The household answers back
Answer it · 20 minutes · Published
Read this first
As though he would say: “I am worrying you, I am lacerating your hearts, I am keeping everyone in the house awake. Well, stay awake then, you, too, feel every minute that I have toothache. I am not a hero to you now, as I tried to seem before, but simply a nasty person, an impostor. Well, so be it, then! I am very glad that you see through me. It is nasty for you to hear my despicable moans: well, let it be nasty; here I will let you have a nastier flourish in a minute....”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground (1864). Translated by Constance Garnett, 1918. Project Gutenberg #600
The prompt
A man with toothache moans all night on purpose, and in his head he tells the household they deserve to hear every groan. Write the household's answer, a note slipped under his door, in his own grinding, self-mocking register, turning each of his provocations back on him. Keep it to one voice and one night.
Set a timer for 20 minutes.
Short version · 10 minutes
In ten minutes, write the note slipped under the door, six sentences in his own mocking register.
The move
Answer it. Write the text's reply, the letter back, the missing retort, the other side of the contest, in the form of the original.
Tags: dialogue, voice and imitation.
In a group
A way to run it with a writing group:
Only what works. Anyone reads who wants to. In this format, responses name only what works in the first draft, and every text is treated as fiction.
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.