This is an entry that I read today in April's journal today:
"I wanted to do another take on show and tell, but with a different twist. Can you "show" without describing anything?
Tell:
The girl was bored.
Show:
Sigh. Open book. Read.
Close book. Get up. Go to the computer.
Sit. Check email. Stand.
Nothing new.
Stretch. Yawn. Walk to the kitchen.
Open the fridge. Grab nothing. Back to the couch. "
I really liked what she did with the showing twist so this is what I commented:
"It is so typical of descriptions of boredom to be just
that...descriptions. We create a scene by showing what is happening in
the typical way "Maddie opened her book and desperately tried to read.
Anxious, she walked to the computer and logged on..."but here you paint
the same picture without doing that. The short, sharp, choppy,
one-to-two-word sentences characterize the speaker as bored because the
collection of sentences show how quickly the character moves from one
activity to the other, trying to stay busy but failing. I think this is
more effective than the typical description because it makes the boredom
seem more "real" in a sense."
How about this for boredom made fantastically interesting:
ReplyDeleteDolor
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.
Theodore Roethke (American poet, 1908-1963)