Flip it

Narrate a very short story (1-3 paragraphs) from 1st person POV, and then write another story, your choice in length, from an outsider’s POV, but still first person.

Here’s an example (“Those Gel Tears” by Chelsey Cashwell)

POV #1: Those gel tears. The slow to start, slow to brim, slow to tumble down tears. The “come on I just want to get it over with” “go on, now GET” tears. Those overriding my body’s natural functions, just won’t kick into gear tears. Those big wet sad tears, eventually puddled up next to my dirty toes tears. Crying on my balcony tears with my broken other half on the other side of the wall tears. Marriage tears.

POV #2: I was smoking a cigarette and watching my neighbor take his puppy Pit to shit on my lawn for what must be the twelfth time since he brought the adorable thing home. I heard a quick inhale and exhale above me when I was in the middle of a thought about how I really can’t be all that riled up over a few puppy poops on my lawn when I’m not even positive as to what shit I even have back there. For a moment, I was pleased with myself for being so reasonable and dignified for not making a fuss about the poop, but my self-aggrandizing forked off into curiosity when I heard what was definitely a woman’s huffing.

Her balcony faces a busy street. My house from her balcony, and her balcony from my house, are uncomfortably visible to each other, and I’m sure she, like me, has to remind herself of that often.

You could tell her body was stiff from withstanding the shakes that come right before a really good cry. She was leaning back and forth just barely, and when that wasn’t enough she leaned forward like she was stretching and squeezed her knees to her chest and then flung herself back into the chair and popped her neck. That kind of startled me even from a distance, but not because I actually heard her neck pop, but because I realized at that moment that she already knew I was there with her, smoking my cigarette, and she was trying to be strong, for my sake. My mind fell wayward and flipped through a million instances when I witnessed a man telling a girl that she should smile and swore off the idea as if that kind of commentary is contagious, a sort of socially transmitted infection. A part of me really did want to try and cheer her up, but the other part wanted to tell her to just cry because I knew that’s what she wanted to do.

City By the Sidewalk

Paint a scene from an odd perspective. You can describe anything, but do so from a perspective you wouldn’t normally choose, one that makes you uncomfortable. This exercise forces you to broaden your perspective and to describe things in a way that is foreign to you. Below is an original of mine (wrote this in McGrail’s class). I decided to describe an urban city from its reflection in a pothole:

The lights from the street lamps, from the line of brick shacks, lights from the high-rise buildings look up at us from the puddled potholes in the street. There’s a layer of oil in the pothole puddle and you can see the bottom of your foot’s multicolored reflection. You learn to keep your head down on certain streets, and eventually you remember the places in the sidewalk where there is no more sidewalk or where it’s all caved in. You’ll sometimes wonder what could have possibly happened to make the sidewalk completely bashed in right there. Sometimes you’ll zoom in and focus on these cracks and crevices or try to step over them and a body will jump out at you. Well, the body doesn’t actually jump out at you, but you’ll be walking like a zombie looking at cracks in the sidewalk and then BAM there’s a body…a person…a freaking human being…sleeping in between the side of a building and a dumpster.

“City By the Side Walk” By Chelsey Cashwell

Perspective Shifting

Write character sketches for two or more characters. Sketches should be comprised of no more than 2-3 sentences, but should be as long as 2-3 paragraphs. You will do this by mending together the sketches in a place where the characters’ lives meet. Examine how David Foster Wallace does this in the excerpt below, which is an excerpt from the same story mentioned in the previous prompt. Take special note of how the narrator continues to narrate the story within the structure of his classroom window (you do not need to do this for this specific prompt unless you want to continue narrating the same story as before). If it’s two characters, feel free to go back and forth between perspectives (but keep the details relevant to the narrative you’re telling).

“I did not, though, initially recall the window’s narrative including any explanation of what fate befell the smaller, subordinate feral dog, with the sore, whose name was Scraps, and had run away from home because of the way its owner mistreated it when the tedium and despair of his lower level administrative job made him come home empty-eyed and angry and drink several highballs without any ice or even a lime, and later always found some excuse to be cruel to Scraps, who had waited alone at home all day and only wanted some petting or affection or to play tug of war with a rag or dog toy in order to take its mind off of its own bored loneliness, and whose life had been so awful that the backstory cut off abruptly after the second time the man kicked Scraps in the stomach so hard that Scraps couldn’t stop coughing as quietly as he could.”

“The Soul Is Not a Smithy” from Oblivion, By David Foster Wallace

Pillars of Narration

Narrate a story through a concrete structure, with an architectural backdrop of some sort. The structure might obscure the storyline for the narrator, or the story might take place within that structure. Here’s an example from one of David Foster Wallace’s stories. The narrator is easily distracted and what some might call “A.D.D.,” and he isn’t normally allowed to sit next to the window in the classroom for this reason (except on days like this one when there is a substitute teacher). Here you will notice how he describes a scene between neighborhood dogs within the window panel of his classroom:

“A series of panels in the very top row of mesh squares, which is often reserved for flashbacks and back story elements that help fill in gaps in the window’s unfolding action, reveals that Cuffie’s collar and vaccination tags have gotten torn off as he wriggles under the Simmons family’s yard fence, in excitement over seeing the two strange dogs, one black and dun, and the other predominantly piebald, that have locked up to the cheap wire fence and urged Cuffie to come join them in some freely roaming dog adventures, the dark one, when the panel has angled eyebrows and a sinister pencil mustache, crossing his heart over the promise that they won’t go far at all and will be sure and show the trusting Cuffie the way back home again.”

“The Soul Is Not a Smithy” from Oblivion, By David Foster Wallace