A363 TMA 05

A363 TMA 05

Tutor-Marked Assignment

• Task 1: Write a 1500-word piece of fiction or life writing, or 2-7 poems totalling 80-100 lines.
• Task 2: Write a 750-word "commentary" about the process, reflecting on form, structure, and style.
• Due date: 15 March 2012
• Mark: About 86% overall. Actual mark is temporarily unavailable on a dead hard drive!

I have no idea why the line spacing changes part of the way through the commentary after being pasted into Blogger! :-/

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 Option 1 – prose. Genre: Fiction

Title: The Three Prisoners

This story has been removed because it has now been published in the anthology Here's One I Made Earlier, available from Amazon here.

Commentary

The Three Prisoners is an extension of a true story described by a magistrate as ‘one of the most extraordinary cases that have ever been brought into a Court of Justice.’  In preparing to write it, one of the most important processes was the selective omission of details which, though arrestingly dramatic in reality, were so fantastic that they would probably have destroyed the reader’s suspension of disbelief. An additional benefit of making these omissions was that the fraudster’s crimes were not so extreme that they eclipsed the story I wanted to tell: That of three of his victims still feeling irrationally beholden to him.

Beyond the date of his conviction, the fraudster’s life is not well documented but I was not free to do as I pleased. For example, a German lady could not meet a German man from a British prison in 1917. (They would both be interned.) I therefore took a liberty with the dates, choosing December 1918 to keep the change as small as possible. This change had direct consequences for the narrative I had already written (e.g., the crowd in the Sawyer’s Arms had to find something other than the war to talk about.)

 My choice of form was no choice at all: I learned from A215 that the skill and time required for creating poetry are both far in excess of what I can supply.

My choices regarding structure and style were dictated by what I hope was logic. Firstly, since the story is intensely concerned with the perverted relationships between characters, I was keen to keep settings in the background. For this reason I deliberately avoided applying film technique to fiction, as described by Anderson (2009), to evoke settings. I did, however, mimic cinematic ‘cuts’ (Anderson, 2009) when transitioning the narrative viewpoints. I did this by establishing visual anchors (e.g., Anna’s red face, Joseph’s grin, etc) ahead of the cut and then referencing that anchor after the cut (and from the next viewpoint character’s perspective.)

Wanting a surprise ending I had to walk the tightrope between dropping in enough clues to make things fair and giving so much away that the effect was lost. My original synopsis had the travellers having a conversation into which I could insert exposition and backstories. However, I found I could not sustain this for seven or eight pages, even by ignoring my pet hate of supposedly ‘real’ people delivering narrative prose in dialogue. Therefore, I reluctantly chose to split the viewpoint between the travellers, knowing that, like flashbacks, defies the conventions of the short story form. Although my approach has an arguably positive aspect – in that ‘[unlike a movie] it probes the inner workings of the mind’ (Anderson, 2009) I am aware that it forces the story to rely rather too heavily upon the ‘telling’ of backstory which would, ideally, have been revealed better by ‘showing’.

As I already knew how I would go about ‘splicing the strands’ (Neale, 2009¹) in my final scene, the only structural issues still to be addressed were the order in which I would present those strands and how long each would be. My chief concern was maintaining the illusion that they were going to meet three different people, so I decided to separate the women’s sections by placing Joseph’s between them. I hoped to reduce the risk of the reader inferring that both women had married the same man. In order to play down the bigamy somewhat, I called the fraudster a ‘scoundrel’ in the section I heading, reserving the word ‘bigamist’ for section III. The strand lengths were influenced by my desire to avoid boring the reader. I reasoned that by the time the reader reached the third strand, the unfolding pattern would be evident, so I endeavoured to make each of the second and third strands shorter than its predecessor.

I found myself acting ‘as an impersonator, mimicking the various voices’ (Neale, 2009²) in the story by adjusting the language according to which viewpoint character I was writing for, while trying not to get too bogged down in dialect.

My last conscious style choice was made very late in the writing process: I decided to switch tenses, using the present tense to describe the viewpoint characters in the trains. I did this to reduce the danger of their past-tense reminiscences (flashbacks, in essence) being confusing to the reader. I also switched to the present tense for the final few paragraphs of action, but for a different reason: Dramatic immediacy.

