writing and dick taylor
Sep. 4th, 2002 12:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321More writing aerobics.
2) Take a simple event: A man gets off a bus, trips, looks around in embarrassment, and sees a woman smiling. Describe this event, using the same characters and elements of setting, in five completely different ways (changes of style, tone, sentence structure, voice, psychic distance, etc.). Make sure the styles are radically different; otherwise, the exercise is wasted.
1) It happened so suddenly that he didn't have time to reflect. His ankle twisted against something. Before he knew it, he was stumbling, tripping, falling. No, not quite falling, catching himself just in time. Steadying himself on shaky feet, in his ears the roar of the bus departing behind him. For a moment, the world had come loose from its moorings. The tiles on the footpath teetered fuzzily. He looked around, wondering whether anyone else had seen.
There was a woman a short way off. He hadn't noticed her at first but she'd noticed him. She was smiling. Smiling at him.
Or was she smiling at something else? Had she been smiling all along, and all that had happened was that he had stumbled, tripped, fallen into her smile?
-----
2) Once upon a time there was a woman. She was a nice woman, with nice eyes and a nice voice and kind hands. But this woman had a dark heart. Her dark heart was not visible on the outside. Only very rarely did it show through in the woman's smile. Noone knew, though, for the woman never smiled. She smiled only when she was alone, when she was alone in front of a mirror. Only then did she bare her teeth and pour all her darkness into the world.
One fine evening, this woman waited at a bus stop. She had been waiting there for many hours. She had been waiting for a very special friend of hers. But the friend hadn't arrived. Each time the woman saw a bus approach from around the corner at the far end of the street, she rose up on tiptoe and strained to see into the windows. She was disappointed every time. The bus always stopped, people got out, men, women, children, but her special friend was never among them.
At last, hope died in the nice woman's face. She stamped her feet and hugged her elbows. She turned to go. Just then, there was the rumble of an engine, and the woman stayed to wait for the very last bus of the evening.
The very last bus arrived. The doors opened. A man got out. He was not her very special friend. He was just some man. He jumped off the bus, clutching a black briefcase, and just as he got to the kerb near where the woman was standing, he tripped. The woman heard his feet scrabble for purchase on the pavement, then she saw him look up and look around in embarrassment.
The woman looked at the man's face. It was a nice face. The man had nice hair and kind eyes and a lovely pointed nose. He smiled apologetically, as if to say, 'Aren't I a clumsy klutz?'
It was then that the woman saw the darkness in his smile. The darkness was pouring out, all pouring out into the street. Without thinking, she opened her own mouth and smiled back.
-----
3) It is Tuesday, the third of September, 18:45 precisely. The automatic doors of the regulation municipal bus hiss open to reveal an anxious-looking man in a raincoat. He is about 180 cm in height, aged between 35 and 40, has sallow skin, brown hair speckled with grey and a sharp nose. He glances at the Swatch on his left wrist, mutters something inaudible and hops off the bus. His left foot hits the kerb at a 30-degree angle. The stone which has been loose in its socket ever since a nine-year-old boy kicked at it for a persistent 35 minutes on a Sunday afternoon in mid-August, gives under the sudden onslaught of human weight, and rolls out into the street. The man stumbles. His Swatched arm is flung sideways, his briefcase drops onto the asphalt, his right palm hits the kerb.
It is 18:46 precisely. The man with the raincoat picks up his case and straightens up. He shakes his right hand. He brushes his raincoat. He looks around with a hang-dog expression on his long face. Next to the lamp post, two meters to the man's left, stands a woman who's wearing clothes that are too young for her age. The man looks away and glances up again. The woman is smiling. In the corner of her mouth, there is the glint of a gold-capped tooth.
It is 18:47 precisely. The automatic doors of the bus hiss shut. The kerb stone is brushed aside by its large flat-profiled tyres. The man in the raincoat looks at his watch again. The woman is still smiling.
