It’s a Field Trip! WE Interactive Writing Project – Week 3

We worked on physical description the first week – giving our characters names, appearances, families, and surroundings. Last week’s games and exercises were designed to help us separate our characters from ourselves so we could observe their personalities and watch them interact with others. Now that we can identify each character in a crowd and know what they think of us and how they respond to others, it’s time to explore their emotions and psychology and find out how they became the people they are and why they act the way they do.

The goal of this game is to step into their skin and live through them instead of making up stories about them. Think their thoughts instead of our own, feel their urges, carry their subconscious, hold their dreams and fears, and allow their stories to flow, unfiltered, through us.

Since a number of characters have shown they are anxious to get out of their homes and on with stories, I postponed background and planned a field trip this week. I also outlined some game rules and did some housekeeping.

As readers, we learn the most about a character’s psyche in the reflective scenes that follow action. Our characters will visit Wonderland in the Alley, a scene I visited by invitation. I challenge our characters to find a more creative entrance. They may take the role of an unidentified person in the room, add themselves to the characters who are already there, or drop through the ceiling.

I chose a scene with very little action so our characters will have to be introspective. Next time out, we’ll visit an action scene written by one of you, specifically for our characters. (Consider writing or finding that scene a bonus challenge.)

GAME RULES - for this week and for all future exercises

1) Whether writing in first or third person, write only from your character’s point of view (POV). Your character knows only what is in his/her/its head and cannot speak for another character, cannot change anything about another character, and cannot alter the profile of any other character. The only ways your character can change a scene is by acting in that scene, or observing that scene.

Examples:

• Your character cannot give Sabrina an inch of dark hair on her upper lip, no matter how much your character hates Sabrina and would like to do this. That would be altering the way I have written my character--who should remain exactly as I have written her--and I might want to come after yours with the razor after I cleaned up Sabrina’s lip.
• Your character (maybe she is a nosy woman with binoculars or a jealous type who just wants to cause trouble) can report Sabrina to CPS. This would be your character acting outside Sabrina’s profile or personal story. Sabrina may react – or not. Your character can hope CPS will show up and take Faith, Hope, and Charity from her, and your character can talk about her to the other characters. But your character cannot make CPS show up at her door and remove her children because that would affect my ability to control my character’s story or destiny.
• Your character cannot go into Wonderland in the Alley and replace the rocking chairs with futons, unless s/he buys the wonderland. That would require my permission, since I own the character who owns the wonderland.
• Your character can hate the rocking chairs and everything else in the room and redesign it in his/her mind. When you write about the field trip, your character can disagree with everything I said about the wonderland and the people in it. This is your character’s perspective or opinion, and it changes nothing about my character or my scene.
• You must have permission to move any character that does not belong to you. If you want to move Sabrina from the ballpark to your barbecue, you have to arrange that with me before writing it.
• Not even The Ferryman will kill another character without the owner’s permission.

If I haven’t covered something that concerns you, or if you have questions about any of these rules, please make suggestions and ask questions in the comment section.

HOUSEKEEPING

The Gather Writing Essential group is our home. I created the Wee WE Interactive Creative Writing Project group as our room in that home, so we will have a corner in which to store work that is specific to this project, separated from the rest. The walls aren’t painted and we don’t have furniture yet, but you are welcome to start moving your characters and exercises into their new home. (Nothing else in this group, please.)

I will continue to post weekly updates and exercises in the Writing Essential group on Tuesday. We should all continue to submit our posts to the Writing Essential group, as well as to Wee WE but we should use the conversation space in Wee WE for project related questions, suggestions, and brainstorming.

(If you create groups only for your character’s exercises, I will link to them from Wee WE. That will mean posting to three groups: Writing Essential, Wee WE, and your character’s group, but it will make your work easier for readers and other participants to find. If you do this, be sure to drop your group link in the Wee We chat area so I can link it.)

I do not encourage anyone to post a novel-in-progress in these (or any) public forums if you plan to do anything else with it later. The purpose of this project is to have fun with other writers while working on technique, developing characters, and playing with those characters in situations that they would not meet in your novel, and with other characters who would not appear in your novel.

When our characters are fully developed and we see which ones work well together, we can move on to writing scenes together, and to working on plots. There’s a chance we will end up with all of our characters in some scenes, but this should not be anyone’s novel-in-progress. Keep your plots and ideas private and write new scenes for this project because you might have a hard time selling your novel if you’ve already given it away here. Also, remember that the characters entered in this game belong to their creators, and you should not use them in your other work.

