Better reading: new features on Typetrigger

In the next week or two, you will start to see some nice new features on Typetrigger. Several of these were developed in response to feedback from you Triggerers. At this stage, we are focussing on how to improve the browsing experience so that as we grow you can continue to find the content that is most interesting for you to read. We will be adding a full index of past triggers for your perusing pleasure, and you will soon be able to click on any trigger to see all the responses to it.

You may have noticed last week that we changed the Recent Triggers a bit: now all past triggers appear with the most liked at the top of the list. We hope this will make it fun and interesting to read what is being written and have a bit of a sense of where the community is at. Search results are similarly weighted by likes. When the trigger names are clickable, you will be able to see the full list of entries for that trigger in the search results.

We have some more fun features up our sleeve, but we'll wait until they are live to tell you about them.

My audience is dumb and I'm uniquer than them.

Several years ago, I (Lily) took a great writing class from Seattle writer Nick O'Connell. For the month or two that we met, each of us worked on one main piece. I attempted to write about two scenes of men and food and me. The whole thing was an embarrassment, and Nick kindly hinted that I needed to find the "universal truth" (a.k.a. The Point) of the stories to tie them together and to draw the reader in. I never quite got there, and I scrapped the whole thing, but I revisited one half of the story on Typetrigger not long ago.

In writing again about something I had struggled with before, I had the embarrassing epiphany that I had never quite gotten the concept of universal truth right. I had somehow assumed that the "average" reader to whom I was supposed to address my writing was expecting something moving, or lovely, or sweet or maybe profound. No one wants to be hamfisted. Plus, I didn't want to write something that would fit the bill for the "average" reader. I didn't really think they'd understand what I really wanted to say, so I overexplained, to position myself as somehow exceptional. Needless to say, this led to heavy navel gazing.

Typetrigger is helping me escape my own innane definition of universal truth, because in 300 words I don't have time to think too much about it. All I have room to do is to try to write something good, and to do that I have to write something that carries. (This is what I meant when I referred in my interview with Paul Constant to looking "like an asshole.") I don't worry about what it carries, but lo and behold: what tends to work best for me is the simplest observation. I can't tell my reader what to think of me or my story, and I realize no one will like me more for being the most incredibly profound, meaningful, sweet, unique person ever. It's rather refreshing.

I am sure that this epiphany of mine is well understood by folks all over, but I also think it is hard to get a hold on until you truly try to engage a reader for the first time. Once you realize how quickly 300 words go by, you realize how much can be wasted. The next time, you go back and tighten it up. Before you know it, you've got universal truth, right there. I have noticed that Typetrigger has opened things up for several writers. It is a real pleasure to read improvement in writers, to see good ideas develop into good storytelling as they get a handle on pacing and point.

I have really enjoyed a lot of the writing by itsalrightma, a writer from Georgia who has been on Typetrigger for a while. She writes personal things that don't make me disdain her or myself (which confessional writing can often do).

Waking at ungodly hours with a racing heart and a heavy mind, I find it strange to think that these are the best years of my life.

Maybe if I was content with getting drunk and fucking the first man to enter my line of vision every night, I would understand why people classify these years as such. But really, why do I find myself desiring, even momentarily, the things I’ve never wanted from life? It all comes back to Henry David Thoreau for me, as it often does. I sometimes feel I use his words more than my own. Anyways, he once wrote that “a stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind." Social novocain works for some, but the constant pursuit of such empty affairs just leaves me hollow. Whether or not the insignificant conquests are there, the despair will remain. Try though I might, I've accepted that some voids cannot be filled with liquor and lust.

Despite the inherent anxiety and occasional anguish of such transitional periods, I am determined to believe that these are some of the best years of my life. Not because of the supposed absence of responsibility, not due to the prevalence of revelry among my peers, but because these are the years that will prove that my own two feet are more than adequate enough to carry me through the years to come. Thoreauvian self-sufficiency isn't about the exclusion of others, but the importance of acknowledging and supporting yourself- and I'm starting to realize just how much I've neglected her lately.

And really, when it comes down to it, I’d much rather have a lifelong relationship with a dead author than a one-night stand with a deadbeat.

Typetrigger in the Stranger! Plus: a beautiful piece by pdxbrad

Not sure how we forgot to post this, but if you haven't checked it out yet, Paul Constant of Seattle's The Stranger did a great write up on Typetrigger and 750words. We have had a great momentum this past week as people we met at Wordstock started joining, followed by people who heard about us from this article. The writing is amazing, and we love seeing how quickly new (to Typetrigger) writers jump in and start playing around with the possibilities.

We were really charmed this weekend by the response new writer pdxbrad had to the trigger "things in jars."

I took it all for granted.

I ran through thick Midwestern summer evenings, waist deep in curdled soil bristling with wheat. The eerie drone of cicadas reached the highest branches, burrowed into the deepest holes. In the gloaming, the fireflies rose.

When I was very young, I plucked their lights and smeared the luminous fluid on my nose and cheeks. Pretended I was some astral native, warlike and barbaric. Later, a fey sensitivity took hold and torture became nurture. I housed them in Mason jars, lids studded by holes my mom made. Together we harvested broad blades of grass for food, and twigs for shelter.

I sank into sleep watching them on the bookshelf. They were the closest thing to honest-to-god magic in the world. As night deepened, their rhythmic sparks slowed with each passing minute, like illuminated breath slowly failing. I have no memory of them in the morning. Did my mom free them, or did they die unnoticed on the bookshelf?

The glow of the fireflies faded from my thoughts. Each slow summer twilight, they continued their vigil as I grew into young man. I moved to a place where Mason jars hold jams and seeds, not sticks and grass. They don't twinkle at night. And mother's don't poke holes in the lids.

