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Assignment #6 – McCullers 3rd Person – Noble K. Thomas
Preamble: Recall an event from my life when the world really seemed changed afterwards. Then create a Third Person PN who has great sympathy for the changed character and is passionate about the character’s emotional and mental states. Use accurate and colorful language and stay with the character not telling us anything the character does not know. Keep the tone matter-of-fact, elegant but not showy, colored by the character’s emotion but not out of control. The mood is uneasy.
4/19/11 NOTE: Wrote this in the Fall of 2008 as an excercise for the Writer's Studio.
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It was the one day different from all the other days he had ever known. It began as an April morning like any other, the day after his birthday, warm and breezy. After a quick yoga routine he had taken a shower where he typically loosely plotted the rest of his day and that was when it happened. He could hear it, despite the steady hiss from the shower spout and the sheer distance between here and there. Something had happened that wasn’t natural, that wasn’t normal.
With a towel draped around him he turned on the television expecting to see a live news report of a plane crash. It had been that loud, that disturbing. Already news helicopters hovered above the scene with their reporters aroused and confused. Just what the hell had happened? Did a gas line break and somehow erupt?
A short while later he drove south down the Broadway Extension and there were a few cars that whipped around him and sped off towards the faraway downtown, towards a wounded skyline that fashioned a fresh halo, but now bent, flattened and dissipating to the west. He couldn’t help but wonder about those poor souls speeding past – were they husbands, fathers, sons who had forgotten to thank their mothers for buttering their toast just a few hours earlier?
He listened to a song on a new CD.
“Water water everywhere and not a place to stand,
My foundation rests on bedrock but the bedrock rests on shifting sand.”
Suddenly a pick-up truck came from out of nowhere, lights on and horn honking, and it was amazing how quickly that vehicle just disappeared in front of him. He looked down at his own speedometer: seventy miles per hour and compared to that guy he was nothing but a concrete-sucking snail. The overwhelming sense of desperation was contagious and, although not truly shared, he sure felt something turning in the pit of his stomach. He loosened his tight grip on the steering wheel and turned off the music. Tuned the radio to a local news talk station where the details, although still sketchy, were starting to come together.
He was meeting his father for lunch but they would eat no lunch this day. Instead they drove together toward the downtown, toward the location of the building that had crumbled to earth, women and men and children inside. Out of a morbid curiosity or a need to pay respect they drove. Or maybe they just couldn’t believe it until they saw it with their very own eyes. They found a place to pull over a couple of miles north and west of it, at an angle where the view that sliced through a gaggle of trees and homes was surprisingly good.
“It looks like some kind of giant monster took a huge bite out of it.” The smoke had all blown away now and the silence was affronting.
“Yep – a couple of bites out of it. God – I can’t believe it.”
All of a sudden it felt like a great sin to be just sitting there, gawking at it, wondering and speculating. Human beings had been crushed right over there, really just beyond the tip of your nose, a mere hop – skip – and a jump away, inside a building that just last night he had driven past while on the way home from a birthday celebration in Bricktown. Jesus Christ. People might be suffering in there right now while he simply sat and gawked. People at the bottom of the pile, a sudden pressing midnight, as airless as the surface of the moon.
Just right over there – just beyond the tip of your nose.
“Let’s get out of here.”
They slowly drove away and spoke not a word. The radio was still on, more details coming in, apparently an explosion outside the building a little after nine. A child’s care center was located on the first floor. His teeth clenched and a breath caught in the musty cavern of his dry throat.
He dropped his dad off and headed back up the Broadway Extension, dark springtime clouds gathering above, all cars now with their headlights on creating some kind of solemn citywide funeral procession. His sons would be coming home from school soon and what did they know? What should he tell them?
That night it rained and rained.
Preamble: Recall an event from my life when the world really seemed changed afterwards. Then create a Third Person PN who has great sympathy for the changed character and is passionate about the character’s emotional and mental states. Use accurate and colorful language and stay with the character not telling us anything the character does not know. Keep the tone matter-of-fact, elegant but not showy, colored by the character’s emotion but not out of control. The mood is uneasy.
4/19/11 NOTE: Wrote this in the Fall of 2008 as an excercise for the Writer's Studio.
--------------------------------------------------------------
It was the one day different from all the other days he had ever known. It began as an April morning like any other, the day after his birthday, warm and breezy. After a quick yoga routine he had taken a shower where he typically loosely plotted the rest of his day and that was when it happened. He could hear it, despite the steady hiss from the shower spout and the sheer distance between here and there. Something had happened that wasn’t natural, that wasn’t normal.
With a towel draped around him he turned on the television expecting to see a live news report of a plane crash. It had been that loud, that disturbing. Already news helicopters hovered above the scene with their reporters aroused and confused. Just what the hell had happened? Did a gas line break and somehow erupt?
A short while later he drove south down the Broadway Extension and there were a few cars that whipped around him and sped off towards the faraway downtown, towards a wounded skyline that fashioned a fresh halo, but now bent, flattened and dissipating to the west. He couldn’t help but wonder about those poor souls speeding past – were they husbands, fathers, sons who had forgotten to thank their mothers for buttering their toast just a few hours earlier?
He listened to a song on a new CD.
“Water water everywhere and not a place to stand,
My foundation rests on bedrock but the bedrock rests on shifting sand.”
Suddenly a pick-up truck came from out of nowhere, lights on and horn honking, and it was amazing how quickly that vehicle just disappeared in front of him. He looked down at his own speedometer: seventy miles per hour and compared to that guy he was nothing but a concrete-sucking snail. The overwhelming sense of desperation was contagious and, although not truly shared, he sure felt something turning in the pit of his stomach. He loosened his tight grip on the steering wheel and turned off the music. Tuned the radio to a local news talk station where the details, although still sketchy, were starting to come together.
He was meeting his father for lunch but they would eat no lunch this day. Instead they drove together toward the downtown, toward the location of the building that had crumbled to earth, women and men and children inside. Out of a morbid curiosity or a need to pay respect they drove. Or maybe they just couldn’t believe it until they saw it with their very own eyes. They found a place to pull over a couple of miles north and west of it, at an angle where the view that sliced through a gaggle of trees and homes was surprisingly good.
“It looks like some kind of giant monster took a huge bite out of it.” The smoke had all blown away now and the silence was affronting.
“Yep – a couple of bites out of it. God – I can’t believe it.”
All of a sudden it felt like a great sin to be just sitting there, gawking at it, wondering and speculating. Human beings had been crushed right over there, really just beyond the tip of your nose, a mere hop – skip – and a jump away, inside a building that just last night he had driven past while on the way home from a birthday celebration in Bricktown. Jesus Christ. People might be suffering in there right now while he simply sat and gawked. People at the bottom of the pile, a sudden pressing midnight, as airless as the surface of the moon.
Just right over there – just beyond the tip of your nose.
“Let’s get out of here.”
They slowly drove away and spoke not a word. The radio was still on, more details coming in, apparently an explosion outside the building a little after nine. A child’s care center was located on the first floor. His teeth clenched and a breath caught in the musty cavern of his dry throat.
He dropped his dad off and headed back up the Broadway Extension, dark springtime clouds gathering above, all cars now with their headlights on creating some kind of solemn citywide funeral procession. His sons would be coming home from school soon and what did they know? What should he tell them?
That night it rained and rained.
