Reading is an essential part of everyone’s lives, whether it’s fiction, non-fiction, mystery, horror, romance, autobiographies or more. Reading has also evolved over time, especially with how we read things. Instead of just getting the hard copy of a book, we now have access to them on our tablets, Nooks, Kindles, iPads and even phones. More and more people are resorting to their cell phones for reading material on social media, and also buying full novels through the app stores available on smartphones.
But the new app Cliffhanger has just brought reading to yet another level. We all know that phones are taking over the world as we walk around and see everyone sucked into whatever is happening on their phone. With that being said, peoples’ attention spans are becoming shorter. And Cliffhanger has come up with the idea of reading a story through text messages.
English professor Joe Monninger introduced this app in one of his classes, showing how “diverse” reading can really be. The app is free to download, but once you open it, you can only see so much without getting a weekly, monthly or annual subscription. The weekly rate is $2.99, the monthly is $7.99 and the annual is $39.99.
The app categorizes the stories into genres of “popular,” “new releases,” “horror,” “thriller,” “relationships,” “comedy” and “supernatural.” Most of the stories are suspenseful. So, if you’re into reading about ghosts, murders and other themes in that realm, this is definitely the app for you.
Once you pick a story you want to read, the it pops up like a text conversation between two people, and, sometimes, multiple people. You can only read so much, and then, you have to wait for a “text back” to read the next part of the story. It is exactly like being in a real text message conversation, minus the control over what is being done, which makes it a short story.
The animations within the app did are amazing, and you can even see the text bubbles showing that someone is texting. A few times a day, you get a message on your phone like a text message from the app bringing out a new short story for you to read, or for you to continue a story you already started.
And for all the writers out there, there is an option to sign up and write for the app if you are interested in writing short stories through text message. Check out Cliffhanger, and download it from the app store today!