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I asked for some writing exercises and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lobelia321 pointed me to this post as an example of how to try a few different writing styles for fun and maybe even give the muse a kick-start. So, here I go. I haven't done all the styles she had there yet, but I may come back to it.
My prompt, provided by the lovelyshoemoney2night was: Rodney gets woken up by something in the middle of the night
In the style of the 19th-century novel I've never read a 19th century novel, so I am attempting to copy the style from Lobelia321 and Sheldrake.
The city of Atlantis rests peacefully in the night, floating in the inky darkness of the ocean, deathly quiet but for the sound of the gentle lapping of the waves against the city’s walls.
It is within this city we find our unlikely hero sleeping soundly, though in truth he has been asleep for barely a moment, within his inconsiderable quarters. His face, though slack with sleep, bears an unsightly pallor from long hours spent in the toils of his employment and, even in sleep, he appears to frown.
This man, who I can now reveal to be one Doctor Rodney McKay, is suddenly awoken by a disembodied voice which is screaming unceremoniously from within a device that rests upon a chest of drawers beside the bed.
The man, having been awoken at such an unholy hour, and with no possible time to adjust to his sudden awakening, reached for his communication device and without preamble launched into a tirade against the person or persons responsible for the untimely disruption of his comfortable repose.
Exclamation
Arrgh! I’m awake already! Yelling! My heart thumping so damn hard! Trying to kill me! Not so loud! Alright already! Shut up and listen to me!
No secondary clauses, present tense, no incomplete sentences
The city lies in slumber. Rodney sleeps too. His room is dark. He is awoken suddenly. A harsh yelling can be heard. There is a voice yelling from the radio. His heart beats wildly within his chest. It beats the staccato rhythm of his fright. Rodney is less than pleased. He reaches for the radio. He answers the voice that is yelling. Rodney’s own voice cuts with a knife edge. The yelling subsides.
First person point-of-view, subjective, homodiegetic narrator
I’d only just fallen asleep. I swear it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes since my head had hit the pillow. Twelve, or was it fifteen hours (who knew anymore?) straight of dealing with energy fluctuations in the main power relays, while trying to keep the shield functioning and maintain power to vital facilities really took it out of you.
I could have slept anywhere, but I’d made it back to the room – practically crawled here, but I made it. Nothing could have woken me, or so I thought. Apparently yelling over the radio was something I was primed to respond to though. After all, the idiots, who had the nerve to call themselves my staff, were incapable of tying their shoes without my help.
And there it was, just moments after I closed my eyes, frantic yelling and screaming over the static-filled channel. Enough to make me sit bolt upright, reaching for the radio with one hand, while attempting to breathe through the heart attack I truly believed they had finally caused.
“What the hell is so important, that you felt the need to wake me up with your yelling and screaming?” I asked, using a tone that I have perfected over the years. It’s a tone that should make any rational person pause and, if it wasn’t really an emergency, wish to god they hadn’t disturbed me.
Txt message
u woke me u bastrd. better b urgent!
Second-person point of view, homodiegetic narrator, pov of Rodney’s radio
Barely a few minutes had passed since it had been removed from the warmth of the man’s ear and placed atop the cool surface of a table. It had been a busy day for the radio, warm fingers regularly pressing into its surface, activating that electrical spark deep within that brought with it the sweet vibration of human voices that it craved.
Now sitting quietly, the radio rested in silence. It still registered some small vibration of sound, but it didn’t come from within, rather it came from the gentle snoring of the warm man who had removed the radio from his ear to sleep.
The radio knew the man was tired, yet it didn’t like being inactive. The radio was so rarely away from the man, though, that it knew there wouldn’t be long before it was needed again. Not long before it would feel whole again, warm and nestled within the warmth of the man’s ear.
“Dr McKay, you’re needed in section 37B right now. McKay, you there?”
And there it was; the flash of energy and sweet vibrations of sound and voice. A warm hand lifting radio into its rightful place and now it could faithfully relay the man’s wonderfully plentiful words. It was home.
lobelia321 pointed me to this post as an example of how to try a few different writing styles for fun and maybe even give the muse a kick-start. So, here I go. I haven't done all the styles she had there yet, but I may come back to it. My prompt, provided by the lovely
shoemoney2night was: Rodney gets woken up by something in the middle of the nightIn the style of the 19th-century novel I've never read a 19th century novel, so I am attempting to copy the style from Lobelia321 and Sheldrake.
The city of Atlantis rests peacefully in the night, floating in the inky darkness of the ocean, deathly quiet but for the sound of the gentle lapping of the waves against the city’s walls.
It is within this city we find our unlikely hero sleeping soundly, though in truth he has been asleep for barely a moment, within his inconsiderable quarters. His face, though slack with sleep, bears an unsightly pallor from long hours spent in the toils of his employment and, even in sleep, he appears to frown.
