SIX SENTENCE SUNDAY - THREE PERSONS BUT ONE PRESENT

Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's

Looking Smoky...

Image from Wikimedia Commons

For my short story competition entries I have been experimenting with present tense. It seemed like a good time to see how the reading experience is altered when the narrative is written in first, second and third person too.

FIRST PERSON present:

There are six levels of sorting.

I hate smelling, sitting inside a primordial swamp of laundry, fending off images of the origins of every odour. There’s nothing good to be gained by thinking too much, and it’s not like I’ve another option.

Not thinking about it was my mum’s answer to everything; that, and re-brewing cups of stewed tea. I sit on shirts, in smalls, between socks, and I'm sure keeping front of house is more important.

When was the last time I immersed myself in laundry?

SECOND PERSON present: 

There are six levels of sorting.

You hate smelling, sitting inside a primordial swamp of laundry, fending off images of the origins of every odour. There’s nothing good to be gained by thinking too much, and it’s not like you've another option.

Not thinking about it was your mum’s answer to everything; that, and re-brewing cups of stewed tea. You sit on shirts, in smalls, between socks,and you're sure keeping front of house is more important.

When was the last time you immersed yourself in laundry?

THIRD PERSON present: 

There are six levels of sorting.

She hates smelling, sitting inside a primordial swamp of laundry, fending off images of the origins of every odour. She knows there’s nothing good to be gained by thinking too much, and it’s not like she has another option.

Not thinking about it was her mum’s answer to everything; that, and re-brewing cups of stewed tea. She sits on shirts, in smalls, between socks, and she’s sure keeping front of house is more important.

When was the last time she immersed herself in laundry?

WHICH POINT OF VIEW - first person, second person, third person - ATTRACTS YOU MOST?

THURSDAY’S TIP’S: WRITE SENSATIONALLY

REMEMBER TO BRING ALL
THE SENSES TO PLAY

THURSDAY’S TIP’S: Write sensationally!

“Your protagonist is your reader’s portal into the story. The more observant he or she can be, the more vivid will be the world you’re creating. They don’t have to be super-educated, they just have to be mentally active. Keep them looking, thinking, wondering, remembering.” -  Janet Fitch

Today, I took Janet Fitch's advice, I read through my wip in search of setting. Keeping Hal looking around him was the order of the day. I found that although I’d remembered to tell the reader where Hal was I was over-reliant on the sense of sight.

Apparently, there are more than the five senses that could be used to add depth to the readers understanding: 

•  Sight

•  Taste

•  Touch

•  Pressure

•  Itch

•  Thermoception:  Ability to sense heat and cold. 

•  Sound: 

•  Smell: 

•  Proprioception:  This sense gives you the ability to tell where your body parts are, relative to other body parts. 

•  Tension Sensors:  These are found in such places as your muscles and allow the brain the ability to monitor muscle tension.

•  Nociception:  In a word, pain.  There are three distinct types of pain receptors: cutaneous (skin), somatic (bones and joints), and visceral (body organs).

•  Equilibrioception:   The sense that allows you to keep your balance and sense body movement in terms of acceleration and directional changes. 

•  Stretch Receptors:  These are found in such places as the lungs, bladder, stomach, and the gastrointestinal tract. 

•  Chemoreceptors:  These trigger an area of the medulla in the brain that is involved in detecting blood born hormones and drugs - the vomiting reflex is linked to this one.

•  Thirst

•  Hunger

•  Magentoception:  This is the ability to detect magnetic fields

•  Time:  This one is still being debated but experimental data has conclusively shown humans have a startling accurate sense of time.

Using senses more traditional than fascinating, and considering the speed at which the writing needed to flow, I dripped in sensory information that added to way the reader would picture the setting.

The sensory information adds depth to the ambience - moving the reader on from an understanding of a river in general, to this river in particular.

I think the adjectives provide the ambient overview but the verb provides the sharp spotlight that highlights the details.

