Bitter Brew
I missed my Creative Writing seminar the other week but the tutor was kind enough to email me the hand out with the exercise that we did in class. This time we had to write a really descriptive piece focusing on a character without saying anything on-the-nose. Ie, telling the reader a piece of information, or listing the character thoughts.
No speech was allowed either, but as it was based on one character making a brew this didn’t affect the exercise too much really.
It was suggested we use a character we’ve been thinking of using for our developed short story, but as I didn’t have one too mind I took the setting from the Project In A Box exercise and placed a female character into the post-apocalyptic setting.
I’ll add the full exercise at the end of the work.
Here is said piece of work.
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Ella ground up the bark into a fine powder and sprinkled it into the base of the kettle. The tin kettle was placed onto the impromptu hook above the fire. The kettle and the flames blew in the strong wind. Sand bounced of the side of the kettle, which produced a nice relaxing musical sound, which when combined with the starry sky made for a lovely moment.
Ella picked up the flask from the hot sand and poured it into the kettle, holding the flask upside down draining every last drop. The water boiled quickly. She then pulled from her pack a metal bowl and placed this on the ground gently. Next Ella withdrew a can and a porcelain mug, the handle of the mug was missing, but otherwise it was in good shape.
After she had placed these items into the sand she removed the kettle from the hook carefully and poured it’s contents into the mug. Moving cautiously to her tent she relocated the three items to the over-hang and sat down. As she placed the bowl down in front of her she caught a distorted, but legible, reflection of herself looking back at her.
Ella’s hair was knotted. Her bandanna had slipped away from her mouth and hung around her neck, revealing dry cracked lips. Her blue eyes still sparkled though.
Ella unsheathed her combat knife and used it to remove the top of the can. She emptied the contents of the can into the bowl, reached into her tent and retrieved her fork. The sparkle in Ella’s eyes, flashed at the taste of the salty meat. She picked up her mug and washed the meat down with a long drink of the brew, her face twinging as she swallowed. But yet she took another drink. And another.
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“There is probably no more important advice in short story writing (nor any other type of creative writing, but it’s crucial for short fiction) than “Show, don’t tell.” The reader wishes to find out what is happening in any given story: if the history, emotions and likely behaviour of the characters are all laid out in one go, there’s no story – just a plot. This exercise is designed to slow down your processes of telling a story, and to work on ways in which you can make the narrative unfold to the reader.
Think of a character. If it helps, and you are working on a piece of prose fiction at the moment, you can do this with one of your own characters. If you do not have an in-progress story, you can invent a character and create a ‘story’ for them – i.e. give them a distinctive characteristic (personality trait, habit of behaviour etc), life situation (i.e. the mood they’re in, the state of their personal life etc) or lifestyle (job, home, attitude to life etc). You don’t have to worry about creating a full story about this person. It’s up to you whether they have a name at this stage.
When you have settled on your character, you need to write a passage of prose in which this character makes and drinks a cup of tea. The passage should begin roughly from the time of filling up the kettle and end when the character is drinking the tea. In this passage, we should be able to work out what your character’s ‘story’ is. The following restrictions apply:
- We must never read the character’s thoughts. We can only view his or her actions.
- No back-story is allowed in the form of narrative that addresses the reader. You must not directly explain the context for anything you present in the passage. This includes not giving a separate introduction to your passage to explain who your character is meant to be.
- No speech or dialogue is permitted that deals with anything that is happening outside the making of the tea. So, if there is another character present, comments between the two can only relate to the process of making the tea. Ideally, the character should be alone or any other characters should be very much in the background.
- The character should not do anything that reveals his/her back-story that takes place away from the making of the tea. The information we receive about your character should be gleaned entirely from the manner in which the tea is made. So the character can’t, say, leave the tea to brew and pick up a letter/gun/gift that will tell us more about his/her life.
- Description is therefore paramount. The approach to making the tea and the tea-making facilities; the physical appearance of the character; the room in which the action takes place; smells and sounds – all these are acceptable as details to include. But remember not to tell too much: if you character has a scar, then s/he has a scar – leave it to us to interpret where this scar might have come from.
- Coffee/cocoa are allowed, but the act of making the drink has to be a process involving a number of different stages. No opening of Coke tins.”
- Dinesh Allirajah
http://www.freewebs.com/dineshallirajah/
