Subliminal Subtext

During one of the workshops I attended this fall, we had an assignment to write a scene with no dialogue. I wrote the following, and have always wondered if anybody in the world would be able to figure out what was actually happening in the scene. I don't think anybody in workshop did, but if you're game, tell me what you think the situation surrounding this scene might be and what brought you to that conclusion. Or, if this just seems like a completely jumbled and confusing mess, tell me that too.

This is just a raw snippet from a writing prompt, so you're not going to hurt my feelings a bit if you tell me it's completely incomprehensible.

To make this more interesting, there will be a prize for whoever comes up with the interpretation closest to what I had in mind. Naturally, I haven't figured out what the prize will be, but it will most likely be something from Amazon (I heart you one-click). I will announce the winner -- oh, I don't know -- sometime early next week. So guess away and no guess is too crazy. As a matter of fact, if you guess something better than what I originally envisioned, I'll probably claim it's what I meant to say.

Jeanne folded the invoice from the attorney, pushed it to the edge of the kitchen table past the plate of congealing chicken, mashed potatoes and canned peas, and ran her hands through her hair. Gunmetal streaks dominated either side of her center part for an inch or more, and abruptly transitioned to dark brown like a bad neighborhood divided from a good one. Dick drained the last of a tepid cup of coffee and checked his watch. A pile of black trash bags and a smaller pile of boxes, labeled Salvation Army sat in the middle of the floor, an accusation, a poor man’s shrine or perhaps, just the trash that it was. One bag remained open; a torn flannel shirt coiled around a broken Walkman, the stench of an ashtray and unwashed clothing hiding the burnt kitchen spoon underneath.

The phone in the middle of the table rang, ripping through the silence in the house that had until now been interrupted only by the sounds of the plow blades grinding against the street out front. Jeanne’s hands stopped ruffling and froze, still, as though she considered pulling her hair out by the roots. They both looked at the Caller ID. Department of Corrections. Jeanne’s right hand extended up and at an angle, hovering over the table and giving her the look of an uncertain student, offering the answer to a difficult question. Their eyes met and Dick picked up the phone and pressed the off button to silence the ringing. He set it down precisely, checked his watch again and pushed back from the table. He carried his plate and the chipped mug across the kitchen, stopped to scrape the chicken bones and cold peas into the open trash bag and then placed the dishes in the dishwasher.

Jeanne stared at the phone and dropped her hands to the table top. Dick pulled a heavy parka from a coat rack beside the back door, put it on and began gathering keys, wallet, and cigarettes and pocketed a heavy metal medallion with a triangle and Roman numeral inscribed in the center. He patted down his coat pockets. Jeanne stood, moved her chair to the front of the refrigerator and hesitated, staring at the snapshots of smiling faces held on with magnetic fruits and vegetables, a heavy magnet that said Korn, and one that said Visualize Whirled Peas. She reached out and touched a yellowing photo of the three of them and then climbed up. Dick stopped to watch as she took a dust covered bottle out of the cabinet above and stepped back down. He jammed his hands in his pockets and dipped his bearded chin inside the front of his coat. Her back turned to him, she filled a glass with amber liquid, took a long swallow, wiped her lips with the back of her hand and planted both fists on the edge of the counter in front of the sink. She tried to look beyond the reflection that stared back at her from the dark window. The sound of the clock ticking was interrupted by the compressor in the refrigerator, and the smell of roasted chicken lingered in the tiny kitchen.

The phone rang again as another plow passed by. Jeanne turned to face Dick and he looked away. He reached into his pockets and pulled his keys out, tucked the Big Book under his arm, grabbed the trash bags and walked out into the snow.

Free Writing

Since I’d never taking a writing course or workshop until recently, I’d never been under the gun to put pen to paper for five or ten or fifteen minutes and write in response to a specific prompt. We did quite a few of these writing exercises at Grand Lake and each time, the goal was very specific and it was very often to write in a way that I might not typically do. I was surprised at some of the results.

An odd sensation, almost a feeling of being possessed would come over me in response to a free writing prompt. It was very different from sitting in front of my laptop at home, consciously deciding what to write next.

There is something to writing in a workshop environment that reminded me of the spinning classes I used to go to. A cyclist friend asked me why in the world anyone would need to go to a class to ride a stationary bicycle. Anyone who’s gone to one of these grueling classes will tell you that few people would ever maintain the insane riding pace for a fifty minute session if not surrounded by a roomful of people. The only thing that ever kept me on that bike was peer pressure and the desire not to be the person who slinked off to the locker room before the class was done.

The writing exercises triggered an automatic kind of writing where the inner editor was not present. The urgency I felt was to complete the initial idea before the time was over. I imagine it’s possible to replicate that sensation alone with some practice.

One of the many prompts was to create an establishing opener for a scene by using only the physical setting with no dialogue or internal narrative – all show and no tell. The goal was to lead the reader into a very specific moment within a story world.

I’m not sure where my establishing opener came from. It’s not Chekhov, but here’s the unedited version of what I came up with:

The girl slid down from the high brass bed, plastic pads from her footed pajamas scraping the plywood flooring. She ran to the kitchen, dragged a vinyl seated chair to the counter, climbed onto it and reached for the cereal box. Tumbling moons, stars and four leafed clovers rang out into the bowl and echoed throughout the room. She sidestepped old-fashioned glasses, half full with brown liquid and bobbing cigarette butts, carefully swiped an overflowing ashtray and several more glasses to one side of the Danish modern coffee table and crouched to her knees in front of breakfast. The glasses emitted a sharp smell that pushed at her face and nostrils each time she lowered her head to take a bite. A fur coat lay in a heap on the floor behind the sofa. She stepped across the room to the turntable perched on planks above grey cinder blocks. The colorful album covers lay scattered on the floor and a large stack of records revolved around and around, the faint pop coming through the speakers each time they made a full revolution. Carefully, she lifted the arm and guided the stylus to the outer edge of the record on top. Her eyes widened and she snatched at the black knob and turned all the way to the left. Slowly, she reversed the knob’s direction until weak strains of music came through the speakers. She lay belly down on the floor in front of one speaker on the thin carpet, the perfume of spilled drinks and overturned ashtrays at nose level, her ear pressed to the speaker.

This isn’t something I can use for my current work in progress, and I'd revise it quite a bit if I did want to use it, but I really enjoyed the exercise and this whole scene just seemed to pop into my head from out of nowhere. By focusing on establishing this scene and not using any more description than what an outside observer could see, not describing the thoughts of the girl or narrating, it forced me to think of as many meaningful details as I could to convey something about this person and her environment. It also illustrated for me how frequently we tend to write in back story or provide exposition that we might be able to more effectively convey with more show and less tell.

Do you consciously review your work to see how much telling you are doing versus showing? Do you have any tips, suggestions, ideas or anecdotes about the benefits of timed free writing exercises? If you are familiar with the psychology of how free writing seems to unleash something different than what our more disciplined writing routines do, please share your thoughts!