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Describing my new book to people who don't use social media or aren't into classic literature can be hard. To most people who are Facebook-friendly and love books, it usually goes a bit smoother. But my default, best expression to explain what's in this book is "Facebook Lit."

I know. The term sounds like a make-your-own-course title for a sixth-year undergrad at a progressive college. But Facebook Lit has been my creative challenge-and my job-since the night a year ago when, with a newborn and few functioning brain cells, I began to wonder what Ophelia would have posted on Facebook as she strayed to the fun side of sanity.

The piece I wrote, "Hamlet (Facebook News Feed Edition," for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, inspired Ophelia Joined the Group Maidens Who Don't Float. And since then, others have written news feed versions of everything from the Book of Genesis to The Aeneid, not to mention Slate's ongoing Obama news feed and a Facebook group of world leaders in The Atlantic. There are also, of course, Twitter novels-classics and those solely in tweet form.

I know some people may see this as a corruption of literature, just like some people prefer their Jane Austen zombie-free. But it's all meant in fun: a companion (or what my husband calls a gateway drug) for the classics, not any attempt at revision. Besides, the classics have been parodied-and survived-for hundreds, sometimes thousands of years. What's new to parody is 5-year-old Facebook (and even younger Twitter). And what I've found interesting about this project beyond, of course, creating an Event page for The Canterbury Tales or engaging Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain in a status update quip-off, is how much it demonstrates the literary quality of social media.

Facebook amazes me with its capacity for narrative storytelling. People become friends and end relationships and join groups and profess their love of things. A friend will write about his job application, then his job interview, then his job offer, then, inevitably, about how he hates his job. People detail full pregnancies, then their children's infancy to toddlerhood and beyond. And then there's the dialogue. On any given update, I can have comments from former coworkers, a high school boyfriend, my husband's cousin and a woman I just met at my son's play date. It's a bit This Is Your Life, but it's also fascinating reading material.

Twitter, too, is full of stories. It may be a cacophony of voices, but you can still easily "follow" someone through the establishment of their problem, rising tension, conflict, climax and resolution.

Is it just the writer in me that sees this? (And one who's spent too much time studying literature and Facebook simultaneously?) I don't think so. I think we tune in to social media, in part, to see how everything turns out.

For more on "Facebook Lit" and the book, please see www.maidenswhodontfloat.com

Sarah Schmelling, Ophelia Joined The Group Maidens Who Don't Float, Facebook, classic literature, satire, social networking, books, Penguin Books