draft i another part of the same untitled work
here's the stuff that i'm pretty sure i'm going to include; the modelled one from Stephen Fiucan. This part is meant to juxtapose what was written before (the last post), and create contrast to it.
Henry was a little embaressed to wait for the green minivan after work that day. Fran's job required her to drive an hour into the next town, and his car was in the body shop. The green van suddenly appeared in front of Henry, who didn't even see it turn into the winding entrance. The car window rolled down.
"Mr (Henry's last name), is it alright if we stop by the store? I swear, soccer makes a monster of the boys--your fridge is bare. Well, except for the mustard and margarine."
"Hi Diane. That's not a problem," Henry climbed into the vehicle, labourously swinging the door shut.
At the lights, Diane was tapping her fingers on the steering wheel to the rhythm of a song about daisies and cowboys.
"So, Mr __, how was your day?"
"My day was okay," he answered, aware that her question was just a piece of social convention.
"No one was expecting it to rain today--blue and blue and blue and bam! Rain was running down, and soon the soccer field was all over the faces and jerseys of your boys!" Diane continued on about the empty condition of of the fridge after his sons had come back from practise, ravagingly hungry and had torn the kitchen to pieces. "I make them clean up," she added with a raised brow. As she spoke about how the margarine was nearly devoured, mistaken for cream cheese, Henry watched her red hair waving like coral reefs as her head bobbed side to side with every phrase spoken. "Able to keep up with young children," her advertisement had read, and that was why he and Fran hired her.
A huge toothy grin of the mascot farmer greeted them as they walked through automatic sliding doors of the grocery.
"Wow, this place is big," Henry said, mostly to himself. Diane led the way through labyrinths of canned fish, lettuce heads, microwave bacon, and baguettes. He could not keep his eyes fixed on one item, there was too much produce and product to gaze on. It was as though he was eating with his eyes, and realized that he was hungry. A flyer was thrust into his field of vision as Diane pointed to pictures of pickles. They were now looking for the pickles on sale, but as Henry followed Diane through more mazes of stocked shelves, he forgot about them and was looking at the rows of pasta before him: straight, short, curly, rotini, spaghetti, linguini, totellini. The uniform neatness of the dry starch made him want to open the bags and touch them. They had a calm quality to their arrangement that made them look lifeless or maybe i shoudl say "asleep"?. It was ironic then, that when boiled, the dry pasta could be resurrected as purposeful meals, ornate with pieces of pepper and dressed in red.
"Excuse me," a man behidn him reached for a package that Henry had completely stopped to look at.
"Sorry," Henry said, embaressment spreading over his face and turned around.
It was 5:30pm, and the store was full of people in coats, hunched over their wheeling carts, women waiting for meat with white tickets in hand, men walking briskly inbetween aisles with metal baskets. It was rush hour and dance-like. Henry suddenly felt betrayed. The smiling farmer was nto his "neighbourly grocer"--he was supplier to the masses. And Henry was one of the mass. Just one of the mass. Let's move it along Henry.
Henry found Diane in line at the cashier with her own shopping cart.
"I called to you, Mr. ___, but you looked so focused--comparing prices? Anyhow, I got all that we need," she pointed to her full cart, the jar of pickels nestled in the corner. Henry looked at his own cart and sheepishly took out the only item he'd picked up.
-i feel that i'm doing a very poor job at writing as Diane. her energetic nature is hard to take on so that i can get her voice
-reading this again, i'm not sure i like who Henry is sounding like--a really daft and spaced out man. it doesn't make sense to give him all these cynical thoughts to think, b/c he doesn't seem like the kind of guy to even think about life all that much. or maybe this'll just be the ordinary side of him?
-i think i like this piece b/c i've broken up the contemplative tone--it's way too slow and becoming boring. also, i need to incorporate characters into the story somehow and somehow tactfully!! i decided to model this section b/c by focusing on the character Diane, it will implicitly demonstrate how different Henry is in contrast to her
-what do you think?
3 Comments:
Henry does sound very spaced out in this. Plus, all of these random thoughts don't really advance the character development much. I sort of got the feeling that he's either high, or he's dreaming, or both.
Writing from Dianes perspective would be difficult. Have you considered writing as if you were Diane, but not from a first person view (I thought, I took), but rather focus on her thoughts, and what she is thinking in regards to what Henry is doing, and then have her say something like "I wonder why he didn't hear me" and then jumping to inside Henrys mind? That would get Dianes character more in front, and we'd learn more about who she is, what she thinks and feels about situations, and at the same time, we would see the part of Henry that Diane sees, as well as what he is thinking in his own mind, which will help both characters acquire some life. Personally, that's what I'd do. Just a suggestion.
P.S. I was thinking about this piece of work, and it sounds an awful lot like it's talking about someones life. This guy Henry seems to like his life, but get sick of the everydayness of it. A random thought for a title popped into my head. A Painfully Normal Life. Just a thought.
hmm. hmm!
i'll play around the draft w/ your suggestions Dave, esp. the first one. merci once again!
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