Howdy,
I shared with you a couple of days ago I am reading On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King, (a book containing an insightful and generous tone of open, honest, and well-crafted advice) and today I read through a section in which he gives a short writing assignment (the first I’ve seen and one of the few if not the only one I’d suspect because he writes, “This isn’t a textbook, and so there aren’t a lot of exercises, but I want to offer you one now …”).
The job for the writing exercise is a few pages of drafting “unplotted narration” upon a twist on backstory of a situation he supplies. Emphasized is the notion of situation over plotting, story over plot.
What’s quite an offer is, the famous author gives invitation for contact in sharing the exercise with him on his website and some indication that he’d look forward to reading what he could get to and even respond to a few of those instances. Certainly no guarantee, but a nice gesture.
I don’t think I’ll pursue that from him, though, particularly since I haven’t been in the habit of writing about psychotic murders creeping people out and then doing very bad things to horrifically unfortunate characters who find themselves in “situations,” and I don’t plan to start that.
But I was thinking I could attempt to replicate the energy and part of the purpose of the exercise with a jump back into the fiction I’ve been giving a run on this site lately by exploring Jake Jones’s dad a bit more as well as the relationship between him and his son, our young friend and developing basketball player, Jake. It’ll give me a chance to fire away again on the developing story with no real pressure on results, just possible discovery and direction from unplotted narration.
My plan is to start it today and continue in tomorrow’s post …
* * * * *
Following his shot, Jake bounded in and snatched his miss. He turned straight back to the free throw line to release another shot, seeking the right flick of the wrist, the right feel — a repetition from approached all the way to ball through the net.
Jake Jones toed the line for his two bounces and a deep breath. Between dribble one and dribble two, he noticed something. The thing — the person — didn’t register with him and nagged at him through the motion.
He caught his dribble.
Jake looked again to the side, completely out of focus on the free throw. What was running through his head, stood off to the side of the court. Leaned more than stood, Jake saw when he stopped fully.
His dad leaned against the fence.
In his natural reaction, Jake almost had to wonder what his dad was doing, leaning there on the fence alongside the sidelines.
On the sidelines of the court where Jake was shooting hoops.
He had to wonder — it was a wonder — because he’d never seen his dad watching him play basketball before.
Mr. Jones was shorter than Jake was. Well, not in actual inches. Jake’s dad stood taller than his son still, but compared against adults, other dads, Jake thought his dad seemed much less tall to them than he himself felt shorter than the competition his own age.
Jake never even thought to imagine his dad and basketball in the same scene. Jake also always felt a weirdness, a little something from somewhere that I didn’t think he made up, that since he’d found basketball when he lost his mom, his dad would stay away from it …
To be continued …
–Billy
Reading. Writing. Living.
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