Assignment for this Week
Gentlemen!
In terms of the assignment for this week, it breaks down as follows:
Those of you who were on the left side of the room (my left) are to bring in short sequences of scenes (bonus points for naming that literary device) that you feel tell great story
sans dialogue.
Those of you on the right side of the room (my right) have a slightly different challenge. I want you to re-write the scene from last week's assignment using
only description to tell the story. This means grabbing onto active verbs, vivid adjectives and concrete descriptions. Again, be concise - for brevity is the soul of wit. No more than one page in total, please.
Some of examples of good visual writing include, but are not limited to, the following:
They set a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the colour of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandhi Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT.
He didn't see it coming. The last he saw of India was the pink stucco facade of a place called the Khush Oil Hotel.
- Count Zero
Maynard and Zed come through the curtains. Zed is an even more intense version of Maynard, if such a thing is possible. The two hillbillys are obviously brothers. Where Maynard is a vicious pitbull, Zed is a deadly cobra. Zed walks in and stands in front of the two captives. He inspects them for a long time.
- Pulp Fiction
We are in the darkened living room of the Ustinov household, the only light rippling from the images on the T.V. screen. Alone in the house, CRUISER USTINOV sits on the sofa. As the program ends he fumbles with the remote. The years have had a toll on Cruiser but he's still holding Father Time at bay. Trim and fit, the only concession he's made to late middle age are a pair of thick-rimmed glasses that crouch on the end of his nose. With a sigh, he hauls himself to his feet.
Cruiser makes his way down a dim hallway to the staircase. You get a sense that this is house that hasn't changed much since the days when the Brooklyn Dodgers game were "news" not "history." The faded wallpaper clings to the walls with a mindless tenacity.
- In Memory of Cruiser Ustinov
