Ophelia's Nun

ISN

Fins, come and mark us....come on.....come on....get out of your bed!!!!

FinsburyParkCarrots

Oi've been up fookin' ages and reading George Gissing.

Okay! And another way you might have approached your piece, ISN, is this:

"Peter saunters back to Ventura Rodriguez, exhausted with his day'ssearch for a Pensione, and climbs the steps to his Pensione. His room is tiny, with just a small sink and a makeshift cupboard. He takes out a bottle of red, and some Jamón and bread, and eating, looks out the window at the rooftops and clothes flapping in a light summer breeze. Picking up Don Quixote, he's not convinced he'll ever finish it. He thinks about his luck in finding the Pensione to move to. It's half-way between Plaza España and Bilbao where his college is.
Looking for a Pensione in Madrid is difficult at the best of times, but this summer, all the rooms seemed to be taken in every boarding house in the whole of the city. There were certain areas that Peter didn't want to live in, all nicely detailed in the Lonely Planet guide. So en route, on his quest for a room today, he didn't walk through Sol, or Lavapies (the latter had an air of bohemia that Peter found incompatible with a good night's sleep: you know the kind of thing; people out drinking 'til all hours of the night; gangs of ruffians marauding at will).



All day, Peter had been walking from Plaza España, up through Noviciados, and he'd already passed a bakery and an interesting café. He'd stopped in the café and ordered a caña and some tapas. Standing at the counter, he'd found himself to be a magnet, and was soon engaged in discussion with the regulars, one of whom happened to be a Briton. This man was once a model so it seemed, but his jaunty remarks about living in Spain were betrayed by his bleary-eyed look and general decrepitude. (Moving on, Peter noted the incredibly orange internet café for future reference). He decided not to enquire at any Pensiones near Gran Via, but headed up-hill on a parrallel with the major road, crossing the small side-streets, like a surgeon deftly splicing veins.

We would have found him at one point today in Bilbao, enquiring about a room in a street overlooking the station, with balconies towering over the junction: an imposing building with decorative architecture on her light grey walls. The room (from the classified paper, Segundomano), was taken. Peter was somewhat relieved, as the landlady seemed to be a little too personal, and the other man living there, who might have divided her interests, was leaving for Milan that evening.

He had noted that day on his walk that the youth hostels were all full, which he knew from his first few weeks in Madrid. We can see him at one point at the edges of the city, walking haphazardly through streets with little shops and cafés. He was peering into a shop with blanched leather gourds hanging out to air. One day they would be filled with wine and painted in gaudy colours for the tourists. We see him backtracking, and coming upon a square, that Sunday afternoon, filled with young people drinking beer, singing, talking together, and playing drums. All encircling the front of a huge church, splayed around the courtyard like a necklace of conviviality. Lingering, he felt part of the happy crowd, which included toddlers, and Madrileños that would not look out of place in a Benneton ad.

The street was long and straight, with different vendors on it. The balcony of his new room caught the afternoon sun, and let it flood into the double sized space, highlighting the beautiful polished floorboards. One of the shops was a tobacconist. There were plenty of cafés and a flower stall was set up. It was near the old centre of Madrid, and he'd passed a film crew, but only stayed to gawk for a few minutes.

This area was sure to become as fond to him as his favourite, Ventura Rodriguez, where he would watch the sunset from the top of the hill in Park Ouest, and dream of walking to the distant mountains - 'the mountains of Madrid', and skirt the ancient Temple Debod, with its reflective water apron, to laze in the folds of greenery, and dream his lazy dreams. The guide to the Madrid Metro was similar to the London Underground, in its wild twistings and bright colours: reds, yellows etc, but, unlike London, each stop on the Madrid Metro afforded discoveries of a nature ensured to bring delight to the newest Madrileño unfamiliar with the infinite possibilities that a walk through Madrid could open."

I really liked this one!

FinsburyParkCarrots

And Ruby, your piece is exceptional. It manages to adhere to the specifications of "Mrs Neave's Discovery" while also observing focalization techniques in the "Penny's Dilemma" exercise, achieving the device of "external-analepsis" through the protagonist's memories as suggested in the "Peter's Walk" task.

ISN

....

FinsburyParkCarrots

I liked it, ISN! I was just showing you another of several ways you can approach playing with time in a narrative.

ISN

hehehehe....:)

FinsburyParkCarrots

Naw... You're great! I love your work.

