Writing Exercise #2: Story Form, Plot, and Structure
Revised due date: Monday, 12/18/2006, 11:00 p.m.
Here's an exercise from Janet Burroway's book Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft (Go), which was our textbook for the first writing class I took at UW:
Here's an exercise from Janet Burroway's book Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft (Go), which was our textbook for the first writing class I took at UW:
Write a scene in which a character is in a restaurant and, in going from the table to the restroom, passes his or her old love on a date with a new love.
posted by Lane at 7:37 PM
3 Comments:
As the waiter showed them us to their table, Tom said to his mother, "You go ahead and sit down. I just have to run to the restroom."
He wove his way between the closely spaced tables, and by the time he saw Arvin sitting there, it was too late to try a different route or to avoid detection.
"Hi Tom!" Arvin's voice sounded exuberant, but Tom detected a note of derision. No doubt Arvin was surprised to see how much weight Tom had put on in the last six months.
"Hi Arvin," said Tom.
This was the first time Tom had come back to Chanterelle's since he and Arvin were together. It was their place, and he'd avoided it religiously until now, with his mother visiting from back east. He just assumed Arvin would avoid it as well.
"Tom, this is my boyfriend Reynold. Reynold, this is Tom."
Reynold (Reynold?) stood up, towering nearly a foot above Tom's head, and offered his hand, which practically enveloped Tom's chubby little paw as they shook. "Nice meeting you, Tom."
"Nice meeting you," said Tom to Reynold's bulging pectorals.
"This is our four monthiversary," said Arvin as Reynold sat back down. "We're celebrating. Reynold's asked me to move in with him."
Tom's mind raced. How like Arvin to coin a word like "monthiversary." And four months? That would mean they started dating just three weeks and two days after Tom and Arvin's big breakup, in this very restaurant. While Tom was lying on the couch drowning his sorrows in Chunky Monkey, Arvin was playing Patroclus with this Achilles.
"How nice for you."
"Reynold's a cardiologist. We met in surgery. He said 'scalpel' and I just gave him my heart."
"Well lucky for you he's a cardiologist, so he'll know what to do with it," said Tom. Arvin laughed, but when he saw Tom's sneer, he stopped abruptly.
"Would you like to join us?" said Reynold.
"Thank you but I'm here with my... with a friend."
"Well we'll have to get together some time."
"Thanks for the offer, but I don't think so."
Arvin put his boy-hand on Reynold's and leaned in to speak in mock confidentiality. "I think Tom hasn't forgiven me for breaking up with him."
"Yeah, well I guess it's obvious what he's got to offer," Tom said to Arvin. "Big hands and all."
"Hey," said Arvin, "it's not my fault you weren't any good in bed."
"Yeah, well it's not my fault you were such a slut that you got all stretched out of shape."
"You always were a bitch," said Arvin. "Why don't you go."
"Fine. Nice meeting you, Reynold. Oh, and if I were you, I'd get tested. Often."
Tom made his way toward the restroom. Once inside, he locked himself in a stall, leaned back against the door, and wept.
They arrived at the eatery. Meph gave him the questioning glance with a slight forward lean, Anything else?
"Wait outside". Stin hadn't yet gotten used to Meph's new height. The hair, skin, shape, all these aspects of a person he'd come to know as fleeting, but he'd be damned if he could ever get used to Meph being taller than him. Height was always of primary importance to him. That and age of course.
Stin slid through the entry into a fading phenomenon, a public restaurant. How private and shameful eating had become for everyone. Everyone but his prey. Hunting, a subtle art he was either born with or learned through experience, blended together in a wash of shapes and sounds. Memory. A worthless concept.
At his table, he selected his favorite consumptive indulgence. If he had to eat in public, it was going to be delicious and terrible for his suit. Already he had begun cataloging all patrons within eyeshot.
It seemed his job was becoming increasingly difficult. How recently he had noticed this was hard to say. Centuries were becoming to him as vague as decades had just two hops ago. Already he would rate every patron in his area as ten to one, not a first rounder.
Could he take second rounders? Sure as shit. He'd earned that discretionary power with his last hop, but virgin suits, oh, weren't they a treat. More than their worth, was the joy of dispatching a mind that had never been separated from it's biological body. Weren't they just so surprised?
As he rose, forced to engage in another disgusting public practice: urinating, he located the signs, Men followed every so closely by Women, and wondered how many present noticed the humor in it. Maybe it took a gender hop to get it, that or a relationship with one so hopped. Seems that would suffice.
While continuing with his scan of the flock, he moved towards the restrooms. The place was noisy, rank, dimly lit, in all foul and he preferred not to be there. But hunt he must. The odds weren't getting any better as he scoped out a new portion of the space.
His eyes passed over a young female suit and he paused in eye and foot, head slightly cocked, confused by feelings of familiarity and blurry flashes of imagery. The name escaped him, the exact context as well, but he knew this suit.
Memories of a few hundred years may as well be a thousand for all the feelings of truth he could squeeze from them. Through all his pausing and gawking, their eyes met.
He didn't try and think, just stared and tried to relish the slowed down feeling of time. Blinks taking seconds. Sounds muffled and low-pitched. It was so rare that he remembered anything, he followed it like deja vu, eager but not insistent.
She threw him a polite smile then broke the connection, returning to her party. Time resumed it's typically rushed pace, details again drew back. He continued his scan of the area and his trip to the restroom simultaneously.
