Fan Expo Canada returned to Toronto this past weekend with endless comics, film, cosplays, gaming, celebrities, and panels. Among them was Wattpad’s panel, Evolution of Storytelling: How to Make Digital Storytelling into a Career. It included Takatsu, a third year English literature and creative writing student at York who prefers to go by his pen name.
Wattpad is a Toronto-based company with an online community of over 40 million readers and writers. Takatsu is a featured Wattpad author with over 14,000 followers and almost 1.2 million reads on his works.
“I was passionate about forging a new route with my writing on Wattpad and sharing what I’ve learned throughout the years to inspire new ways of looking at the world and at writing,” says Takatsu.
In his Wattpad panel, Takatsu spoke about how he was the first person to bring the cell phone novel phenomenon, which originated in Japan, into the English language. The cell phone novel utilizes a phone’s screen through its short chapters, fragments, and poetic devices.
“Cell phone novel writing is also much about improvisation and spontaneity,” he says. “Of course, in its nature as literature or media on-the-go, capitalizing on commuting culture, modern scatter-brained antics, and fast-paced urban lifestyles, it calls for a quick summoning of inspiration and immediate response with only minutes to spare.”
In Japan, popular cell phone novels have not only been published into physical books, but have also been adapted to dramas, anime, and manga.
His 2008 novel, Secondhand Memories, is credited as the first English cell phone novel and was published in paperback earlier this year.
“To my surprise, Secondhand Memories managed to gain traction and inspire thousands of young writers and readers around the world,” says Takatsu.
Despite Takatsu’s success in his debut novel, cell phone novels aren’t picking up the same attention as they do in Japan.
“It’s due to differences in culture and industry,” he says. “For example, Japan never had such down to earth, casual, vulgar, and accessible writing before, while we have young adult genres and many varying styles of literary voices.”
“The West already has e-books and other digital mediums or social networks and sites like Wattpad or fanfiction.net. Japan had 3G and mobile browsing for a long time when simpler text-based usage was more common.”
Regardless of its impact in Western literature, the cell phone novel remains a powerful medium that Takatsu will continue to expand.
“My passion is to inspire new insight and present new ways of looking at literature and writing as the language of consciousness and human collectivity,” he adds.
“I was able to speak [at Fan Expo] about what I love the most about writing and being involved on Wattpad with millions of readers around the world.”
Learn more about Takatsu and the cell phone novel at takatsu.tk.
Jenny Mao, Copy Editor
Featured image courtesy of Christopher Lai
