Thoughts and the Unreliable Narrator

I've been thinking a lot about my writing lately and about teaching because my first two classes in the graduate program where fiction writing workshop and creative writing pedagogy. I had to write a huge paper (okay, huge meaning 8-10 pages and mine turned out to be about 10 pages) about my statement of pedagogy. Before this class, I didn't even know what the word pedagogy meant, but I learned quickly. I finally got around to reading Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft and found it to be a great read. I think every fiction/creative writing class should be required to read this book. And one day, if I ever get to teach creative writing, I will make it required in my class. I learned a lot about myself as a potential teacher and myself as a student of writing during this class. I will definitely post my paper to my website, if anyone is interested. (Also, a kind of funny side note: I wrote a paper for the AWP Forum about students blogging as a means of learning creative writing.)

So, with a new class starting up comes new exercises. This class uses a book called 3 AM Epiphany. It has a series of interesting writing exercises meant to help one write critically as well as creatively. They are fantastic exercises. One day I wish to write a novel with an unreliable narrator in third person who is believed to be reliable the entire time, but ends up being unreliable.

[READER INTERACTIVE] Please feel free to try this exercise. It involves 500 words written in third person, intimate and must be written in a way that makes the narrator seem reliable, but actually is not. Post your version in the comments or post a link to it.

Changing Points of View and Voice

So, a week or so ago in class, we did this exercise about changing view points. We had to write a narrative in third person limited about a group of people doing something and change points of view for each character while keeping their voice. I like the exercise because I prefer to write in third person and often times it can be difficult to give a character a strong voice. Here is what I wrote for this class exercise:

Lily relaxed her body as she listened to the deep breaths of three clients sitting around the circular table in her spiritual parlor. Her grimiore lay open in front of her; behind it in the centre of the table, stood four white pillar candles. Lily held out her palms to either side and invited her guests to hold hands. As the others closed their eyes, she gazed at the candle flames, watching them wane and bloom in succession. Her eyes drooped as she chanted words from her book; she knew them by heart, but insisted on keeping the grimiore nearby.

Amanda was losing her patience. She’d been sitting around the creepy table for almost an hour and nothing had happened. She rolled her eyes, then shut them again. What was she doing here? The card someone, she assumed Lily, slipped under her apartment door had a date, the time and directions to a location with the words ‘In need of a Spirit Medium?’ written across the top with red grape coloured ink. While she wasn’t in need of a psychic, Amanda’s curiosity got the better of her and she found herself at Lily’s homely cottage anyway. At least she wasn’t like the poor SOBs who came hoping to talk to their dead kid.

A cool breeze blew over Danny’s neck, sending shivers through his body. He wished Madame Lily would close the window, but didn’t want to interrupt her. Danny brought his wife, Erin, to Madame Lily because she was having trouble getting over the loss of their daughter 4 years ago. He received a card inviting him and his wife, and under any normal situation he would have just tossed it, but they had tried every “normal” option without avail. Danny gave Erin’s hand an encouraging squeeze. He couldn’t stop shivering. Was the wind blowing that hard? The only sound Danny heard was Madame Lily chanting.

Tears fell from Erin’s closed eyes as she thought of her baby. She never forgave herself for falling asleep on the couch while three year old Anna wandered outside the house and into the street. The sight of her child bleeding and broken lying in the street bore into her mind unlike any memory she’d ever had. Half of her baby’s grated face was flecked with black from skidding across the assault. Erin felt sick. An immense moan echoed throughout the room and Madame Lily flew to her feet. Lily insisted that they would have to resume at a later time. Erin thought what little was left of her heart was breaking. She tried to protest through sobs, but the words refused to come out. Lily lead them to the front door as she explained something to Danny that Erin couldn’t comprehend through her disappointment.

[READER INVOLVEMENT] Feel free to try this exercise and post it or a link to it! How do you feel about voice and changing points of view?

Learning your Craft

So, I've been under the radar for the last month or so due to school starting and, more so, a horrible back injury. I was bedridden for a couple of weeks and while you would think I should have been able to get tons of work don, this was not actually the case. I couldn't sit up for 3 weeks and typing while flat on my back was just plain hard. But, I managed and now I'm doing better. Still sore and all that but I can sit for long periods of time and get work done.

As I mentioned, I started school during my absence. I'm earning my master's in creative writing and I may go on to earn my PhD. We'll see about that. At any rate, I turned in the first two chapters of my novel, Land of No Angels for critique. Now, this is a graduate level class, so the expectations are high, but in general the response has been good so far. I definitely have things to work on and my classmates gave me plenty of things to think about. I'm pleased because I feel like I'm finally on the right path, not just with my book, but with myself. I know that once I finish this book, it will be publishable and that thrills me. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect it will be easy, I just believe that at some point this story will be worth publishing so many others can enjoy it.

Other things we've done so far in this class are weekly writing exercises. One of the recent exercises had us write a 150-300 word narrative using sentences with a max of 7 words in it. That one was devistating when I did it. The second part of that assignment was to write another narrative or the same story (I chose the same) up to 300 words long using only 1 sentence. I will never understand why anyone needs a 300 word sentence, but this part of the exercise seemed a little more like how I naturally write with long and short lines. For fun, I will post it here.

Leslie ducked behind a tree, narrowly missing three whizzing arrows to the chest; he scrambled to run deeper into the thick forest and regretted getting caught stealing the precious Kalic amulet, but knew it would be worth it to trade in order to get Aurora back; besides, getting into a Kalic prison was easy, getting out alive was not so much; several towering Amazon-like women chased after him; he used the thought of Aurora’s warm, sweet skin and her large brown eyes which seemed to encompass Lesley’s entire soul in rapture to motivate him, pushing past dry shrubs and rotting, fallen trees; a fourth warrior woman dropped down from a tree in front of Lesley’s escape route with a fiery arrow in her bow; it was too late for him to dodge the blazing projectile and in a single shot to the chest—right through the heart—he went up in flames, shrieks of pain cut through the early morning air.

It ended up being 159 words long. If I saw this in a book, I'd either skim it or stop reading the book entirely, even though I know this sort of sentencing happened a lot a long time ago.

We also did an exercise in class where we had to write without any adjectives or adverbs. It was a serious nightmare. Adverbs are easy to keep out for me because I try not to use them anyway, but adjectives! Noooooo! The exercise wanted us to think outside the box for ways to describe things without depending on adverbs, which I think are crutches, and adjectives, which are important even though sometimes people abuse them. The exercise made me realise how dear to me adjectives are.

I recommend either of these exercises to those who are having trouble coming up with something to write. [Reader Interaction] If you try either of these, feel free to link me to them or post them in a comment! If you have any other good exercises, please share them!