Now, everything is up to me.

Next features on Typetrigger

As Typetrigger approaches two months old, we are tidying the site as we prepare to open the site up. We are improving the browsing process so that readers can more easily find writers they might like. We are also going to allow writers to remove pieces and make it easy to remember to tag. We don't have a little 'beta' symbol all over the site, but we are still in our infancy. We are always happy to hear from readers and writers about their experience on the site, from sign up to writing. Thank you for being here. Typetrigger is nothing without this community.

Murder on Typetrigger: the Hamburgler Narrative

Don't know if any of you caught this, but there has been a multi-writer mystery developing on Typetriggger. It all started with Bosley's response to "under a stone."

It was pretty clever, Officer Big Mac had to admit, to hide this particular body under a rock near the Hamburger Patch. He walked around the hole that Early Bird had pecked out around the corpse and tried to ignore the howls of the Apple Pies that hung  off the branches of the Pie Tree that loomed over the scene. Officer Big Mac reached into the pocket of his jacket and withdrew the old, tarnished badge that had sat in it for so long. Giving it a quick wipe and hard stare he pinned it to his lapel. It looked like retirement was canceled.
   "What kind of sick fuck does such a thing?" came a voice from behind him. Big Mac turned and nodded at his partner, noting that for once he looked like his name.
   "Someone who isn't in control of himself, Grimace," Big Mac replied. "Someone who tried to resist temptation, maybe for years, but in the end...just couldn't do it anymore."
   The two of them stood over the body while Early Bird, who was normally a stone cold bitch when it came to corpse excavation, let loose a torrent of half digested Toasted Egg McMuffin with Sausage, Golden Hash Browns, and 8 ounces of Colombian Coffee all over the wailing Apple Pie Tree.
   "What happened to his head, Mac?"
   Big Mac tensed. He knew Grimace knew the answer to his own question, he just wasn't ready to face it. Taking out his notepad Big Mac began to jot down his observations, all the while he kept picturing the killer in his head. His list of suspects was one name long. One crafty, terrible name.
   But no matter what, Officer Big Mac was going to catch the bastard who murdered Mayor McCheese.

The plot thickened when BobbyHayes got going:

I heard they pulled the body from the water yesterday Because there was no head, it probably took them about 24 hours to get a positive ID--fingerprints, maybe, or maybe they just called in Early to take a look at the angle of his dangle, if you get my  drift. I can see her now, making a huge fuss over the body when everyone knows she's been schtupping Ron on the side. So anyway, this means that they're probably coming after me even as I write this. Of course. I mean, right? The guy's head was a giant hamburger. Everyone knows that I have a compulsion to steal and eat hamburgers. I'm also dressed like a prisoner in these big wide black and white stripes. Those are two pretty goddamned huge clues right there. It 's the perfect open and shut case.

     Only one thing,  One little catch.

      I didn't do it.

      Sure, I can hear you sneering, of course you didn't do it, Pull the other one. But I'm telling you the truth. Listen. I can't blame the pigs. If your name was Jimmy Murder and somebody got killed, you can bet all eyes would be on you. But this is too pat. Too simple. I had nothing against the Mayor. I voted for him. Twice. (The third time he ran, I was doing time for stealing the hot side of a McDLT, and so I wasn't allowed to vote. And I ll admit it I did that one. I'm no angel.)

     I know who did this. The fat man. Big Purple. I hate his doofy laugh, and I hate that he thinks he got away clean. But we'll see who laughs last. I got a plan.

From there, daviewheeler took over:

Fry kids mumbled on the corner, waiting for the #1. All that sort did. Parents weren't around much, working double and sometimes triple shifts, leaving school chums to look out for each other, catch each other up into delinquent behavior. Sure, it started young, climbing the apple pie trees,  swimming in Filet-O-Fish Lake. Now they spent their days on the bus lines, frying out on whatever manufactured substance they could smuggle onto campus. But hardly any went to school anymore.

Officer Big Mac didn't have time for truants these days. The synthetic substances they used, though--well, he wasn't sure. Mayor McCheese had been lobbying for stronger campaigns to keep kids off drugs. "I guess we'll never see the day," Mac thought.

Since the Hamburgler's recent escape, McCheese had been assassinated and the fry kid gangs were multiplying. Mac, a beat cop, knew it was all related. Everyone in his precinct discounted him, but he was certain. He pulled his squad car around and parked across from the bus station. Fry kids came in packs. Where there was one, the rest weren't far behind, leaving their greasy tracks wherever they went. Them and their crystal addiction. "Salt" they were calling it these days. The street name was always changing.

"Maybe, ol' Macky boy," he sighed. "Just maybe." Salt was another piece. Salt, the fry kids, and Hamburgler. What was the plan? What was happening? Something big, it felt like. Something big was going down.

Big Mac staked the station for another hour. Bernice would be home, waiting, dinner getting cold on the table. The pieces were there for him if he could just fit them together.

This is the first we have noticed a serial worked on by multiple writers, and we are now trying to figure out ways to make such strings more easy to find. The writers did not use the same tags, which means you would have to be reading an awful lot to catch the thread. One possibility for now is that if people are interested in pursuing this sort of thing they could use the same tags so that the various pieces of the story would come up together in search. Tagging with consecutive numbers could also help keep the pieces in chronological order. For example, the first piece could have been tagged: Mystery, hamburgler1. The second would be: Mystery, hamburgler2. And of course, the next: Mystery, hamburgler3. If anyone else has any idea of how to keep these things going, please post it in the comments here.

And keep the story moving!