He entered and locked the pissroom, he was alone. Stin flipped a switch in his mind, and spoke aloud.
"Meph, fetch our private transport. I have one."
All I can say is, “Oh what a night.” Who sang that song anyway? The Eagles? Bachman Turner Overdrive? Who knows. Doesn’t matter anyway. Just another random, annoying song by some one-off 70’s band from childhood that I still somehow know all of the words to. Why does my mind retain “oh I, I got a funny feeling when she walked into the room…” but can’t remember the name of the movie I watched last night?
But really, this evening was CLASSIC. A classic fucking disaster. So I had a date with a complete and utter dud. Remember that game, Mystery Date? (Sorry, another throwback to the 70’s.) Is he a dream? (ah!) or is he a dud?(ugh.). It was a silly girlie board game and I forget the actual rules of play, but the best part was opening the white plastic door to reveal who your 2-dimensional mystery date was… would it be the GQ guy in the tux for the prom? The prepster swinging a tennis raquet? The ooh-la-la European-esque skier? The bottle-glasses-wearing “smart” nerd or the non-descript “bum”. Ironically, now that I think about these stereotypes transposed to our day and age, it is the “bum” that would now be the coolest – a veritable Gap or iPod poster child. Funny how generational ideals change over time.
Well, this guy tonight wasn’t just a dud, he was a dull, disgusting dufus. I cannot BELIEVE my friend Rhonda thought we would hit it off. What was she thinking? She touted him as a “sweet” guy who owned his own business and had all of his hair. Like those three things make a great catch. It turns out he isn’t so “sweet” (has 3 children from his first marriage that he refers to as “the runts”), the “business” he owns? Well, it’s one of those weird model train hobby shops in a shabby, run-down strip mall, you know, the kind that you wonder how in the hell it stays in business; and his hair? Sure, he has it all… but it’s scary. It’s Meatloaf scary. Greasy, stringy and gross. I mean, it’s the first date and first impressions and all that. One would think he’d at least comb it, nevertheless maybe wash it. Okay. I’m being harsh. He’s not that grotesque… but when he picked me up in his “classic” El Camino… well… just shoot me.
So one thing I would like to tell all women is when a man asks you where you’d like to go for dinner, don’t be all cute and coy and tell him “it doesn’t matter, you pick.” No. It does matter. Otherwise, you’ll end up like me at Applebee’s. Really. I mean, I don’t ask a lot, but it’s the first date, the first fucking date. Try and impress me a little please. Use a little creativity… a little romance. I don’t need to go anywhere fancy, but sheez. Anyway, so we sat there, eating our $12.99 lukewarm three-course meal deals and he’s going on and on, whining about how the Chinese take-out restaurant next door to his store is stealing business from him… yeah, I didn’t get it either.
So that’s when I decided to go to the bathroom. And that’s when I saw him. Him being Rob, my Rob, my ex-boyfriend Rob, the love-of-my-life Rob. I didn’t know what to do to tell you the truth. I guess my 5-second pause to run through the various options (1: keep walking, pretending not to see him; 2: approach the table confidently, ever-so casually and say “what a surprise to see you here”; 3: approach the table confidently, ever-so casually and slap him; 4: just stand there peeing in my pants; 5: turn around and run like hell) didn’t help my situation as, within that same 5-second interval, the bimbo he was cuddling with in the booth noticed me staring, nudged him and pointed in my direction. Great. So my options were then reduced to #2 , #3 and #4. It didn’t matter as he didn’t allow me any of those options. He immediately stood up, awkwardly hugged me and gave me one of those once adorable, but now suspiciously disparaging double European cheek kisses, and then grabbed my shoulders, and held me at arms-length looking me over like an artist studying his unfinished work, speculating on what needed to be augmented, and then said, “Kate, how the hell are you? You look great. You haven’t changed at all over the years.” I guess some women would take that as a compliment… that in 7 years, you hadn’t noticeably aged. But the truth is, he was right. I hadn’t changed in 7 years. I still missed him, still thought of him (yes) daily, still stupidly loved him, and still googled his name after drinking too much. I don’t really know what happened during the next 5 minutes. I know he introduced me to the blonde tart as his wife, and I think we chatted a bit about our jobs and somewhere in the thick emotionally-charged fog, I think he even asked me if I ever finally finished that screenplay.
Anyway, after the second longest 5 minutes in my life, I managed to find my way to the bathroom, after first sleep-walking into the kitchen and then the wrong exit door where the cold air and oozing dumpster-stench snapped me out of my trance. And in the bathroom stall, squatting over the toilet with my skirt down, I sat there for a good long while, half naked, looking down at the crotch of my panties, scouring over the imprints of the 4 years Rob and I spent together. And ironically, after being so intimate with him, so in love with him, I realized I couldn’t remember some of the most trivial aspects of our lives: what color his eyes were, his favorite beer or even his middle name. But I do remember two things: the last words he said to me before I got into my car, with the U-haul latched behind it: “you should wait for someone who loves you” - and the words to the first song we danced to – New Order’s Temptation: “And I never met anyone like you before.”
So I gathered myself up, hovered in front of the bathroom mirror for a minute, nervously lacing my lips with some lipstick, and then walked back to Lewis, who was licking the remains of the apple pie à la mode off his plate.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home