Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Creative writing: a first person narrator who exists in the present and reflects on the trauma of the past. includes clash of values or attitudes and an emphasis on tention

Carefully parse what this question is asking you to do before you begin answering it. It is asking for a first-person narrative reflecting on a past trauma. This means you will need to take careful account of what tense you are writing in—you may wish to establish where your first person narrator is in his or her life in the present, which will involve writing in the present tense, before you go on to describe the clash of values and/or attitudes which led to their past trauma. For example:
"Today, anyone who meets me for the first time probably sees a self-possessed professional person who is at ease with himself. However, these people don't realize—and I am glad they don't realize—what difficulties I have overcome to get to where I am."
This is only an example—you may wish to set the scene in your own way. You should also decide who your narrator is (male/female) and where they are in life (their job, where they live, etc). You may also choose to have your narrator be in a terrible situation which you can then say was caused by the trauma you go on to describe. Having set the scene, you then allow your writing to flow naturally into a past tense description of whatever issues the narrator has experienced. For example:
"In truth, I had a terrible adolescence. My childhood was fine, but that was, I now realize, because children don't really have attitudes or values which can clash with those of their parents'. I never really considered what my parents' attitudes or politics were until I was seventeen years old and..."
At this point, you have set the scene, and established some past tension. Now you need to decide what clash of attitudes or values caused the trauma. Some easy examples might be:
1. Your character, a woman, became pregnant as a teenager and had very conservative parents who disapproved of her aborting the baby; or, conversely, had liberal parents who disapproved of her keeping the baby as they thought it would ruin her life;
2. Your character, of either gender, didn't realize their parents were homophobic until they discovered they were gay, which led to conflict with the parents (either resolved, ultimately, or unresolved and leading to estrangement).
This part of the story, then, is where you explicate the conflict. This should all be in the past tense. The final section of the narrative should tie the ends together and return the reader to the present, framing the internal narrative:
"Today, I don't tell many people about what happened to me, and I have mostly got over it. But it is always with me..." and so on.
I hope this is helpful as a starting point. Remember that this is your response and your story, so you should fill in the details in a way that resonates with you, and make sure your narrator has a unique personality.

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