Yesterday I wrote about an introductory course that I’m currently taking, on fiction writing. Not because I want to write a book, but as a tool to force my brain to work by learning new things. I’ve opted to take a ‘use it or lose it’ approach to dealing with my disease-related mild cognitive impairment (MCI), in the hopes of preventing the MCI from worsening.
During each week of this course, there are some audio or video clips to watch, some short excerpts of fiction to read… and some very brief assignments to write. This week, here on the blog, I’ll be sharing some of my assigned writing exercises so far – some of these micro-stories – with you.
The following micro-story was written to a very specific set of instructions and limitations, based on a video clip shown as part of the course. The assignment was to write a 200-word character sketch of any of the ten or so people we’d seen in the video, focusing on quickly creating a fictional character and imagining what they might possibly be doing at that moment.
We had to try to provide a backstory to our character, as well as to incorporate some elements of their physical description. This assignment also required us to situate our characters as they were in the video. Mine was riding a bus, so I had to find a way to convey that in my story; I could only describe the bus, and my character’s clothing and position, as these were shown in the clip.
This is my unedited story, so please be kind! I’ve never written fiction before, so this is all new to me… I’m discovering that it’s also a lot of fun – as long as the assignments are short so that I don’t become frustrated by my MCI, that it ‘-)
“Keith kept his eye on the bright red button, as the bus swayed along the boulevard. His shoulders were hunched towards the doors, in the ready position to vault over the railing. He knew that he’d be able to exit the vehicle quickly, if it came under attack. Keith had chosen the first seat past the back exit, setting his backpack down on next space.
The bus was nowhere near full, and his scraggly appearance and camouflage jacket were generally enough to encourage other passengers to keep their distance. The backpack was extra insurance; insulation against the risk of being hemmed in.It wasn’t that he didn’t like people, rather that he couldn’t predict what would happen if a stranger got too close to him. Anyone, really.
Ever since he’d been released from the military, after that last gruelling tour in Afghanistan, Keith had felt best in the woods. “Best” in relative terms, he supposed, because he hadn’t felt good at all since being spliced away from his unit; his real family.
Sandra Woods; Introduction to fiction writing, course assignment; 2020
If you’d told him five years ago that he’d someday be living with PTSD, he’d never have believed it. Not him… So hopefully the research project would help.”
If you’d like to comment on this story, feel free to reach out over on Twitter or Instagram. Regular blog followers will know what I was being comment-spammed with obscene messages or bots, so I had to resort to disabling the comments feature here. Having MCI means having a limited attention span, and I’m not willing to waste any of it dealing with other people’s trash!
As always, thanks so much for stopping by – and have a wonderful, happy day ‘-)