I've done life drawing classes in the past where we've been encouraged to produce our work on newspaper so as not to be too precious about our exercises. Remember that these are just workshop tasks for fun, and what you personally get out of them is what's paramount. The more you do the exercises, the more nimble and flexible you get. And you're truly very talented. I'm not disingenuous here. I mean it.

ISN

......

even flow?

Originally posted by FinsburyParkCarrots
Here's an exercise I've set. Anyone like to try it?

I'd like you to attempt a short piece of prose narrative featuring a character called Penny who is in a dilemma. The nature of her difficulty, you can choose entirely for yourself. What I'm really interested in here is to ask you to explore the possibilities of representing Penny's consciousness. However, your main constraint is that Penny must always be referred to in the third person. She is not the narrator even though it is her thought being represented.

I'd like you to take note of the following:

When a third-person, "omniscient" narrator plunges into the consciousness of a character and represents their thoughts but still in the third-person, this technique is called focalization.
And there are different levels of focalization. Used to great effect, the narrator can display a particular level of empathy with a character, for a different effect. Let me demonstrate how this works.

A character's quoted monologue, "Have I wasted my time in this job all these years?" would, in focalization, be converted to the third person and the past tense, using for example the following three techniques:

1 She wondered if she had wasted her time in her job, all those years. This sentence is an example of what is called psycho-narration. The narrator is reporting indirectly the character's thought, changing the pronoun and tense, and substituting the demonstrative adjective "those" for "these".

2 Had she squandered her time by remaining in that occupation for all those years?: This sentence is an example of narrated monologue. Note that there's no phrase such as "She wondered" in this example to identify the prominence of an obtrusive authorial narrator here, which means we have greater emphasis on the character's thoughts, without any additional narratorial reportage. However, the language used is more writerly than in the character's own quoted monologue, so we say that here is an example of narrated monologue of the dissonant kind.

3 Had she wasted her time in his job, all those years? This is narrated monologue of the consonant kind, because though it phrases the character's thought in the third person and switches tense, it is the closest kind of focalization we have seen to the original example of quoted monologue quoted above.

Example 3, and, to an extent, example 2, are known in linguistics as free indirect discourse. Such discourse is 'free' because it's not preceded by phrases such as "She said" to make it reported speech that emphasises the narrator's standpoint; it's indirect because it's not a first person utterance.

So, I'd like you to produce a piece of work which shows all three kinds of focalization mentioned above, in operation.

And please do make sure to have good fun at attempting this exercise. I hope it will benefit you!

Hey there Fins: Here is my stab at what I understand this to be?...


1. Pondering where all of her glory years as a dancer had faded to.

2. Should she had been more meticulous with her craft throughout the wasted years?

3. Would the practice have paid off in her later years?

FinsburyParkCarrots

Spot on.

Thanks, even flow?

ISN

oooops.....hehehehe.....big:)

ruby

ISN, your work is wonderful.
Please don't feel sad.
I've been reading all your stuff here.
You know so much that I sometimes feel like a dumbass cos I know so little in comparison!

FinsburyParkCarrots

ISN is very good. The exercise clearly states there are two ways one might reorder narrative time. I was demonstrating that the piece ISN wrote was strong enough to be adapted to both forms.
I believe workshop exercises are good for showing writers that literature is a process and that we must continue to negotiate and revise its form. I'm never satisfied with my own efforts. I'm always changing them.

ISN, pm me if you like, on this point. Let's get back to the exercises! You too, ISN!

Love
Finsbury

ISN

(:))

ruby

Despondency's a stupid bastard. I know him well. Kick the asshole out the closest window!
I hope you have sweet sleep, ISN
xo

ISN

thanks rubytubey....I love you very muchly....altho I don't tell you......hehehehehehe....I'm quite happy.....now I feel better......I love you rubytubey.....:)

ruby tubey
the only ruby
around

ruby

I love you too ISN (have been trying to think of something that rhymes with ISN) And very muchly so too.

There once was a girl called ISN
she was fiesty, irish and very good with a pen
Fair knowledge abundant she did possess
and her words in themselves were fineness!

Sweet dreams xo

ruby

(p.s Mr Finsbury actually paid your work a high compliment I thought. Cos if he didn't know you well enough and think your work worthy enough he never would have or could have used it as an example. I think it's only cos he knows and assumes you too therefore know that you are great that he could do that. I'll shut up now.)

FinsburyParkCarrots

If I hear another word about this I'll attach a brick to this thread and drown it.



Only joking.

Now. Onward.

ruby

(Sorry it's a woman thing. We tend to draw things out. Part of what makes us so wonderful.)
Surely one brick wouldn't be enough? This thing is huge!