[Word count: 750]

References

Anderson, L. (2009) ‘Film technique in fiction’, in D. Neale (ed) A Creative Writing Handbook, London: A & C Black
Neale, D. (2009¹) ‘Splicing the strands’, in D. Neale (ed) A Creative Writing Handbook, London: A & C Black
Neale, D. (2009²) ‘Voices in fiction’, in D. Neale (ed) A Creative Writing Handbook, London: A & C Black

A363 TMA 01

Tutor-Marked Assignment

• Task 1: Write a 1500-word story or a poem of 30-36 lines. (Optional prompts: the pool, brief encounter, the waiting room, throwing stones, under ground.)
• Task 2: Write a 350-word "commentary" about the process, describing how genre was chosen, research undertaken, and the editing/revision process.
• Due date: 3 November 2011
• Mark: 87% overall. Separate marks for the tasks are temporarily unavailable on a dead hard drive!

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Option 1 – prose. Genre: Fiction

Title: YOUR CARRIAGE AWAITS

We probably have less than two minutes before the door gives way. The bolt might once have deterred casual visitors, but jackboots and rifle butts are another matter. Now that we have stopped running the sweat in my shirt begins to cool at an alarming rate. I am shivering already. Another kick rattles the door, and a muffled shout follows.

I have already pushed the sounds of our pursuers from my mind as I turn to face my son. There is a table in the middle of the room and Isaac stands by it. He grips the nearest table leg in his tiny hands and gazes at the snow-covered debris which covers it. I lift his face and gently touch my lips to his forehead, wondering whether his trembling is caused by cold or fear. Another crash at the door makes us both jump. His voice is a whisper as he asks the worst possible question:

‘Are they going to kill us Papa?’

‘Of course not,’ I try to laugh it off but the sound is brittle, and it cracks. Trying to ignore the sounds of boots and diesel engines from the nearby streets, I swallow and try again:

‘They’ve been told by their officers to chase us for a while. Just to frighten us.’

‘I am frightened Papa.’

 ‘They’ll get bored soon. And they hate the cold.’

‘But Kurt says it’s warm here after Stalingrad.’

I smile, inwardly cursing Kurt’s easy humour. ‘Well, if he’s on duty tonight he’ll be in a hurry to get back to the barracks and his schnapps, so we won’t be here long my love.’

I tell myself that Isaac believes me, and look away, in case his face tells a different story. Standing, I let my gaze flit over the room. Apart from the table and the litter upon it, the only feature is a large rusted bread oven set at waist height in the rear wall. This place must have been a bakery. From the outside, with its boarded-up windows, it had looked like just another ghetto house, except that the roof was gone.  I raise my face, squinting into the pricking sleet. There is no ceiling; just a few snow-dusted timber stumps protruding from the brickwork. Beyond them, the wet and sagging wallpaper is of a different pattern. Apart from a toilet, clinging ludicrously to one wall, there is only the white sky to be seen. 

Another bang brings me back to earth. The wall in which the oven is set leans threateningly, its single door blocked by fallen masonry. The snow-covered floor is lumpy with fragments of plaster, but the bulk of the collapsed upper floor has presumably long since been scavenged for firewood. Seizing Isaac, I heft him bodily into the oven. He fills it halfway, but is already drawing his knees up to his chest to make more room as I clamber in. I somehow manage to fold myself into the tiny space, which still has the unmistakable smell of vanilla and almond. I reach out, grasp the iron door, remembering to cover my fingers with my shirt cuff, and pull. The hinge gives a single, sharp screech.

The shouting from the other side of the door stops. The banging becomes a soft knocking - almost polite. Then comes an urgent whisper:

‘Wpuść mnie. Proszę!’ Let me in. Please!

Incredibly, Isaac releases his hold on my arm and moves as if to obey. It’s all I can do not to whimper aloud as I catch him by the collar. “Don’t make sound!” I hiss.  Then the banging resumes with fresh intensity. In the darkness of the oven, Isaac’s eyes widen in his grimy face at the sound of splintering wood. The gloom lifts and I realise the oven door is swinging open. I lunge and just manage to arrest its progress with my fingertips. As if in response to my movement, the whole oven seems to slip downward by an inch or so, with a grate of shifting masonry. Instinctively I hunch my already cramped shoulders, ready for the wall to come crashing down. But it holds. I draw the oven door closed quietly, feeling slightly foolish; a collapsing wall can’t hurt us in here. It might even protect us. The sleet has been replaced by rain that pings against the oven door like gunfire, but my exposed fingers are too numb to feel it.

Suddenly it’s all over. Booted feet stumble into the room. The door is slammed shut again. There’s a second or two of exhausted breathing, followed by an exultant cry. The oven door is yanked open, its freezing metal stripping skin from my fingertips. I clutch Isaac and pull him tight to me, screwing my eyes shut.