-----
4) Late again. Shit. This is not good. Not good at all. What am I going to tell her? Bloody Maria. Always the bloody same. Bus is late, bus gets stuck in traffic jam, bus driver chats to his mate down at the depot. And this final jolt always gets to me. This jolt that buses make before they grind to a halt. I bet bus drivers do it on purpose. They enjoy seeing their passengers fall all over each other. Old-age pensioners, kids, tired businessmen with their briefcases -- bus drivers get a kick out of seeing all of us tumbele about in the aisle like peas in a pod. That's why they wham on the brakes so suddenly before they get to a bus stop. And then they always wait just that tiny bit before opening the bloody doors. Come on, matey, open up, some of us have got stuff to do!
Finally. The door opens. Shit. Is this even my stop? Did I press the button too early? What's the time? Stupid watch, stopped again. No wonder I'm always late, cheap Swiss crap. Okay, okay, let's just get out of here. One small step for man --
Fucking hell. What was that? Was there an earthquake? One minute I'm getting off the bus, the next minute I'm floundering all over the roadside, waving my hands in the air, slipping and sliding like a bloody spinning top. Briefcase in mud. Hands scuffed. Palm full of grit and shit. Scratches, too. Great, just great. Just what I needed. Comes from bloody well always having to hurry. What a sight. Man with coat and briefcase falls off bus in haste, lands in shit. Did anyone see?
Who's that smirking? What are you looking at, you smarmy old bint? Hasn't she got anything better to do than laugh at some sad sod on his way home from work?
Hang on, don't I know her from somewhere?
-----
5) When autumn was as yet no more than a briskness in the air and the evening's light still mellow upon the paving stones of Featherworth Street, there shuddered to a halt in front of the graffiti-riddled bus shelter at the corner of Chiswick and Wenham, the 6.35 to Portland Station. It left a trail of grey monoxide clouds in its wake. The driver, a pasty-faced but jovial man, peered past the fuzzy dice dangling from above his dashboard and, with a practised flick of his wrist, pressed the button to release the doors.
Out stepped Mr Taylor, doyen of digitalisation and darling of New Zealand special-effects film teams.
"Have a good evening, Dick," said the bus driver and grinned. He knew Mr Taylor as well as any bus driver knows his regular passengers; indeed, he never tired of bragging to his colleagues after they knocked off from their shift and went down the pub for a pint or two about how he was on first-name terms with the famous Mr Taylor. It raised his status no end with his mates.
"Evening, Jim," said Mr Taylor and lifted a hand in a cursory wave.
A woman in a red coat, one of the small crowd that always seems to accumulate around bus stops during the rush hours, turned her head at the exchange of greetings. A hand flew to her mouth. She stepped back into the shadows of the bus shelter but didn't take the hand from her face.
Meanwhile, Mr Taylor, adjusting his coat and flexing his fingers around the leather strap of his businessman's briefcase, leaped in one fluid arc from the bus towards the kerb. There, his arc was interrupted. His foot was caught against something. He swayed uncertainly for a few moments, then stumbled forwards.
"You all right?" a voice asked from among the shuffling crowd.
"Yes, yes, thank you," came the slightly breathless reply. Mr Taylor adjusted his glasses. He picked up his briefcase from where it had fallen and stepped onto the footpath. As one does on such occasions, he looked about himself to check whether people had stared at his misfortune. His gaze alighted on the woman with the red coat.
"Good Lord," he muttered.
The woman flashed a bright smile at him.
----
This was harder than I expected. And I don't think I got it right. These texts aren't all that radically different from each other in terms of style. Still, limbered the old muscles and will forge on tomorrow.
Pleasant side effect as a result of DVD "featurette"-watching and mad chats with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
viva_gloria, demelzagirl and lazulus: My lust for Richard Taylor, WETA-man and slashy-as-anything New Zealand dag, is growing by the minute! Heh, perhaps a bit of gratuitous "Duck-fucking" will help me to get out of this writing crisis I'm stuck in.
