The Personals

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting: Fri, 16 Aug 1996 09:44:15 EDT

short, and maybe sweet?

pick a number from one to six. yes, you may use a die if so inclined.

(did you pick a number yet? we're waiting...okay? got your number, right? let's go!)

1. "Come Home, Elvis! Your grandson needs the target practice! Call 555-9834 today."

2. "Young woman urgently needed to save world. Experience desirable, not necessary for the right person. Will train. Expenses not included. Will contact you using Gjallarhorn via Bifrost."

3. "Bodies Available. Off-the-rack or custom, we have what you need at the lowest rate. Come in and take one home today. See Peter Wilton Cushing at 1235 Homunculus Row."

4. "Redheads Needed for Photo Opportunity. Come in, we snap, and you leave $25 richer. The League, 221B Baker Street."

5. "The World Ended Yesterday. Why Are You Reading This? Respond to Police Box 378, TARDIS Type 40."

6. "Lost Pet Unicorn Found on 5th and Maple. Owner - please call 555-1379. Ask for Dab-Dab of Puddleby-on-the-Marsh."

In reading their friendly local newspaper this morning, one of your characters noticed this slightly unusual advertisement in the personals. They react...

(of course, if your character reads the news at lunch, sitting in an airport, or perhaps sandwiched between riders in the bowels of New York, that is your choice!)

Tell us about that recognition. You may start with the ad if you like, then show us the scene, with the coffee slowly being poured over the pancakes as they stare at the paper, or...

whatever happens in your story (poem, vignette, etc. at your election).

tell it now.

Sensual Experiments

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting: Sun, 11 Aug 1996 14:21:35 EDT

There are at least five major senses normally mentioned for people - sight, sound, touch/feeling, smell, taste. Those who look closely sometimes point out that balance, the feeling of motion from inside, and some other bits and pieces fit somewhere in the sensorium, but we'll skip lightly over those quibbles (and the questions about just how many tastes are really smells - sweet, sour, salt, bitter? Something like those four are all the physiologist will admit to our tongue, little reckoning the wonder of melting creamery butter on biscuits fresh from Grandma's oven, topped with a light dusting of flour and a heavy dollop of love.)

Let's start with a bit of introspection. Do you tend to focus on one sense more than another? Think about your writing - do you "see" what is going on or do you "hear" the song? Do you "feel it in your gut" or even smell or taste it? Think about which one you tend to use, then... pick one of the others listed below, and do something different!

1. sight - so you don't "see" things? Okay, here's your opportunity to write something that makes the (virtual) eyes of your readers light up. Take a picture or scene. Make it something that you can either look at while writing or very familiar to you. Now pretend that you are "painting" the scene with words. Sketch in the background - tell us about the colors, the forest in the distance, the mountains (in your mind? Thanks, Rqy!), whatever is in the back. Keep it simple and hazy, not too many details (that's why it's background). Then pick out the foci - perhaps that off-center figure, stooping over the koi pond, bent in the early evening gloom by the misunderstandings and love of friends? Or is it the dogs, a pair of beagles dancing and leaping, red tongues laughing in the corners of mouths, white tails wagging like metronomes set on high? Don't forget - highlights, shadows, details for foreground, and so on! Anyway, "draw" that picture on the "tabula rosa" of your reader's little mind.

[show me the way to go home...]

2. sound - how can mere written words ring with sound? Okay, your assignment is to take a musical piece - classical, modern, something that you know the rhythm and sound of - and start by singing (or playing) that piece in your mind. If it has words, carefully hum along - wipe those words out and get down to the rhythm and whine of it, okay? Dum-tata-dum-tata-dumdumdum - or whatever. Then put words to it.

What do you say,
where do you go,
I don't know but I think you do!

Take those words, pound them out, make them ring, make them shout!

(if that seems too simple, try this - write your scene or description, and make that echo the tunes and harmonies of your musical background.)

[it's late and I'm tired and I don't want to roam...]

3. Touch/Feeling - I'll include the wonders of self-movement here. As with other senses, let's focus on something. Pick a movement you know well (ballroom dancing? Okay. Walking against a strong wind? Why not! Or maybe the bedraggled sadness of walking, head-down, in a cold dripping rain? Ugh... Sexual friction? Sure.) Take that movement, and make the words bounce along, stroking cold and slippery along the puckering skin, grinding in the aching joints of the jogger, lancing into the skull where headaches explode. Whatever, make us feel what you are "showing" us!

[so show me the way to go home now...]

4 & 5. Taste/Smell - Pick a food/taste sensation that you really know well. Perhaps you want to tell us about the salty fat crunch of a deep-fried mushroom? Or what about the sweet smoothness of hot fudge, accented with peanuts, all over the cold creaminess of rich icecream? Take those tastes and smells, then layer the words in a cloying thickness that clogs the back our the reader's throat with joy.

[I had too much to drink,
and I can't stand my own stink,
so show me the way to go home now.]

A bit late, a bit strange, but maybe someone will find a word or two worth stretching their fingers over.

(extra point? Sure. Take a piece of your writing, and look at what kind of senses you have used. Did you leave something out? Work it in, make it part of the gestalt that puts the reader "in the think of things"!)

Short start?

"What a strange sensation," she said.

ave, plato, ave, ideals, ave, imagio?

no ave maria?