Shouts from the street reach us. Orders barked in German. From closer comes another voice; two unexpected syllables so charged with fear that they squeak like the wheels of the approaching tanks:

“Isaac?”

I open my eyes to look at the newcomer.  The face is too filthy to identify, but I recognise those eyes. For a moment, still assuming him to be a soldier, I think it must be Kurt, the jaded S.S. Oberscharführer who occasionally pushed a half loaf into Isaac’s hand during the ghetto’s early months. Then the cracked lips part, revealing a gap where front teeth used to be. It’s Jacob Eckstein – ‘Luka Żyd’ my other students affectionately used to call him. He’s grown into a young man in the years since the school was closed, but his voice is tremulous.

‘They’re coming. Let me in!’

I almost laugh at the absurd request. ‘There’s no room.’

I reach for the oven door once more, but he uses his elbow to nudge it beyond my reach.

‘Please!’ Jacob steps toward the oven and actually tries to insert a bony shoulder between me and Isaac. Awkwardly, I unfold a leg, plant the flapping sole of my shoe on Jacob’s chest, and shove. Jacob clutches my ankle as he starts to topple backward. I slither from the oven, which rocks precariously, and we hit the floor together. Our eyes meet and we lie motionless for a moment. The noise of the rain is loud, but surely the soldiers have heard.

I roll over and start to stand, but suddenly the world jolts and I’m sprawling in the slush again. The ear Jacob kicked is too cold to feel pain; the second kick – this one to my ribs – is also painless, but winds me. My cheek is pressed against the wet floorboards and I can feel the thunder of boots in the house next door. I’m spitting out mud and ice as I use the table to pull myself to my feet. I notice for the first time that the object upon the table is the frozen corpse of a baby boy. Jacob is back at the oven, pulling at my boy’s foot. Everything else fades. The sounds of rain and stamping boots are still there but I do not hear them. The icy wetness spreading through my clothing might as well be warm bathwater. Two strides bring me to Jacob and I grab him by his shoulders and I hurl him behind me and I stoop to embrace my boy.

I’m climbing back into the oven when Jacob’s body hits me. I’m momentarily pinned to the wall, and there’s an ominous creak from above. Jacob is already climbing into the oven when two bricks fall. One hits his head. It’s a glancing blow, but he sags, his head in the oven, his legs limp. As Isaac stares at the bricks, the voice next door abruptly changes in tone, and we know the soldiers heard this time. Jacob stiffens, turns, and looks up at me with childlike helplessness. The young man has now gone entirely. As booted feet descend the stairs next door, I scoop him in my arms and push him into the oven with Isaac, who opens his mouth to question me.

‘Hush, my love. They’ll be gone soon.’ I see realisation on my baby’s face, and bewildered relief on Jacob’s as I add, ‘Don’t move till after dark.’

The soldiers are back in the street now. Without looking at the front door, I close the oven. I walk to the table. I turn and I run at the oven as hard as I can.

When the soldiers drag me from the pile of rubble on which they found me lying, I surreptitiously look for the oven. I am horrified to see its door is plainly visible under the lightest possible dusting of fallen plaster. The whole pathetically-contrived scene is simply too fresh; the broken surfaces of the bricks are too clean; there is not enough icy filth. But as I am bundled into the back of a truck, the jaded Oberscharführer is already ordering his squad to the next street. And it won’t be dark for at least an hour.

[Word count: 1495]

Commentary

Without any game plan, I composed an opening sentence intended to convey tension and intrigue the reader. Only with that done did I know the setting and genre, and begin research. As predicted by Greenwell (2009, p.34) most of my notes went unused. (Or unwritten; I know the story’s exact date¹ but do not share it with the reader.) The remainder were used only subtly². As advised by Greenwell (2009, p.34) I did not resist being led off at tangents during my research. One tangent led me to an anecdote – which I adapted - concerning a soldier who survived an explosion by sheltering in an oven. (Cornwell, 1981.)

I found myself writing with a fairly formal voice, which, with Neale (2009, p.8) influenced my decision to make the narrator a teacher. A first-person narrator is likely to be taken as trustworthy by default, so, apart from showing his efforts to comfort Jacob, I did not go to great lengths to present him as ‘decent and trustworthy.’ (See Neale, 2009, p.20). To make Jacob seem realistic before gaining the sympathy of the narrator and reader, I adapted Activity 2.8 (Greenwell, 2009) and wrote an account of the story through his eyes. This gave me his ridiculous attempt to cram himself into the oven with the other two characters. There is little dialogue in the story, but on the advice of Greenwell (2009 p.23) I did try to contrast Jacob’s speech with the narrator’s attempts to speak reassuringly.

