Link up in my new cyber writing workshop: Open to all those who write or aspire to write fiction, looking to improve their craft and to receive constructive criticism. What I always stress with my students: To succeed as a writer, you must become your own best editor – which means revision. So in following weeks, feel free to repost entries you have revised.
Weekly, I will offer writing prompts, ones to help you focus better on the editorial and control of voice. Remember, these are just offerings.
Our first prompt is:
Write in the close first person point of view.
What does this mean?
John Updike's short story "A &P" is a great example of writing from this close "I" colloquial (spoken) point of view. Here's the first paragraph:
"In walks these three girls in nothing but bathing suits. I'm in the third check-out slot, with my back to the door, so I don't see them until they're over by the bread. The one that caught my eye first was the one in the plaid green two-piece. She was a chunky kid, with a good tan and a sweet broad soft-looking can with those two crescents of white just under it, where the sun never seems to hit, at the top of the backs of her legs. I stood there with my hand on a box of HiHo crackers trying to remember if I rang it up or not. I ring it up again and the customer starts giving me hell. She's one of these cash-register-watchers, a witch about fifty with rouge on her cheekbones and no eyebrows, and I knowit made her day to trip me up. She'd been watching cash registers forty years and probably never seen a mistake before." (You can read the full story here: http://www.tiger-town.com/whatnot/updike/)
Take note of the diction, present tense, how both contribute to an authentic teenage voice.