Obstructions 2015

1. Shift the story to third person – free indirect style
2. Present tense
3. No two paragraphs in the whole story can start with the same word
4. Talking dog

‘Stewed Fruit’ is a very good story. I wouldn’t have chosen it for this challenge otherwise. However, it’s also quite safe in its mode, tone and structure. This first round of obstructions are designed to be both technical and creative challenges.

1. The first challenge is about experimenting with point of view and shifting away from the story’s current first person point of view. Nineteenth-century authors as diverse as Austen and Flaubert were masters of this style – it’s a sort of cinematic mode zooming in and out of different characters’ perspectives. What makes it even more powerful than film though is our immediate access to several different characters’ thoughts in the one story. This can mean a nuanced and subtle telling – but can also slip into heavy-handedness and a surfeit of exposition so these are things to look out for.
2. Although past tense has its benefits, there’s often a greater sense of immediacy and energy in the present tense and so switching this element can have a significant impact on the mood of the story.
3. The last of the technical requirements, many of the sentences in this story start with ‘I’ or ‘we’, by stipulating that no two paragraphs can start with the same word, this should encourage a shift in sentence structure.
4. Slater tends to write about the real world and it will be interesting to see what the imposition of an element of magical realism does to her work.

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