When writing the story I was aware that I could not keep the reader continuously excited. As suggested by Greenwell (2009, p.26) I varied the pace by allowing the narrator to periodically distract himself; his defence mechanism gives the reader a pause before the next piece of action, as well as the writer an opportunity to slip in bits of description.

 I originally meant to name only Isaac, to help focus the reader on his plight, but ended up naming Jacob for the same reason. Kurt, whilst a ‘good guy’ was named purely for mechanical reasons, allowing the narrator to credibly describe his kindness. When he actually appears he is only identified only by the reprise of the adjective ‘jaded.’

[Word count: 366]

Footnotes

1. Friday 19 February 1943
2. The smells in the oven come from a particular type of Polish seed cake.)

References

Cornwell, B. (1981) Sharpe’s Gold, London: Collins
Greenwell, B. (2009) ‘Conflict and contrast’, in D. Neale (ed) A Creative Writing Handbook, London: A & C Black
 Neale, D. (2009) ‘Playing with genre’, in D. Neale (ed) A Creative Writing Handbook, London: A & C Black

A215 TMA 02

Tutor-Marked Assignment

• Task 1: 2,200-word story. (Optional prompts: a closed door, walking in the rain, it's your turn..., a wager, all in one day.)
• Task 2: Write a 500-word commentary, describing aims, decisions, difficulties, and solutions.
• Due date: 4 January 2010
• Mark: About 80%? (Actual mark temporarily unavailable on a dead hard drive.)

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1. A short story.

Title: Even the Weariest River?

Breakfast time

It’s six-o’clock. The clock in the hall begins to chime.

One: Little Eustace Dauger, half awake, permits himself to open his eyes. Not being able to see a clock from his bed – or even tell time for that matter – he can never be sure at the first chime whether it’s time to get up, or the middle of the night.

Two: Eustace Dauger wriggles into a sitting position, expertly keeping all of his bodily extremities under the covers. It feels like morning. He slept with the light on. He can’t tell for sure.

Three: Beneath the covers, chilly Eustace Dauger hugs his knees. He hopes that it is time to get up and he hopes that Mommy will bring a mug of hot milk with his breakfast.

Four: Sleepy Eustace Dauger permits himself to close his eyes, just for a moment. It won’t matter if he falls asleep again - Mommy will wake him with a kiss and a hug and a waft of divine perfume.

Five: Little Eustace Dauger nods.

The sixth chime goes unheard by sleeping Eustace Dauger.

Lunch time

It’s midday. The clock in the hall begins to chime.

One: Eustace stops drawing. He has good hearing, and has been vaguely aware of the previous few hours, but sometimes gets absorbed by his drawing and merely fancies that he hears things.

Two: Eustace snaps the green top on the green pen, and slides the green pen into the pencil case. He snaps the blue top on the blue pen, and slides the blue pen into the pencil case.

Three: Footsteps in the hall. In one fluid movement Eustace zips the case swiftly and drops it into his open toy trunk.

Four: Eustace scoops up his drawing book from the floor and places it carefully in the toy trunk.

Five: Eustace closes the lid of the trunk and turns away.

Six: Mommy sure would love this picture. You’re such a talented artist, my darling boy! Eustace returns to the toy trunk, opens it once more and retrieves the drawing book.

Seven: The lid falls once more. Eustace crosses to the table.

Eight: Eustace is about to sit when he realises something is missing.

Nine: Special Smart Boy Napkin! Where is it? Eustace whirls, eyes scanning the nursery. There! On the bedpost!

Ten: Click, jiggle, jangle. There’s the sound of Mommy grappling one-handed with the door handle.  Skidding across the floor now, grabbing Special Smart Boy Napkin before landing neatly on a dining chair, with his back to the doorway. Don’t get under Mommy’s feet while she’s carrying stuff, my darling boy. It’s so dangerous!

Eleven: As Eustace ducks under the table to thrust the colouring book under the chair (Good children don’t colour at the dining table) Mommy will be shuffling backwards into the nursery, tray in hand, nudging - first with hip, then with shoulder - the door which threatens to close on her and send the tray flying.