I read somewhere that three sections designed to bring depth to how the reader relates to the environment is enough. 

ARE YOU HAVING A SENSATIONAL EVENING?

7 SENTENCE SUNDAY - PERFECT FOR ST PATRICK'S DAY

HAPPY ST PATRICK'S DAY
May your troubles never start
and your blessing never end.

I was born in Ireland. 

Although I’m not exactly Irish any more, I love it when the teams do well and I've always celebrated St. Patrick's Day. 

Everyone gets to be Irish on St Patrick’s Day. 

One of the benefits of the day falling on Sunday is that there’s a parade in London… on St. Patrick's Day! We’re going to celebrate the day in fine-style although I don’t think there are plans to make the River Thames run green like they do in cities like Boston.

Last week only 50 % of my children were here to celebrate Mothers’ Day so this is Irish-ish Mother’s Day.

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig!

To celebrate the day, I’m posting 7 sentences for St Patrick’s Day Sunday

HAL LONGLEAT AND THE TROUBLE WITH TRUTH

Hal’s eyes widened. The outlaw's tone was sticky like everything he said was a joke, nothing more than a trick. What answer did the Fox expect him to say? If he was bored with his own company, he should have sent for one of his own people to torture with questions. “I don’t know about laws…or brothers.”

“Really?” The outlaw stared as though he could see right into Hal’s head where his thoughts were written and easy to read.

HOW ARE YOU SPENDING ST PATRICK'S DAY?

PLOT IS PEOPLE - MARY, MORGAN AND THE TALL MEN

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. 

Anyone can play along:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title and the author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

“Plot is people.” ~ Leigh Brackett.

SNAKE ROPES by Jess Richards

This novel is set on an island that’s off the edge of the map and outside history, an isolated and insular society that’s troubled from within and beyond.

“I tear through to the bedroom, look under hims small bed, under my bed, rumple up the bedclothes in case him is hiding. In Da’s room, I rummage through the wardrobe where Mam’s clothes still hang, but there’s no Barney.”

WOULD YOU FIND THE INVENTED DIALECT A BARRIER TO READING?

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY READING? I NEED A RECOMMENDATION

THURSDAY STYLE

Thursday and Tuesday have many similarities, they are both days of the week, they both start with letter T,  and I'm supposed to post on them.
I was all set to hit post on Tuesday but I was all-excited about the Man Utd game that didn't go the way I hoped it was destined to go. Now, I hate football... and I will until Saturday's fixture against West Ham. I also follow the cricket, England were trying to play in New Zealand - I think it's a shame the Kiwi team didn't let them have a proper turn, so far. This has not been a good week. 

Thank goodness for reading and writing - I like both of them.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. 

Anyone can play along:

• Grab your current read

• Open to a random page

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

• Share the title and the author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Once is about a boy called Felix.

Once it was 1942, and Felix had to pretend he was a catholic orphan when in fact he was Jewish – and a little confused at how much the world he knew was changing.

Once is a harrowing and emotional tale about a hopeful, if naïve, little boy.

Once Felix couldn’t imagine the depths of evil that shadowed the world but, well, it never entered his head that what he was experiencing was worse than a lot of misunderstandings.

pg 149 This is why Once was followed by Then

“You know when you jump off a moving train and  Nazis shoot at you with machine guns and you see sharp tree trunks coming at you and then you hit the ground so hard you feel like you’ve smashed your head open and bullets have gone through your chest and you don’t survive even though you prayed to God, Mary, the Pope and Richmal Compton?

That’s what happened to poor Chaya”

These are Miz B's W...W...W... Wednesday questions:

What are you currently reading?

         A Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England

         by Ian Mortimer

What did you recently finish?

         Once 

         by Morris Gleitzman

What do you think you'll read next?

         The Raven Boys

         by Maggie Stiefvater

What are you reading? What book do you really recommend?