The Trio

Here is an exercise about scene...I had to convey these people's emotions for each other entirely through body language. Can you guess what they are?

Charles leads the trio in, per usual, catching his reflection in the mirror behind the register before striding straight to his favorite seat. Something about the ceiling to floor display of wine glasses behind the bar always captivated him. Janet is only a few steps behind, her eyes on Charles to see where he’ll sit, as if it would be anywhere else. She takes the seat to the right of him, and subtly scuffles it to the left. Marcus always lags a bit. The revolving door still proves difficult for him to navigate. After attempting to help Janet into her seat, he takes the mahogany chair to her right. They all give slight smiles and nods to one another, as if to acknowledge the impeccable location of the table.

When Charles sits not a single one of his vertebrae comes close to brushing the back of his chair. He moves his head side to side ever so slightly, watching as the wine glasses make a mosaic of his symmetrical features. Occasionally the brush of Janet’s fingers on his forearm startles him and breaks his gaze from the glasses, but it never stays away long. Marcus sits across from Charles, creating the perfect antithesis to his posture. He is tall like Charles, but his body is more river than oak tree. The most solid thing about him is the hand he keeps on the table to provide the stability he needs to balance on the back two legs of his chair. The other lanky limbs spill over the chair, which is turned at a slight angle towards Janet. During their conversation he has the habit of tapping his left, green converse shoe on the leg of her chair. She doesn’t seem to notice. 

Running

You'll have to bear with me on this week's class exercise a bit. We had to play with different points of view (which there are a million, if not 8 of, by the way) while rewriting the same scene. There is a redundancy to this exercise, so I wasn't even going to post it, but it proved a little more interesting than I thought.

I tried to keep the same scene while changing perspective, but in most cases the story ended up shifting a bit. That got me thinking of that oh-so-over-stated idea of putting yourself in someone else's shoes, taking a moment to see from someone else's perspective. It is a truth so accepted it is often ignored. That's what makes this exercise so interesting. It gives concrete evidence that the same story, the same situation, can look and feel different when looked at with different points of view. And while our points of view may appear almost identical at times, the slight difference in perspective can become a large difference in story.

Just something to think about.

(One last thing...if you want explanations of each point of view, either email me, or check out Josip Novakovich's book, Fiction Writer's Workshop. Great stuff.)

First Person POV:

           

Correct me if I’m wrong, but most people I see running for exercise wear athletic sweats of some kind. Me, I run in my suit and tie after work, or in my jeans and t-shirt on weekends. Nevertheless my neighbors have started patting me on the back for my sudden interest in my health. “What inspired you to take up running?” they ask. Apparently the 8-year-old bolting away in front of me does not attract their attention. If they noticed him, they would also notice my face, which I imagine carries less athletic determination than parental frustration. Why did I take up running? Because my son did. Unfortunately he is not running toward anything, just away from me.

Second-Person POV:

            

You know why it started, the sudden running away. She had been sick for over a year. The ambulance came in April and took her for months. You watched her come home once, you saw the relief in her footsteps. Then another ambulance came. Months later you saw her come home again. This time you saw the inevitable in the rolling wheels that carried her frail body into the house. Ambulances and sickness are now replaced with running. Every day you see that boy run away from his father. In the grocery store he narrowly misses your cart as he darts by, and his father is close behind. After church he brushes by you, and his father is a little farther behind. At school he knocks over a few chairs, and his father is in the distance. You see the running 

and you ask no questions. 

Third-Person Omniscient POV:

           

As he bolted away from his father for the third time that day the boy started feeling the effects of fatigue. His father, following closely behind, could see it, could feel it. He hoped it meant his son’s new hobby would soon end. It didn’t. The boy was not trying to add to his father’s problems. Emotions just hit him all at once; confusion, sadness, anger – and then he had to run. Really, his father understood. When the grief came rolling over him, however, he had the option of pouring a glass, or two, or five.        

Third-Person Limited Subjective:

           

Exhaustion consumed the father. An exhaustion of the tear ducts, of the mind, of the spirit, and more recently, an exhaustion of the legs. Really, the change in behavior didn’t surprise him. An 8-year-old loses his mother and change is inevitable. He just wished the change involved less running.