Twelve: Eustace tucks Special Smart Boy Napkin into his collar, paying particular attention to the corners, making sure they are level. He sits up straight. He doesn’t hear shuffling. No “Good morning, my darling boy!” He turns in his chair and looks over his shoulder.

Eustace blinks. The door is still shut. His eyes flick in the direction from which the clock’s chimes came.

Did the clock chime six times? Or was it only five? I must have counted them right; I heard Mommy at the door!

Eustace realises he has been staring blankly at the ceiling. He shifts his gaze to the double doors through which Mommy failed to appear. One is painted pink. The other is plain wood. Both remain shut. Eustace fingers Special Smart Boy Napkin, checking the corners are nice and level. You’re such a smart little man, my darling boy. But it’s fine. Just so.

Eustace doesn’t have lessons today, so he glances over his shoulder at the nursery doors and wonders what’s for breakfast. After a bit, his eyes wander to the picture which hangs over his bed, and has an idea. He retrieves the pencil case and a toy from the toy trunk and the drawing book from under the chair.

I’ll have my picture ready when Mommy comes!

It’s very nearly finished. Eustace has patiently copied the picture on the wall. He’s copied the green gloved fingers, though the colours didn’t match exactly. He’s copied the silky blue background, though - not having a white pen – he’s been been forced to omit the fluffy streaks. He’s drawn the pale yellow band which tapers from the bottom of the picture, separating the two rows of fingers. Now Eustace has time for the final element; his own bit of originality. There’s no Vroom-Vroom in the original picture but Eustace is adding one to his copy. His Vroom-Vroom is on the table. He isn’t aware that his tongue pokes from the corner of his mouth as he draws Vroom-Vroom with a red pen.

When the clock strikes again, Eustace barely notices because the picture is almost complete but he’s cussing himself for a fool. He hasn’t left enough room to copy the writing! As the seventh chime fades, a decision is made. Using his boldest, blackest pen, he copies the letters onto the facing page in his drawing book one at a time, tongue fixed in place.

P I G N E R O L    F A R M

W A T E R C O L O R    B Y    A L E X A N D R A    D A U G E R

Eustace holds the finished work at arm’s length so that he can view it side by side with the picture hanging on the opposite wall. Satisfied that it’s as perfect as can be, he closes the book and plays with Vroom-Vroom for a while, pushing the little red toy from one side of the table to the other and back again.

Dinner time

It’s six-o’clock. The clock in the hall begins to chime.

Being already seated at the dining table, Eustace has plenty of time before the last chimes has faded to place the drawing materials on the floor and tuck Special Smart Boy Napkin into his collar, paying particular attention to the corners, making sure they are nice and level.

This time, however, he doesn’t even hear the click, jiggle, jangle of Mommy grappling with the door handle.

Eustace is hungry now. He still sits at the table, occasionally shifting his weight from buttock to buttock. He’s looking at the picture on the wall and becoming more and more dissatisfied with his own. He now sees that the green fingers are not fingers at all; they do not join hands. Instead, each rough-edged green tower perches atop a stump of brown. Eustace has seen the picture as a depiction of hands for so long that this new perspective is startling. The green towers-that-aren’t-fingers don’t alarm Eustace as such. He’s simply discombobulated by the sudden absence of the comforting effect the hands must have given him until now. Hands can hold and hug and protect. These perversely inanimate structures merely offend Eustace.

He squints, allowing his lashes to meet and thus blur the picture, but the alien towers refuse to revert. Irked, Eustace reopens the drawing book. Even his own picture has changed. It is as cold as the brick walls of the nursery.

Eustace sweeps the drawing book from the table and returns to his Vroom-Vroom game, eyes unfocused, lest he should spy the picture on the wall.

He’s been putting off the moment, but Eustace has already decided to go and find Mommy. He’s very hungry now. And thirsty too. He stands and walks slowly across the nursery, keeping his eyes on the double doors and off the disturbing picture.

First step: Don’t get under my feet when I’m carrying hot food my darling boy. “I won’t Mommy.”

Second step: Don’t go near the steps my darling boy. You could get a splinter from the wood. “I’m so hungry Mommy. I’ll be careful Mommy.”

Third step: See, Mommy has painted you a special picture. Stay safe and look at the lovely trees mummy painted you.

Fourth step: I’ll always look after you my darling boy. Nothing can hurt you here. “Where are you Mommy?”

Fifth step: I love you so much my darling boy. I’ll never leave you. “I love you too Mommy. Where are you?”

