The reply that cuts deeper
Answer it · 20 minutes · Published
Read this first
“Why, it’s all nonsense, Alyosha. It’s only a senseless poem of a senseless student, who could never write two lines of verse. Why do you take it so seriously? Surely you don’t suppose I am going straight off to the Jesuits, to join the men who are correcting His work? Good Lord, it’s no business of mine. I told you, all I want is to live on to thirty, and then ... dash the cup to the ground!” “But the little sticky leaves, and the precious tombs, and the blue sky, and the woman you love! How will you live, how will you love them?” Alyosha cried sorrowfully. “With such a hell in your heart and your head, how can you? No, that’s just what you are going away for, to join them ... if not, you will kill yourself, you can’t endure it!” “There is a strength to endure everything,” Ivan said with a cold smile. “What strength?” “The strength of the Karamazovs—the strength of the Karamazov baseness.” “To sink into debauchery, to stifle your soul with corruption, yes?”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov (1880). Translated by Constance Garnett, 1912. Project Gutenberg #28054
The prompt
Someone has just said they will live only until thirty and then throw the cup away, and has claimed the strength to endure anything. Write the reply of the person who loves them, in the same quick exchange of short speeches, with no more than a bare tag between them. Let the answer end on a question that cuts deeper than the last one.
Set a timer for 20 minutes.
Short version · 10 minutes
In ten minutes, write only the loving person's reply, six lines of speech at most, ending on a question.
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:
Two sides and a judge. Two teams write on the same subject and the texts are read against each other. A judge decides round by round and gives reasons.
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.