22 September 2010
Technique Exercise 1
Write the paragraph that would appear in a piece of fiction just before the discovery of a body. You might perhaps describe the character's approach to the body (s)he will find, or the location, or both. The purpose of this exercise is to develop the technique of at once attracting the reader toward the paragraph to follow, making her want to skip ahead, and holding her on this paragraph by virtue of its interest. Without the ability to write such foreplay paragraphs, one can never achieve real suspense.
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I have trouble following assignments, even my own. Here goes:
ReplyDeleteDaddy is running toward me, hobbling really. I watch from the screened porch, him coming up the drive. His mouth is puckered, his cheeks in a huff. His face gone scarlet. It’s all in slow motion: boots slipping through gravel, knees bobbing, arms pumping the air. A tremulous gait. He’s dog whipped, I can tell, winded and spent but moving with everything he's got. He’s running with his life.
Above, the noon sun is beaming white. Wind rustles the high branches though it’s flat down here. The scent of tea olive takes purchase in my nose. I feel warm and flushed and stuck to my seat. I am twelve years old, helpless.
Daddy is running, and then he’s not. He’s face down in the yard, one boot hooked over Mama’s red planter, the other kicked out to the side. He is a heap of jeans and shirt.
Later I remember the sound—a crack, sharp like a snapped limb—and the masked, burly man with hands the size of pickle jars, clutching a pistol. He had looked toward the porch, turned, and walked away, no hurry in his step.
When you stumble over a memory like that—a scene you have known and forgotten and remember again—there is a break at the core of you, as if you’ve solved a terrible problem, picked a rusted lock, until its facts come roost again, shaming all the knowledge you own.