2) Take a simple event: A man gets off a bus, trips, looks around in embarrassment, and sees a woman smiling. Describe this event, using the same characters and elements of setting, in five completely different ways (changes of style, tone, sentence structure, voice, psychic distance, etc.). Make sure the styles are radically different; otherwise, the exercise is wasted.
1) It happened so suddenly that he didn't have time to reflect. His ankle twisted against something. Before he knew it, he was stumbling, tripping, falling. No, not quite falling, catching himself just in time. Steadying himself on shaky feet, in his ears the roar of the bus departing behind him. For a moment, the world had come loose from its moorings. The tiles on the footpath teetered fuzzily. He looked around, wondering whether anyone else had seen.
There was a woman a short way off. He hadn't noticed her at first but she'd noticed him. She was smiling. Smiling at him.
Or was she smiling at something else? Had she been smiling all along, and all that had happened was that he had stumbled, tripped, fallen into her smile?
-----
2) Once upon a time there was a woman. She was a nice woman, with nice eyes and a nice voice and kind hands. But this woman had a dark heart. Her dark heart was not visible on the outside. Only very rarely did it show through in the woman's smile. Noone knew, though, for the woman never smiled. She smiled only when she was alone, when she was alone in front of a mirror. Only then did she bare her teeth and pour all her darkness into the world.
One fine evening, this woman waited at a bus stop. She had been waiting there for many hours. She had been waiting for a very special friend of hers. But the friend hadn't arrived. Each time the woman saw a bus approach from around the corner at the far end of the street, she rose up on tiptoe and strained to see into the windows. She was disappointed every time. The bus always stopped, people got out, men, women, children, but her special friend was never among them.
At last, hope died in the nice woman's face. She stamped her feet and hugged her elbows. She turned to go. Just then, there was the rumble of an engine, and the woman stayed to wait for the very last bus of the evening.
The very last bus arrived. The doors opened. A man got out. He was not her very special friend. He was just some man. He jumped off the bus, clutching a black briefcase, and just as he got to the kerb near where the woman was standing, he tripped. The woman heard his feet scrabble for purchase on the pavement, then she saw him look up and look around in embarrassment.
The woman looked at the man's face. It was a nice face. The man had nice hair and kind eyes and a lovely pointed nose. He smiled apologetically, as if to say, 'Aren't I a clumsy klutz?'
It was then that the woman saw the darkness in his smile. The darkness was pouring out, all pouring out into the street. Without thinking, she opened her own mouth and smiled back.
-----
3) It is Tuesday, the third of September, 18:45 precisely. The automatic doors of the regulation municipal bus hiss open to reveal an anxious-looking man in a raincoat. He is about 180 cm in height, aged between 35 and 40, has sallow skin, brown hair speckled with grey and a sharp nose. He glances at the Swatch on his left wrist, mutters something inaudible and hops off the bus. His left foot hits the kerb at a 30-degree angle. The stone which has been loose in its socket ever since a nine-year-old boy kicked at it for a persistent 35 minutes on a Sunday afternoon in mid-August, gives under the sudden onslaught of human weight, and rolls out into the street. The man stumbles. His Swatched arm is flung sideways, his briefcase drops onto the asphalt, his right palm hits the kerb.
It is 18:46 precisely. The man with the raincoat picks up his case and straightens up. He shakes his right hand. He brushes his raincoat. He looks around with a hang-dog expression on his long face. Next to the lamp post, two meters to the man's left, stands a woman who's wearing clothes that are too young for her age. The man looks away and glances up again. The woman is smiling. In the corner of her mouth, there is the glint of a gold-capped tooth.
It is 18:47 precisely. The automatic doors of the bus hiss shut. The kerb stone is brushed aside by its large flat-profiled tyres. The man in the raincoat looks at his watch again. The woman is still smiling.
