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Stripper's Twitter Tale turned Feature Flick


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Some writers work all their life to produce the great american novel and others, such as Aziah "Zola" King (Wells), tells her story in 148 tweets and now may get a movie deal.  

According to a news report in The Guardian, James Franco is reported to have signed on to direct a "potentially controversial true-life drama based on a wild and unsavoury stripper road trip to Florida that went viral on Twitter."   The viral twitter story is here but the one Franco is said to direct is based on the Rollingstone  interview with  Aziah "Zola" Wells.  

It is a fantastical tale about 4 on a road trip,  "Zola" and Jessica who work at hooters, work as part-time strippers and part-time sex workers, Jessica's violent Nigerian pimp  and her boyfriend who allegedly attempts suicide. The tale deals with sex trafficking, prostitution, attempted suicide and murder.    

"Zola" is now 6 months pregnant with her first child and goes by the name Mrs. King . When interviewed she appeared more like a struggling writer than "server-turned-stripper-sex-worker".  She said the first time she tweeted her "true" story no one paid attention. She said she removed it spiced it up and then posted again...

Her "confession" reminds me of that line in "Finding Forrester"..."No thinking - that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head"..

Seems like Zola's final edit was good enough to get her the  attention she sought even that  of Director Ava DuVernay

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Hi Mel.  The was a line in the Broadway play, Avenue Q, goers along the line of "The Internet is for Porn."  There was a time the majority of traffic on the web was porn related.

As I migrate my bestsellers books to a database I'm able to very easily run some queries that present some interesting results.  My all time bestselling book (far and away) is the Confessions of a Video Vixen.  Three of the top five books deal directly with sex.  

I think this has more to do with the subject matter, sex, than the quality of the writing or the writers journey.  Zane started the same way, but on her blog. Karrine's  (author of Confessions) blow-and-tell book made her quite wealthy.

 

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I heard 50 Shades of Grey also started as a blog.

Of course, sex sells there is no disputing that but this writer's success isn't about erotica or sex.   

This is a testament to "Zola"'s storytelling and her ability to use the platform to captivate an audience in 148 tweets .  She spun a tale filled with drama, suspense and brought attention to a social ill. 

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I'm almost always amazed at what goes "viral". Note the quotes. Nothing goes viral. Almost everything is planned or will have one connection to an influencer who pushes said info into the spotlight. The only thing for us normal folks to do is keep generating content, throw it against the wall and hope that something eventually sticks. 

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Welp...a bbc reporter also noticed what I did about storytelling on a digital platform -His story "Is self-publishing coming of age in the digital world?" appeared today (note to self : more folks read AALBC.com forum than we know ;) dude took my angle and ran with it)  He featured white authors who also began their stories on blogs that became feature flicks...

Digital platforms are perfect for succinct storytelling and the immediate feedback allows the writer to know if they are reaching the masses.  Which of course, reaching the masses should be the goal of every writer!  

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Yeah, I agree more people read what we are writing than we know. Troy has his numbers on lurkers and I'm sure one of the reasons he continues to run the site is because of the ad impressions and clicks by lurkers. You should have done a blog post and shared it. Interestingly enough this author of the article does what everyone does when they discuss the "success" of a book that goes from blog to film, or something that goes "viral". Everyone avoids the real point is that almost nothing goes viral without an influencer of some kind sharing the information. Without an influencer we can all keep pounded away but our job is that much more difficult until we get the cosign. Once you get the cosign and that person is willing to promote what you are doing beyond one moment, then you have the potential to go viral. The only people who break through are often doing something so corny and ignorant that people share it because it's so absurd. While I think everything has value, it seems the less value something has, the more likely it is to go viral. Which brings us all back to square one, how do we reach a bigger audience without devolving into idiocy? 

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