Sixth step: This is the top step. He must keep his head bowed, to keep from bumping it on the doors. Bowed and also cowed. Dare he?

“Mommy?”

She’s there, right on the other side of the door. He’s sure of it. At any moment she’ll fling open the door and sweep him up in her arms and shower him with kisses and say that she loves him and -

Palms up, flat on the unpainted wood, he pushes. The door does not move. Not even a little bit. He pushes harder, not noticing the splinter that punctures his thumb. He pushes harder still and suddenly a foot slips from the step and for one lurching second he’s falling back to the floor; he flails madly and grabs something.

He hangs there, panting, with fingers locked on the door’s iron ring. The ring squeaks slightly with each slow swing. He touches a toe to the nearest step and steadies himself. Calmer, but with heart still thudding, he shifts his centre of gravity and settles gratefully onto the steps once more.

“Mommy!” This time it’s barely more than a breath. He presses his face against the pink paint, as though he can kiss Mommy’s pink cheek through the door. And it moves. Just an inch, but oh-so easily! Eustace recoils, slightly revolted. Good boys don’t open doors.

It’s the faintest whiff of divine perfume, of good-morning hugs and kisses, that decides him. Not even daring to think about how he dares, he pushes the pink door. It moves an inch.

Two.

Three.

His eyes hurt. He weeps too.

Four inches. Five.

“Mommy?”

Six.

He moves his feet to the top step at last and with one final heave, throws it open. He remains half crouched for long moments, eyes screwed tight shut waiting for the door to fall back, or for Mom’s voice – comforting or scolding. He doesn’t care.

Nothing happens. His thighs now burn with the strain of crouching. He opens his eyes and this time they don’t hurt so much. But the square of the open doorway still dazzles him with its brilliance and unfamiliarity. His legs can’t remain like this any longer, and so he straightens them.

His head rises through the doorway and emerges into a room that is infinity. Its walls are so far away he can’t see them. Its azure ceiling is a vast canopy that makes his mind trill with fear. The all pervading brightness and shockingly cold air combine to sting his eyes. He blinks the water away, forcing his eyes to remain open. He cannot but gaze upon this horror. The green forms from the picture are here and they are fingers after all. Colossal fingers. Monstrous, hissing, rustling fingers. They rear above him, swaying against the white-smudged ceiling. And they –

They move!

Their bristling shapes seem not to march up the perspective of the pale yellow stripe, but down it. Down towards Eustace. Reaching for him.

Sickened, he retches. Nothing comes up, of course. His breath is happening in ragged little snatches. His fingers perform an unbidden spastic dance along Mommy’s cold arm, which this nightmare vista won’t even let him notice. His lips are slightly parted and he groans without knowing it.

He wants to flee. To hide from the giant green fingers, from the huge and ugly red thing that looks so much his like his Vroom-Vroom, yet so very different. But his feet remain planted on the step, rooted on the cusp of the familiar and the alien.

Long after his initial shock has given way to numb incomprehension, the ceiling turns black and the nightmare scene grows indistinct.

Then, somewhere as distant as another life, a clock chimes.

One: Eustace leans over and fumbles with the iron ring. He pulls.

Two: He heaves and then ducks as the door crashes into its natural position.

Three: He shuffles down the steps.

Four: He stoops and retrieves Special Smart Boy Napkin from the earthen floor.

Five: He sits up straight on a dining chair, like a good boy.

Six: Little Eustace Dauger tucks Special Smart Boy Napkin into his collar, paying particular attention to the corners, making sure they are nice and level.

[Word count: 2117]

2. A commentary.

My story uses the prompt “a closed door” which reminded me of a joke I heard told by a TV comedian (Phillips, 2005.) My aim was to use the germ of that joke to appall the reader. Sketching out the plot was simple. However, some technical elements of the story were quite tricky.

The biggest challenge was choosing the viewpoint. I felt that a first-person viewpoint was required if the shock ending was to be compelling and credible. However, the plot made this difficult. Someone of Eustace’s age and circumstances would almost certainly be incapable of narrating a readable twenty-two hundred word story. I drafted an opening paragraph written in the first person and introducing the story as an adult’s memory of distant childhood, but dismissed this because although it addressed the issue of literacy, it put even more distance between the reader and the action. Also, it would have been very difficult to pull off a surprise ending which the narrator knew all about already. Eventually I used a third-person viewpoint, but wrote in the present tense to make the surprise ending more believable. In retrospect I feel this was the right decision.

