The graves, seen otherwise
Same scene, other way · 25 minutes · Published
Read this first
I give Pirrip as my father’s family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister,—Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, “_Also Georgiana Wife of the Above_,” I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly.
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations (1861). Project Gutenberg #1400
The prompt
A child who never knew his parents pictures them from the lettering on their gravestones. Tell the same visit to the graves, same stones, same guesses about the parents, from the point of view of the sister who brought him there, or in the flat voice of a parish record. Same facts, a different temperature.
Set a timer for 25 minutes.
Short version · 10 minutes
In ten minutes, write the sister's version of the visit to the graves in one paragraph.
The move
Same scene, other way. Keep the matter and change the manner: the same moment told through other eyes, in another mood, another register.
Tags: point of view, voice and structure.
In a group
A way to run it with a writing group:
Blind vote. The texts are gathered without names, read and voted on. Then the writers make themselves known and the choices are discussed.
Where the page goes next
Scrin is a home where pages grow into books: you keep writing, from an untitled line to a chapter, and Scrin keeps the rest.