The earth has moved under your feet, gloriously!--and nothing will ever be the same again
We arrived at the college at about
8:00. My english teacher had been fine with me missing a class, as
was my calculus recitation teacher. So I had decided to spend the
whole day at the GIS conference. My GIS teacher was there, ready to
drive us down to Augusta.
"Hi!" he said. "Get in!
It's a little bit of a mess, but-"
My sister Felicia promptly got into the
back.
"Would it be easier if I sat in
the front or back?" I queried him.
"Whichever's fine."
I assumed that usually people sit in
the front seat, and that he would probably be happier driving someone
in the front, and I was glad I had thought so. Because:
"Where's the seat belt?"
Felicia asked.
"Oh, it's not there?" he
asked. "It probably went behind the seat."
"I don't see it."
He went around and managed to get a
hand on it, and after a minute of effort, was able to extricate the
delinquent buckle from its location of concealment.
"Normally the dog sits back there,
so sorry about all the fur," he said. "You're probably the
first person to sit back there in a year."
We started off, and he asked me to put
"Augusta Civic Center" into the GPS. I tried, but
considering that I had never used one of them before, and such, I had
a little difficulty, and once I did get it in, it did not recognize
the civic center, so the teacher had to just drive by memory.
The drive down was interesting. He
answered a multitude of questions from me for my isearch on GIS. We
reached the civic center without many mishaps, and we were interested
in some school buses outside. The teacher, because if they were there
for our conference, then it would give the young people some interest
in GIS; me, because if they were there for our conference, then that
would mean a bunch of little kids running around. It turned out they
were there for something else, and I was most probably the youngest
person at the conference, as there were only about two other students
there, the remainder were teachers from various colleges and high
schools.
We met the other two members of our
class inside, then left our GIS poster in the poster competition room
on the wall, and attended all the various speeches. There was one
about using colors in GIS that are friendly to color blind people,
and another speech talking about GIS with respect to his internships
and eelgrass or something, the person who gave it was in need of my
speaking class, though the content was interesting. We went to the
lunch, and voted for the GIS posters afterwards.
We went to a speech that turned out to
be more for high school teachers, so naturally not so interesting to
us. Then there was one on GIS as a study, that was quite interesting.
Everyone then gathered in the main room where they announced that the
winner of the undergraduate poster competition was EMCC. It might
have helped that we could vote for our own poster, and that we had
four people there already with the poster, but we were still
delightedly ecstatic to have won the competition.
A few weeks later, we got to see our
poster that we had all designed grace the college newspaper, on page
11 or something like that. But it was in there.
This is something for you to think about: what is a story, how do they work, how are they different in structure from a chronological recounting of events? I don't know Oppenheim, but we share an appreciation of Terhune--what makes his stories work? How does he set them up? What role does character play? Are there 'problems'?
ReplyDeleteI was concerned once I finished this that it was too much of recounting something that happened, (We went to a conference, we won a contest), and was sort of lacking that essential McGuffin (Thanks for that word by the way, before I always just termed it as "A feeling."
ReplyDeleteI have had an exceedingly difficult time thinking of topics for this narrative theme to begin with. Once I have a topic, I think that I can work with it. My difficulty once I acquire a suitable topic seems to be that I have a natural way of writing. I can organize it differently, I can aim for different things, but I am lacking that flexibility to see what material fits narrative and to cut out the extraneous, that would suffice for other writing.
Guidelines would probably be of assistance to me, but this is more of an art then an exact science, and obviously something I need practice in.
What would you suggest I do with this? What is it lacking?
I suppose what makes Terhune, Oppenheim, Farnol, and all of the other authors I have enjoyed work is that they do develop the characters. Without well developed and likable characters, I doubt any of their books would be all that interesting. But am I trying to develop character in narrative, or am I overthinking it?
ReplyDeleteThere generally are problems that the characters deal with and surpass, or succumb to, as the case may be. And this last one I have definitely does not have that.
I knew you'd like the word 'MacGuffin' (even if you are having trouble finding one) because it's useful but not something you're likely to run across ordinarily.
ReplyDeleteI'd love to give you guidelines, but as you say, it's an art, not a science, and guidelines simply crucify the lovely butterfly and drain all the life from it, if I may wax poetic. I'll tell you an Hollywood guideline for what it's worth: character=action and action=conflict. Movies are built around character which inevitably leads to conflict which leads to those moving pictures we all are so fascinated by. Think of your favorite movies, and see if that formula does not hold true.
Narrative is a habit of mind, a way of organizing and thinking about material (and life), a perpsective. I'd say with this piece that when what you've got is a series of external events, what would turn it into a story is a parallel but contrasting inner narrative.
I don't want fiction, but Chekhov once, when impatient with a person who said he couldn't write until inspiration struck, picked up an ashtray, and said, "Tomorrow I will give you a story titled 'The Ashtray.'"
Here is a piece of flash fiction I wrote about a friend whose kids complain that she never lets them do anything, in the spirit of 'The Ashtray':
Her husband always ended phone calls to her with "Love you" Sing song, not much behind it. Same tone for his mother or when he was talking to either of the girls, who now were old enough to parrot back, 'Love you too, dad.'
"I love you too, but you've got to stop saying that. It cheapens the thing," were the words she used on the phone to him one night, incautious words as it turned out because the girls were not paying as much attention to their videogame as she would have wished.
In the back seat on the drive to his mother's they began their new game:
--I love you but you need a new butt.
--Well, I love you too but you've got stinky breath, ewww.
--I love you but you're so dumb you write with the eraser end of your pencil.
She thought she needed to intervene.
--No names. Don't say 'dumb.'
They didn't say anything for a few seconds and then continued:
--I love you but you better wash your hair.
--Well, I love you too, but you better wash your feet.
Then he got involved.
--Don't do that in front of Nana. She won't understand.
--I don't understand, she said.
--It's just a game, he said.
--I don't like it.
--You heard your mother, girls.
--That's not fair, one of them said.
There was silence. Then there was whispering, then giggling. Then they both shouted, We love you, mom, but you never let us do anything!
She looked out the car window. A big tree she'd seen all her life stood in the middle of a field, and she had a sudden image of a chainsaw firing up and dropping the tree with a crash into the ground. She'd love to have her finger on the trigger.