From Monday to Thursday last week I worked 40 hours. Did I mention there’s some sort of yuck going around my office that includes the stuffed up nose, the cough, and the sore throat? How about the fact that up until last Friday night I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in about a month (more on that later)?
As a consequence, I find myself jammed up, without enough time to do my homework and still keep to a blog entry a day for NaBloPoMo. So, while this may be cheating, it is today’s blog entry.
This week’s lesson in Fiction I dealt with description and prompted the usual debate about “showing vs. telling” that is endemic to all fiction classes. Our assignment:
Easy on the Modifiers
Pick one of these situations:A woman riding a crowded city bus
A soldier on night patrol in a war-torn village
A dog wandering through an alleyWrite a paragraph or so, focusing on bringing the scene to life through your descriptive powers. Though you may include interaction between characters, keep the focus on the setting.
Then, do a second draft, which is what you’ll turn in. Here’s the twist: You may no use more than three modifiers (adjectives or adverbs) in this draft. To stay descriptive without modifiers, you will have to be creative (similes, metaphors, etc.) and you will have to use strong nouns and verbs.
Since the prof didn’t specify what point of view we should use, I did mine two ways. I provide both for your reading pleasure.
I snuffle along the cobblestones making the turn into the alley. I try to ignore the smells from people, the grime and the sweat that clog my nose as I try to refind the scent that promised a night spent with at least a half full belly. I dodge the puddle slicked with grease and the remnants of people mating to hug the wall. There it is: chicken with an overlay of burn and vegetables. I hate vegetables but they’re better than a stomach that twists and turns bubbling with air and acid all night. A trash can like the kind that peals when the butcher over on meat row drops the bones in every third-day. I jump. The lid looks loose so I shove. The can rocks and I jump back. Shaking the puddle’s mess off my foot and run and shove again. Darting a look, I’m still alone. Where is it? Paper crinkles and I can smell the fat like the bird clucked in front of my face. Crust, burnt black around the edges and sauce and chunks of flesh my teeth have to rip. My stomach gurgles. Slow down, slow down or you’ll sick it back up. Licking the sauce off the vegetables first I then tongue them in. Now for the crust. Who cares if the cook blacked it in the hot box. A yell comes from a door. I snag the rest of the pie between my teeth and run from the human with the strange bumps on her head by the puddle and out of the alley.
The dog snuffled along the cobblestones nose skimming the ground. He zigs and zags, sidestepping a puddle limned with oil and graced with a used condom. As he hugs the wall the spears of his ribs jut against matted fur. He stops sniffing around the trash barrel. He jumps, all four paws off the ground, and then shoves the can with his shoulder. It rocks and he darts back dipping his foot is the scum coating the puddle’s surface. He shakes his hind leg and darts a glance around the alley. When the can doesn’t tip he runs at it again. Clanging on the cobblestones the lid bounces and the dog clamors into the refuse that spills from the can’s mouth. Papers fly as he scrabbles and digs nails scraping against the stones and the inside of the can. He grunts and gobbles whatever he finds his head so deep in the can he doesn’t notice the light slicing through the darkness in the alley. Curlers in her hair and moisturizer smeared on her face the lady screams. The dog grabs the potpie and runs darting out of the alley and around the corner.
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