Third-Person Limited Objective:

            

The man behind Charlie was dragging. Each step seemed to melt into the ground, making it harder for him to pull his foot back up and continue forward. There seemed to be a cinder block on each of his shoulders, causing them to fall sharply. Charlie stopped his running suddenly and turned back to look at the man. When the man caught up, he got on his knees in front of Charlie, putting him at eye-level with the boy.

           “Charlie,” the man said in heaved breaths, “why do you keep running?”

           Charlie stared at him.

            “You know I love you right?” the man heaved again. Regaining his breath seemed like a difficult process.

            Charlie nodded, looked at his shoes.

            “Do you want to talk about, about her? I can do that. I am ready.”

            A tear rolled off of Charlie’s shoe and the cement below absorbed it. He looked up, into the man’s eyes, and hugged him.

            “I hurt daddy. I hurt,” he whispered. 

Third-Person Limited Flexible:

            

He ran after his son for the third time that day and wondered how much longer he could keep it up, the running. The methodic “thud, thud, thud” of his dress shoes on the pavement spun him into a reverie of the last month. It had been a month of chasing. Chasing away his nightmares and chasing after his son. 

Third-Person Objective:

A small boy sprinted down the street. Close behind followed a man whose tie was loosened and hair was frazzled. The boy started slowing down as a he came upon an ice cream shop. Finally reaching a complete stop, he gazed through the window. By this time the man had caught up with him. He got on his knees and grabbed the boy’s hand. Slowly, the boy turned to face the man. With his small, finger-paint-stained hand he wiped a tear off of the man’s cheek. 

(Last thing, really, I promise this time...these characters are part of a story I am working on right now. So if you're curious, there will be more.) 

A Small Stage in a Town with a Backbone of Labor

A brief disclaimer: Currently I am in a short story class in which we are focusing on developing the different parts of fiction. Each week we do an exercise on a different element, and I've decided I will post a few of them in my blog as well. This first one is an example of setting.

Sun shines on the cobblestone road as it strolls past the too-trendy-for-this-town coffee shop on the corner. A sharp turn to the left and cobblestone meets asphalt abruptly – history only pays for so much after all. Sparkling lights in trees entice pedestrians to storefronts that promise quaint nick-knack shops but offer hardware stores. Where the lights end the warm, bitter smell and the truth begin. The smell is hops. The truth is agriculture. Neither can hide behind twinkling lights and the faint aroma of coffee. This is a town with a backbone of labor. It is evident here, on Main Street, because of the warehouses. On the other side of town suburbs grow out of orchards. It is evident there, because of the magazine-clipped houses that are the product of fruit plucked by immigrants and money made by family businesses.

In the heart of town neither extreme is so evident. Quaint houses of blue and red and green do exist on streets by the names of Chestnut and Lincoln; remnants of a time when neighbors worked side-by-side and spoke face-to-face. Schools made dingy with time still stand tall, alternately spilling students in colors of green and white, red and blue, orange and black from their halls.

Inside the school whose spillage was red and blue there is a stage. Deep but short, chipping but well-loved. Half a decade ago a 13-year-old girl stood upon its black surface staring at the robust red velvet curtain to her right, rather than the bald smiling director to her front. To her left the pianist sat, fingers perched on the keys of the upright piano on wheels, waiting for the girl’s nod indicating she was ready to begin. With a deep breath she was ready to look forward, but over the director’s head. She tried to avoid the window-turned-mirror on the sound and lighting booth at the back of the theater that usually feels overcrowded at 300 people; though she was feeling that twenty were a bit too many. Finally she decided to focus on the empty seats that were taken from a dying movie theater and gifted to a growing high school theater. They were old and ordinary and smelled faintly of popcorn. She found the combination comforting. Her neck muscles relaxed enough to her allow to nod while staring straight forward. Notes of the piece she had selected started streaming from the piano. One more deep breath and she allowed her robust voice to accompany the fluid chords. The director found the combination comforting.