Hello, writers.
SensibleShoes is away this evening, so I’m guest-hosting. As usual when I do, feel free to skip right to the challenges. For those of more meandering bent:
Welcome to the
observation deck!
Writers observe and report back.
We’re much like artists and scientists that way, artists out in the wild blue, and scientists down to earth, writers ranging all between making the connections, finding treasure trove, fetching it back, and saying, “Looka this! Here’s why it might matter. And here’s how it could alllwaaays go sooooo differnt.”
If not necessarily in those words, because fictionists have maybe the widest perspective, since there’s nothing we have to leave out. Humanities, histories, polities, mythologies, fantaseize, move-ease, theatre stage, paper or online page for the actual, the virtual, the propositional. Power, sex, money, destruction, glory, loneliness, crisis, confusion, creation and even occasional clarity show up in novel[las] the same as in news: the warriors who can’t leave it on the battlefield; the rescuers who leave no one behind; pretenders to thrones of office; rulers in exile; gals who crack wise as heartless landlords toss’em out on the bricks; guys who smoke crack ‘cause their baby up and left’em; grim-eyed elders’ slacker kids and grandkids back inna attic bedroom, basement apartment, garage, family business, or collective handcart to hell and earth might as well be flat for what narrow margin there may be ‘twixt heaven and that.
That deck up there, for instance, entitled Terrace — what’s the story with that? ‘Cos we observe that it’s not what it appears to be.
Or is at the same time as not, being artwork,optical illusion, visual science, whimsy, and portraiture.
Or an ad selling twine, terrazzo tile, DIY construction tools, sundials, chessboards, birdbaths, or balustrades. Amazingly observed assemblage in truthful detail! Or if not strictly truthful, surely real? No, realistic ! ...naturalistic?… Or... or ... not… or...
But definitely a case in point that:
❃ The apparent is not all there is in the world ❃
and
❃ what there is is not enough ❃
Short of Procrustean measures for adapting to these facts —for finding ways to live with such observation— people use imagination in various ways, like read. Or a lot do, anyway. Maybe it’s for the same reasons that writers write. Both/all thinking “Hey, what really goes on here?” and seeking/[to] reply.
Fiction is one of the formats that asks that and goes on to wonder, “And, hey, what if … ?” What if beyond what we see there’s more? And how can we tell? Well, if this’n’that is observably so, mightn’t thus’n’so hypothetically be? Then, what and who and how would things go? And what would happen next?!1??!
It takes an eye unsatisfied with the routine scope of orbit. From the cradle, we start noticing (albeit out of focus) everything. And everything right back’s already urging us to understand it all just so: their versions — intentional, accidental, erring, accurate or what. Family, school, whomever clues us in on the new job, shows us the ropes where we volunteer or play, grounds our faith and our hormones, or juices them up or grinds them to dust in the wind. People and culture (especially ads, product placement, and entertainment) all competing and colluding to shape how we see, and what we think of what see, what we think of to ask, what we think to imagine or expect.
What we see of people real and invented (some of it being both) underpins a written character’s realness to readers. And of how the world (ibid) works. The way things and people move, clash, mesh or seize up all comprises the events of the plot. Persuasively, we hope. Plausibly at minimum. So readers say, “I know someone like that!” or “yeah, that’s exactly how it happens!” when they recognize their own perceptions by words made fresh.
From this they trust the rest. (Which can be good or bad; but that’s another story.)
When we can’t go where in space or time or realm what happens that we write up or use for setting or action, and can’t try out being (or even meeting) people like the ones who do the things our characters do, we observe at 2nd-hand. Through the observation and report of someone who’s been there, or seems to have. Or through 3rd-hand matériel , factual or fictional, of people, places, times, and mechanisms as gleaned by someone before us, filtered through her/his eyes, experience, culture, class, and handed off to us to use.
Which writers do, aware or not.
And even at 3rd-hand, we’ve also observed in our own lives how calluses or wounds can begin from repetitive abrasion... how bullies arise from being bullied or choose to self-justify that way… how drive and desire may root from deprivation or fellow-feeling or lust. The writer sweats and trains to engineer living breath into word on page, hone it sharp, and run it home. Touchdown!!!
CHALLENGE:
Look around you where you are at this instant. Write first person present tense of something within 15 feet of you that you suspect, realize, or always dimly knew is not quite what it seems. (Isn’t it? Or is it...) Maybe it’s more or means more. Or maybe less. Or maybe it’s something else altogether...
One to three paragraphs.
Extra Credit:
The same paragraph[s] PLUS then rewritten in 3rd-person past tense — try for equal immediacy.
HyperChallenge:
Start no sentence with a, an, the, their, they, we, she, he; nor proper name.
Alternate Challenge:
Changing names, dates & places to protect innocent & guilty alike, write of someone real who, of your first-hand up-close-and-personal experience turned out not what s/he seemed to be. No-one famous, just someone you came to know enough to observe and realize somewhere along the way that you see through the façade, whether it is/was intentional or not (everyone wears some somma the time, sometimes just to get a break from self).
So, how did it show/how do you know? Were there fleeting facial expressions or body language or patterns of behavior that contradicted what s/he said of self along the way? Moods or turns of phrase that didn’t fit? Ill-assorted items of garb or accessories people use to send silent messages about self? Unheralded depths, dimly glimpsed shadows, partial secrets, or potentials kept hidden? Some relentless or ramshackle quality? Some stand-offish or too friendly trait? Some mask or shield welded in place. Some teflon surface to float placidly along on, untouchable and untouch? Were they too ordinary, too calm, too too cheerful, too stressed? Did their strut show a break in the gait, or their stumble fall oddly secure?
Look back, or look around for the ill-defined figures you’ve encountered in life, and bring the reader’s lens into focus with the words of most key discovery.
Allow yourself a fourth paragraph if needed in case narrative rather than simple recollection or description is the best form.
Alternative Alternate Challenge:
This historic image is as large as I can make it. I’ve searched often through wikipedia and the internet looking for information about the “unidentified nun”: zilch. More photos, no identification that I can find. But see her forward-leaning posture as if she’s about to stride ahead into the next instant of future without the least hesitation. This was no light matter: marchers had already been attacked and some died of those injuries, and “Viola Liuzzo, a white mother of five from Detroit who had come to Alabama to support voting rights for blacks, was assassinated by Ku Klux Klan members while she was ferrying marchers back to Selma from Montgomery...” neither the first assassination nor, obviously, the last.
Write a cohesive pair of fictionalized paragraphs observing and reporting back to us on the unidentified nun and how it seems she may have come to be there that day, or how it seems her life may have become thereafter.
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