The storyteller who won't say where
Be someone else · 20 minutes · Published
Read this first
In a certain Russian ministerial department---- But it is perhaps better that I do not mention which department it was. There are in the whole of Russia no persons more sensitive than Government officials. Each of them believes if he is annoyed in any way, that the whole official class is insulted in his person. Recently an Isprawnik (country magistrate)--I do not know of which town--is said to have drawn up a report with the object of showing that, ignoring Government orders, people were speaking of Isprawniks in terms of contempt. In order to prove his assertions, he forwarded with his report a bulky work of fiction, in which on about every tenth page an Isprawnik appeared generally in a drunken condition. In order therefore to avoid any unpleasantness, I will not definitely indicate the department in which the scene of my story is laid, and will rather say "in a certain chancellery."
Nikolai Gogol, The Mantle and Other Stories (1842). Translated by Claud Field, 1916. Project Gutenberg #36238
The prompt
Speak as a nervous storyteller who keeps refusing to tell you where his story takes place, because someone might take offence. Let him lose himself in a side anecdote about an official who once complained, then come back and still not say it. The voice is the point: fussy, cautious, delighted with itself.
Set a timer for 20 minutes.
Short version · 10 minutes
In ten minutes, write the opening in which the storyteller refuses, three times over, to name the place.
The move
Be someone else. Write from a voice, a time or a situation not your own.
Tags: voice and point of view.
In a group
A way to run it with a writing group:
Call and answer. Whoever is about to read calls out a ritual word, and the group answers before the reading begins.
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.