This man, who I can now reveal to be one Doctor Rodney McKay, is suddenly awoken by a disembodied voice which is screaming unceremoniously from within a device that rests upon a chest of drawers beside the bed.
The man, having been awoken at such an unholy hour, and with no possible time to adjust to his sudden awakening, reached for his communication device and without preamble launched into a tirade against the person or persons responsible for the untimely disruption of his comfortable repose.
Exclamation
Arrgh! I’m awake already! Yelling! My heart thumping so damn hard! Trying to kill me! Not so loud! Alright already! Shut up and listen to me!
No secondary clauses, present tense, no incomplete sentences
The city lies in slumber. Rodney sleeps too. His room is dark. He is awoken suddenly. A harsh yelling can be heard. There is a voice yelling from the radio. His heart beats wildly within his chest. It beats the staccato rhythm of his fright. Rodney is less than pleased. He reaches for the radio. He answers the voice that is yelling. Rodney’s own voice cuts with a knife edge. The yelling subsides.
First person point-of-view, subjective, homodiegetic narrator
I’d only just fallen asleep. I swear it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes since my head had hit the pillow. Twelve, or was it fifteen hours (who knew anymore?) straight of dealing with energy fluctuations in the main power relays, while trying to keep the shield functioning and maintain power to vital facilities really took it out of you.
I could have slept anywhere, but I’d made it back to the room – practically crawled here, but I made it. Nothing could have woken me, or so I thought. Apparently yelling over the radio was something I was primed to respond to though. After all, the idiots, who had the nerve to call themselves my staff, were incapable of tying their shoes without my help.
And there it was, just moments after I closed my eyes, frantic yelling and screaming over the static-filled channel. Enough to make me sit bolt upright, reaching for the radio with one hand, while attempting to breathe through the heart attack I truly believed they had finally caused.
“What the hell is so important, that you felt the need to wake me up with your yelling and screaming?” I asked, using a tone that I have perfected over the years. It’s a tone that should make any rational person pause and, if it wasn’t really an emergency, wish to god they hadn’t disturbed me.
Txt message
u woke me u bastrd. better b urgent!
Second-person point of view, homodiegetic narrator, pov of Rodney’s radio
Barely a few minutes had passed since it had been removed from the warmth of the man’s ear and placed atop the cool surface of a table. It had been a busy day for the radio, warm fingers regularly pressing into its surface, activating that electrical spark deep within that brought with it the sweet vibration of human voices that it craved.
Now sitting quietly, the radio rested in silence. It still registered some small vibration of sound, but it didn’t come from within, rather it came from the gentle snoring of the warm man who had removed the radio from his ear to sleep.
The radio knew the man was tired, yet it didn’t like being inactive. The radio was so rarely away from the man, though, that it knew there wouldn’t be long before it was needed again. Not long before it would feel whole again, warm and nestled within the warmth of the man’s ear.
“Dr McKay, you’re needed in section 37B right now. McKay, you there?”
And there it was; the flash of energy and sweet vibrations of sound and voice. A warm hand lifting radio into its rightful place and now it could faithfully relay the man’s wonderfully plentiful words. It was home.
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Heehee. I like that one a lot. Also, I love the ending of the last one.
*frowns* I think your link to the post is broken.
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Hee! The txt message took me longer to write than the 19th century novel style. :P
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I especially liked the pov of the radio. Suddenly, this story, for me, took on almost sinister overtones. I started thinking, omg, was it the radio that caused the noise? It was like a little fic switch being thrown.
'Homodiegetic', btw, is just the narratological term for a subjective narrator, a narrator who's part of the story (unlike your 19th C. narrator who is not part of the story-world (this man who I can now reveal). That 19th C. one would be called heterodiegetic. It amuses me that these terms have homo and het in them, *g*. I know this because I am currently writing a (non-fiction) book on narrative and am an obsessive jargon pedant, :-)
How did you find doing these? Which one did you find the hardest to do? Which one seemed to be 'most you'? Which one was most interesting?
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And thanks for the definition. Hopefully I was doing it correctly. I did look up your explanation and thought I had it, but that one *points up* is much clearer.
How did you find doing these? Which one did you find the hardest to do? Which one seemed to be 'most you'? Which one was most interesting?
No secondary clauses is damn hard! I like my long flowing sentences and I often have to stop myself from rambling, so that was just hard.
I loved the 19th Century novel style. It's fabulously pompous and allows me to ramble in flow-on sentences and use big words. Way too much fun, though I didn't think the end product really flowed.
The inanimate object is really fun too. I've never done that, though I used to quite often write stories from an animal's pov and this feels similar. You have no preset notion of personality there, so you have total freedom to play with it.
Basically the shorter the sentences have to be, the harder I'll find it. So I liked the 19th century one and the pov of the radio. First person, subjective is very hard to still keep in character. It tends to throw me out of a story when I'm reading, so it's a challenge to still make people believe that the person thinking/talking is ROdney.
In conclusion, thanks; that was fun! :D
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Thanks for reading! :)