiction to readers around the globe. Anne Stone, YONDER’s head of content, attributes the current success of serialized fiction to its flexibility. According to an article by dot.LA, “[Yonder’s] readers pay incrementally only as long as the story engages them. After the first few chapters, which are free, readers can decide if they want to pay between 20 and 65 coins per chapter — one pack of 100 coins costs 99 cents — depending on its length and author. Yonder also rewards regular use by unlocking some content for those who use the app daily.”

Through new pricing models and incentivization practices, writers are finding new ways to capitalize on serializing their fiction. Novels are now being released bit by bit, with readers gaining access to the story bit by bit and the writers making money bit by bit. For readers, paying for serialized content feels both cheaper and safer, because if they DNF (shorthand for “did not finish”), they don’t lose money on the chapters they never read. Writers, on the other hand, are capitalizing on keeping their readers coming back for more.

More multimedia, multiplatform content

Social media sites also give writers a slew of media options for enhancing their writing. For example, writers on Wattpad incorporate images and gifs into their primarily text-based chapters. Some writers also provide track lists that feature songs that capture the mood of each chapter. Many writers also use a text-to-voice software that reads each chapter aloud for readers who don’t want to or can’t read the text themselves. Furthermore, writers can share their content across social media platforms, from Goodreads to Tumblr.

This phenomenon isn’t relegated to book writers, either. For example, comedic sketch writers are having a cross-platform, multimedia heyday on sites like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, each which have features that make combining different media in a cohesive way easy as pie. These specific social media platforms have contributed to the meteoric rise in comedic character-based vignettes (short vids featuring a specific character, e.g., “girl who only cares about looking pretty while skiing”) and POVs (videos placing viewers into the point of view of someone specific, e.g., “POV: you’re skiing in Aspen”). Self-made comedians like kallmekris, Julie Nolke, and Caitlin Reilly have found great success creating multimedia content that, in addition to video, features other elements, including text, music, and visual features (like software-inserted backgrounds). Many of these comedians create multimedia content and release it across several platforms, including YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

Caitlin Reilly, for example, creates compelling narratives around her recurring characters. These include the audience-favorite WASP Mom, a frantic and deeply unhappy mother who’s just trying to navigate her crumbling marriage and be the most helpful harmful mom she can be. Each new WASP Mom video gives us a new glimpse in the painful life of this made-up character who seems all too hyper-real.

While these all the changes spawned by modern digital storytelling have disrupted traditional storytelling structures, they have also opened up new opportunities for writers to experiment, collaborate, and connect with readers in new and exciting ways.

Social media might be a drag in many, many ways, and some could (and do!) argue that new forms of storytelling are, for lack of a better word, crap. People also point to the negative impacts that come about from readers consuming content in an increasingly digital world where a wealth of content is at everyone’s fingertips and attention spans are decreasing. As far as text-based storytelling is concerned: readers are reading less text at a time, and more is required to keep them engaged. This has certainly impacted the way writers write. Modern story writers are writing shorter chapters, placing the inciting incident of each story as close to the beginning of the story as possible, and making their writing more like a drug through various forms of writing trickery, like cliffhangers. Serialized fiction, particularly, which aims to keep readers coming back for stories, bit by bit, will likely try to capitalize on all its readers’ addictive tendencies. How will this change fiction, and will the changes be for the better or for the worse?

Only time will tell. And social media won’t be the only catalyst of continued change, as many other technologies are on the rise. With the rise of AI, for example, we can expect to see even more changes to the way people are telling stories, including more multimedia stories. When a storyteller can quickly generate a free-use (or free-use-ish) unique image or song from AI, for example, it becomes all the easier to package such media together with other forms of media without the need to collab with another human.

Social media has revolutionized the way writers tell stories, and the revolution is not over. Maybe it’s just beginning.