The next challenge was to seduce the reader into assuming Eustace’s circumstances are far less extraordinary than they actually are. I enjoyed leaving clues for the reader, and was careful not to cheat by being unfairly misleading. For example, when Eustace looks in the direction of the hall clock, the narrative explicitly states that he is looking at the ceiling, but (I hope) his internal monologue was just distracting enough that the surprise wasn’t spoiled for the reader, despite the seed having been sown.

Other decisions were equally necessary but not quite as much fun. Setting, for example, was almost entirely preordained. If one wished to lock a boy in a basement for his entire childhood, what better place to do it than a farm?

It was vital to give Eustace an opportunity to change his routine. I considered letting him plan an escape while his mother was out, and even drafted a scene in which he had to quickly retreat to his room when she returned unexpectedly. In the end I decided to kill Eustace’s mother, as this would deprive the boy of food and so force him to act. Of course, she had to die at the door, after having unlocked it.

My original plan was to end the story with Eustace’s dramatic emergence into the big outdoors, but I knew Eustace would slink back inside, so I shared that part of his story too, giving him a recurring stage prop for emphasis.

I wanted to give Eustace a pet, of which he in turn would be over-protective. He didn’t get one partly because of the word limit and partly because I really couldn’t decide whether Eustace would decide to liberate it.

One or two devices emerged naturally as I wrote the first draft. For example, Eustace’s identity is inextricably tied to his nursery, so as he came closer to freedom, I used his name less, only returning to his full name for the final sentence.

[Word count: 522]

REFERENCE:

Phillips, Emo (2005) Live at the Hasty Pudding Theatre, Audio CD, Sony Inc.

A215 TMA 01

Tutor-Marked Assignment

• Task 1: Focused freewrite, of 200-300 words, based on one of a search,learning to swim, a scrapyard, hearing a piano, a bunch of keys.

• Task 2: Proceeding from that prompt, write 750 words of fiction, autobiography, or biography.

• Task 3: Write a 300-word "commentary" about the techniques used.

• Due date: 30 October 2009

• Mark: About 80%? (Actual mark temporarily unavailable on a dead hard drive.)

This is my first piece of creative writing since childhood. Despite facing a memory I'd all but repressed for thirty years, the process was very satisfying - cathartic, even. I'm still pleased with the final product. It should be noted that Rolf Harris's exposure and trial occurred after this piece was written.

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1. Focused freewrite based on the prompt “learning to swim.”
Spitting out chlorinated water. Red eyes. Traipsing for hour after lonely hour across the pool and back, clutching a polystyrene rectangle and wishing it actually helped. The instructor was a bald guy who didn’t smile when you caught his eye. Just blew a whistle and barked orders. Not so much a swimming lesson as aquatic parade square drill. The pool was beautiful. Even as a sulky 13 year old I appreciated that. Victorian with a gorgeous glass roof and attached to a medium sized stately home at the end of a long drive and I never saw it in daylight. Dad and I used to go swimming on Saturdays and one of my strongest memories of those sessions is how ravenously hungry I used to be afterwards. We usually had steak and kidney pie and milkshake in the leisure centre cafeteria afterward. Only two memories of the actual pool itself: First is being in the shallow end, standing on the bottom, and hearing a youth ask my dad how deep the water was and he replied “About three feet I think.” Never knew what  a foot looked like before that but for ages afterwards used the line between my nipples as a 36” datum upon which to base estimates of length. Other memory is of a rare excursion to the deep end. Pratting about having a laugh with Dad and accidentally swatting his glasses in my exuberance. And he left me suddenly alone and doggy paddling for my life, clutching at people anyone and being shrugged off and fuck I’ve been conscious of this memory for thirty years but never allowed myself to dwell on it before now. By God, that was a traumatic episode.
[Word count: 285]