WEEK 3 GAMES AND EXERCISES

1. Match the character to his/her/its creator and info game.

Readers receive double points. The winner gets ten extra comment boxes at the bottom of this page. (Maybe Joy should bring prizes. I’m not so good at this.)

2. The person under/above me game

As you comment on group projects this week, see how many times you can remember something about the character the person above you created. After making your comment, add that fact at the end. For example, if you comment behind me you might say, "The person above me created Sabrina, who has three daughters." For extra fun, you can bait someone else with a “the character below me” comment and see if that person shows up next. Again, readers are invited to play this game for double points. See Joy for prizes.

3. The field trip – exercise.

Find some way get your character into Wonderland in the Alley and write that experience from your character’s point of view. The stakes go up now since we are writing this time, not our characters. Technique counts. Sabrina got away with misusing too and their but I can’t. I have to find another way to show who she is.

Post your stories to Writing Essential, Wee WE, and, if you create one, your character’s group.

Use the following tags: funtue3, fiction, creative writing

Wonderland in the Alley Sandy Knauer (I don’t expect anyone to visit my post. I’m linking because I cut a couple of introductory paragraphs. If you want background, it’s available to use. Otherwise, work from here.)

I knew the intersection well, even pictured the dry-cleaner on the corner when Alan gave directions, but in all the years of passing that location, I had never noticed a carriage house in the alley behind the cleaners. Brian trusted Alan's word, parked on a side street, and we walked in an eerie post-spat silence--sans the spat--toward the carriage house that seemed to have appeared from nowhere.

Feet still planted in the alley, Brian reached across the flat stoop to lift a horseshoe knocker and drop it against a metal plate on the door. His eyes settled on a row of trashcans under the windows. I looked past them to admire the symmetry of the chips in the painted brick, realized I saw them through my father's camera eye, and regretted the many times I had teased him about photographing nothing. I finally got it; nothing could be something.

When Alan opened the door, I stepped through the humble opening off the dreary alley and ended up in an amazing expanse of warmth and light, positive Alice must have felt the same when she found her wonderland. A forest of macramé-supported spider plants, wandering Jews, and ferns breathed life into the room, while reaching out to welcome us into this fine-wine-of-décor, aged-to-perfection carriage house.

Fires crackled in the double fireplace on the far wall. Reflections of the flames danced off glossy shutters that covered the ceiling-to-trash-can-level windows lining the outside walls, and left a glow on the wide-planked, worn, and bowed yet flawless floor. That night, I was content to sit cross-legged in my seat and appreciate the beauty of this used but obviously loved room. Years later, I would try to buy the carriage house so I could walk on the smooth floor with bare feet, and sit in front of the windows with the shutters opened and the sun shining in on me.

An assortment of rocking chairs, each sporting a unique set of quilted cushions, and most occupied by familiar faces, circled the heavy square table that took center stage in the room. Brian and I settled into rockers, his a porch model under a fern by the windows, and mine a bentwood with flowered cushions, close to the fire. Alan reminded everyone that he had food and drinks in the kitchen - an over-sized, copper nook on the far side of the door - and encouraged us to help ourselves before he curled into a white wicker rocker beside the stereo. No one moved.

Alan's reference to food brought his chili to the forefront of the comforting mix of aromas. Strangely, identifying them became more important than eating, drinking, talking, or looking to see what anyone else was doing. I wasn't sure their presence mattered, one way or the other. Burning wood, candles, and floor wax were easy. Fresh flowers surprised me. Until that moment, I hadn't noticed them on the square table. Nor had it occurred to me that there were no ashtrays or drinks on the table.

I scanned the rockers. On any other night, these same eight friends would be smoking, drinking, laughing, and doing most anything other than sitting in rocking chairs, staring into a fire and listening to Dan Fogelberg. They all looked as willingly paralyzed in making something of nothing as I was.

I don't know how long we sat in the magic of Alan's carriage house, or how he happened to have access to this place that was such a perfect reflection of him. Nobody discussed it, with him or with one another. At some point, the fire burned out, the sun came up, Dan stopped singing, and we returned to our lives - at least one of us forever grateful.

STATS:

We have 37 characters with over 4,000 views and nearly 2,000 comments on their profile posts.

25 characters played the list game for another 1,000+ views and 400 comments.

Our characters earned 1,700 views and 600 comments on the 40 letters they wrote.

Keep up the good -- uh, fun!