-----
4) Late again. Shit. This is not good. Not good at all. What am I going to tell her? Bloody Maria. Always the bloody same. Bus is late, bus gets stuck in traffic jam, bus driver chats to his mate down at the depot. And this final jolt always gets to me. This jolt that buses make before they grind to a halt. I bet bus drivers do it on purpose. They enjoy seeing their passengers fall all over each other. Old-age pensioners, kids, tired businessmen with their briefcases -- bus drivers get a kick out of seeing all of us tumbele about in the aisle like peas in a pod. That's why they wham on the brakes so suddenly before they get to a bus stop. And then they always wait just that tiny bit before opening the bloody doors. Come on, matey, open up, some of us have got stuff to do!
Finally. The door opens. Shit. Is this even my stop? Did I press the button too early? What's the time? Stupid watch, stopped again. No wonder I'm always late, cheap Swiss crap. Okay, okay, let's just get out of here. One small step for man --
Fucking hell. What was that? Was there an earthquake? One minute I'm getting off the bus, the next minute I'm floundering all over the roadside, waving my hands in the air, slipping and sliding like a bloody spinning top. Briefcase in mud. Hands scuffed. Palm full of grit and shit. Scratches, too. Great, just great. Just what I needed. Comes from bloody well always having to hurry. What a sight. Man with coat and briefcase falls off bus in haste, lands in shit. Did anyone see?
Who's that smirking? What are you looking at, you smarmy old bint? Hasn't she got anything better to do than laugh at some sad sod on his way home from work?
Hang on, don't I know her from somewhere?
-----
5) When autumn was as yet no more than a briskness in the air and the evening's light still mellow upon the paving stones of Featherworth Street, there shuddered to a halt in front of the graffiti-riddled bus shelter at the corner of Chiswick and Wenham, the 6.35 to Portland Station. It left a trail of grey monoxide clouds in its wake. The driver, a pasty-faced but jovial man, peered past the fuzzy dice dangling from above his dashboard and, with a practised flick of his wrist, pressed the button to release the doors.
Out stepped Mr Taylor, doyen of digitalisation and darling of New Zealand special-effects film teams.
"Have a good evening, Dick," said the bus driver and grinned. He knew Mr Taylor as well as any bus driver knows his regular passengers; indeed, he never tired of bragging to his colleagues after they knocked off from their shift and went down the pub for a pint or two about how he was on first-name terms with the famous Mr Taylor. It raised his status no end with his mates.
"Evening, Jim," said Mr Taylor and lifted a hand in a cursory wave.
A woman in a red coat, one of the small crowd that always seems to accumulate around bus stops during the rush hours, turned her head at the exchange of greetings. A hand flew to her mouth. She stepped back into the shadows of the bus shelter but didn't take the hand from her face.
Meanwhile, Mr Taylor, adjusting his coat and flexing his fingers around the leather strap of his businessman's briefcase, leaped in one fluid arc from the bus towards the kerb. There, his arc was interrupted. His foot was caught against something. He swayed uncertainly for a few moments, then stumbled forwards.
"You all right?" a voice asked from among the shuffling crowd.
"Yes, yes, thank you," came the slightly breathless reply. Mr Taylor adjusted his glasses. He picked up his briefcase from where it had fallen and stepped onto the footpath. As one does on such occasions, he looked about himself to check whether people had stared at his misfortune. His gaze alighted on the woman with the red coat.
"Good Lord," he muttered.
The woman flashed a bright smile at him.
----
This was harder than I expected. And I don't think I got it right. These texts aren't all that radically different from each other in terms of style. Still, limbered the old muscles and will forge on tomorrow.
Pleasant side effect as a result of DVD "featurette"-watching and mad chats with
viva_gloria, demelzagirl and lazulus: My lust for Richard Taylor, WETA-man and slashy-as-anything New Zealand dag, is growing by the minute! Heh, perhaps a bit of gratuitous "Duck-fucking" will help me to get out of this writing crisis I'm stuck in.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2002-09-04 03:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2002-09-04 04:02 am (UTC)...It seems to me that it would be possible to carry out this exercise simply in terms of pastiching other styles. I don't think you have: but there is something about one of them that could almost be a pastiche of some list-fic, though better-constructed than the majority ... (no. It's a compliment! Don't tear your hair out!)