2. A passage of autobiography.

Title: Trusting a man with a beard
When I woke on 30 December, 1974, I didn’t know how to swim.
In those days my father looked quite a lot like the television celebrity Rolf Harris. They had the same style of beard and the same style of glasses. They both owned one of those little electronic organs played with a stylus. In between making TV commercials for his Stylofone, Harris appeared in a public information film, extolling the virtues of having buoyant children.
‘Teach ‘em to swim,’ the infant-festooned Aussie had said, ‘It’ll be fun!’
So, in between being ribbed by his children for his resemblance to Mr Harris, my father tried it with me. It was on my birthday.
The drive to the pool probably took about forty minutes. As this was a Men’s Day Out, I could sit in my mother’s seat in the front, feeling as cool as it was possible to feel while wearing a cissy seatbelt.
Being six years old, I wanted my swimming lesson to consist entirely of fooling about in the shallow end, so it was only under protest that I allowed my father to carry me into deeper water. The pool was crowded; the shouts and screams of the bathers echoed off the glass ceiling in one continuous sixty-minute roar. My nose was permanently wrinkled against the continual splashes. When he was chest deep, my father started the Tickling Game, a singularly unfunny pastime which involved him jabbing me in the ribs until I couldn’t breathe. I howled with involuntary laughter, torn between the urge to wriggle free and the need to cling on. My arms twitched as I squealed and in a moment my father’s glasses were swatted from his face.
And Daddy is gone.
I stand on tiptoe to see where he’s gone. But there is no floor and I am not standing. I am sinking and the water comes past my face and the echoes abruptly stop. The transition from frolicking to drowning is so sudden that I haven’t even drawn a last breath; I’m submerged and utterly airless. I am kicking against a bottom that isn’t there, clawing at the water with my fingers, desperately trying to climb up the very water.
My head breaks into air. Daddy isn’t here. A scream punches its way past the foam in my throat. It’s a short scream, made of the one tiny packet of stale air I had in me. It’s a scream that nobody hears. Now I’m gasping, heaving in air and choking on spray of my own making and my face dips again and my legs thrash and my arms windmill. My hands grope for something – anything.
It’s not fear that drives me into air a second time. It’s Fear. The Fear a field mouse feels when it sees a hawk’s shadow. I’m not so much keeping my face above the surface as doggy paddling so frantically that a small trench opens in the water in front of me. I’m tiring though. The sides of my trench are caving in. My spastic leg movements are slower. I become aware of other people. Huge grown-ups all around, close enough to touch. I’ve gone under for the third time when my flailing hand touches something. I grab and slip and grab and heave and pull myself up again.
And now I really am screaming.
The woman whose swimming costume I am grasping glances down at me with disdain, shrugs me off and moves away. My breathing is steadier now. I can inhale a mix of air, spray and liquid without gagging. And I can scream.
Kick – splash – breathe – scream. And repeat.
I’m getting weaker. The effort required to keep every ounce of me from sinking is massive. A man’s glistening back towers over me and my fingers slide down it without finding purchase. I don’t even know if he’s aware of me. My arms are numb and I’m clawing at people that don’t even know I’m drowning.
I am exhausted and I have no screams left inside and hands grip me and it’s Daddy and his glasses are back on his face and it’s Daddy and he’s got me.
As he carried me to the poolside he was telling me off for knocking his glasses from his face. I don’t think I heard a single word. On the way home I sat in the back seat.
When I went to bed on 30 December, 1974, I still hadn’t learned to swim; I’d just found that I could.
[Word count: 750]


3. Reflective commentary
Freewriting is new to me. Initially I found it difficult to get a flow. That reproduced above is the unedited final section of a longer piece which only gained momentum towards the end. I admit to having held a sceptical view of the claims that freewrites could “bring up uncomfortable material.” (The Open University, p.15) and take me into my “deepest ideas, feelings and memories.” (Anderson, 2009, p.23) However, some of the material in my freewrite was deeply disturbing to me induced a kind of writer’s block as I came to terms with being abandoned, albeit momentarily, by a father more concerned about his spectacles. The block lifted once I decided to avoid writing judgmentally and to concentrate upon making the reader live my experience.
The subject matter is a minefield of clichés. I tried to balance language that dealt with the mechanics of staying afloat with description of the subjective experience, rather that yell at the reader “I’m gonna die!”
In a nod to sensory description, I spliced in sounds I remembered from later pool visits, as my recollection of the day in question is rather blinkered.The Workbook suggests “you will not betray the truth of any particular memory by failing to stick steadfastly to certain details,” (Neale, 2009, p.54) I cheated slightly by condensing two memories into one narrative. The birthday swimming trip was actually a separate one which passed without incident. I did this for two reasons: First, if an infant is going to drown, doing so on his birthday is obviously more poignant. Second, I preferred subtle yet specific exposition to the blunt and vague “It happened when I was six.”
I hadn’t read Glaister’s “Memory” when I decided to switch tenses to pull the reader from the comfort zone of reminiscence.For research I reviewed the Rolf Harris film online (YouTube, 2007) and checked The Elements of Style (Strunk and White, 2005, p.57) to see how I should write the date.
[Word count: 310]