Jaded

Jade
2004-03-21 02:23:24 (UTC)

Jp7

http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/assign/e50xs1.htm
English 50 – Intro to Creative Writing: Exercises for
Story Writers
The T.S. Eliot/John Gardner Killer Exercise: This exercise
is quite possibly the most difficult, demanding and
important exercise a writer can ever do. The poet and
critic, T. S. Eliot, coined the phrase "objective
correlative" to designate what he believed was the most
important element in writing: Rendering the description of
an object so that the emotional state of the character
from whose point of view we receive the description is
revealed WITHOUT ever telling the reader what that
emotional state is or what has motivated it.
The late John Gardner, recognized in his lifetime as the
leading creative writing teacher in the United States,
developed the following exercise for students:
A middle-age man is waiting at a bus stop. He has just
learned that his son has died violently. Describe the
setting from the man's point of view WITHOUT telling your
reader what has happened. How will the street look to this
man? What are the sounds? Odors? Colors? That this man
will notice? What will his clothes feel like? Write a 250
word description.

I think this exercise could be interesting I think I will
try it.
Exercise beginning: old man at the bus stop after his
child’s violent death.

I looked both ways before crossing the street. The left
side seemed clear but the shadows the buildings threw out
were distracting. It was hard to see the traffic that may
be coming down it. I looked to the right and it was clear
to cross. I began to cross the street. The colors on the
street seemed redder than usual and a dense fog encircled
me following behind me. I could see the darkness edging
out the redness of the setting sun. Red and black
surrounded every square inch. Even the fog reflected red
like the blood of a violent death. The smell from the
nearby dumpster contributed to the death like atmosphere.
It smelled of old food, molded garbage, it smelled as if
death had made it a permanent home, wallowing in the
refuse, and forgotten memories thrown into the lonely
green box. The sun was falling further allowing the
darkness to envelope the late evening fog, turning the
reddish glow into a sad shadow fallowing behind an even
greater sorrow. The bus was late. It seemed like it was
always late. I stopped pacing and sat down on the cold
black bench. It sent a chill up my spine. I pulled my coat
tighter around my shoulders. It was beginning to mist. The
coldness sifted through the coat like sand through a
sieve. The mist covered my hair in little droplets making
it look like I had the hair of a ghost.
The bus finally came. Its brakes squealed like a shrill
scream of pain. As I stepped up to get onto the bus, I
took one last look around the world I had known before.
The darkness had enveloped everything and the fog was
thicker. The neon lights dispersed into the mist like
blood running down a drain. I got onto the bus and took it
to a world I had hoped to never find.




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