37 - Country Mouse


37. Describe the experience of a country-born character's first trip to the city.

Town Mouse and Country Mouse is one of Aesop's Fables (Not Hans Anderson, as I said in the video, apologies) which, as a prompt, opens up the opportunities to explore and develop a character's backstory. The original characters were simply visiting each other and complaining about the differences in each other's lives, whereas here we can build something with a foundation that we can come back to in the future.

31. City Mouse will come up at some point along the line and we will return to these characters in order to extend the story.

What is Backstory? - Simply put, it is the events of a story that have happened before the narrative begins - HP does not start with the arrival of his first owl post, for example. A skilled writer can weave the backstory into a narrative without slowing things down, some writers use flashbacks or dream sequences and some just throw a load of history into their narrative like a brain dump - please, please, avoid the latter! The best writers can transmit their character's backstories using character traits, dialogue and inference and with this prompt we will attempt to do the same.

Starter - Who Am I?

To begin with we must discover the roots of our character, where they came from and what their personal version of 'normal' is. 

Country Mouse could be a literal idea - this character was born and raised on a farm or in a small village and has to go to the city for a specific reason. OR, Country Mouse could be an immigrant who has had to flee a war-torn country. OR anything you like - if you have lived all your life in a small village try and create the opposite.

To build our backstory we must answer a few questions - beyond the basic age/gender/race - these are pretty much universal questions for any character-building task:

  1. Born/Grew up where?
  2. Normal daily activities
  3. Family experience
  4. Favourite place/memory
  5. How have the character's experiences made him?

This is my character. I have decided to base the events of my writing in the 1980's as I think that this is a good time for country/city life to still be separate as it falls before technology became readily accessible.

Ross Byrne

- Born (1965) and raised on a Croft in the Scottish Islands – very rough ground to farm – mainly sheep and a little barley.

- Second son of the family, attended the village school until 14, spending most of his free time tending the flock or the land.

- Very tall, strong and muscular. He does not drink, having been raised in the Presbyterian Church. He is rarely up after dark.

- He is an early-riser who enjoys watching the sunrise over the sea. He likes the rain and changeable Scottish weather.

- He grew up in a small, close community (300 people, mostly related) and very rarely travelled to the mainland.

- His older brother left the island to bring back a wife, they now have children and have inherited the farm.

- *[You'll find this point after the writing task, I'm deliberately holding it back because it's something I want to describe to you using inference]

 This is a nice foundation on which to build a characterisation - you do not need to ever include all of these details in your work, it is sufficient that YOU as the writer know where your characters are coming from.

Building Ideas - Through His Eyes

The next stage of this process is to take our character, whose foundation is set, and place them in somewhere new. Think about HP, his childhood with the Dursleys hasn't prepared him for any kind of magical world, so in the first book JK Rowling shows us how he sees/feels about this new reality.

Think about these questions and develop your character's experiences:

  1. Why did Country Mouse leave home?
  2. What has he experienced in the city? Contrasts to home?
  3. What things does Country Mouse find odd/strange/unsettling/challenging?
  4. Does CM want to stay? Why?

These are my initial notes on Ross's experience in the city.

- Ross was sent to the city to find a place – no jobs on the island, elder brother taking over the farm – and decided to go to London, rather than mainland Scotland.

- He finds London very busy, crowded and noisy.

- Many different voices, accents, languages and colours.

- He can’t see the sunrise over the buildings and has lost his link with nature.

- **[Again, this point is after the task]

37. Describe the experience of a country-born character's first trip to the city.

So, now we're ready to transmit our ideas. Because we're looking for the character's experiences I think we should be writing a letter rather than a narrative this time, this allows us to explore his/her thoughts and feelings in a more personal way.

- Write a letter home from Country Mouse.
- How does Country Mouse feel about this place?
- Write 4-5 Paragraphs - Don't forget to PLAN (See Below)

CHALLENGE - What is CM trying to infer? What is the undercurrent to the letter?


PLANNING - You don't have to be really in-depth with planning a piece like this, just separate your ideas into paragraphs to help you keep the story flowing. For example, 

Paragraph 1 - Contrast of Place
Paragraph 2 - Contrast of People
Paragraph 3 - Contrast of Work/Employment/Activities
Paragraph 4 - Contrast of Ideas

 My Example

 

The Blue Cat

Soho

London

30th January 1983

Dear Mother,

                        I’ve been here just over a month. It has been quite an experience. This place doesn’t sleep. There are streetlights that shine icy white even after midnight. The buildings are huge, bigger than in Edinborough, so that you cannot see the sun on the horizon. These skyscrapers hold the filthy air, and when there is no wind it’s thicker than sea mist and makes me cough. I miss the waves on the rocks; the beaches down here have been tamed to flat sand with concrete walls.

            The people in the city are so different; faces and colours and voices and accents. I’ve struggled to understand. They call it English, but it’s not Da’s English. It’s made me realise how closed-in the islands are. I goggled like a lamb at the first dark skin I saw, I’ve only ever seen Scots complexion before.

            I can’t help but rise early in the mornings. There’s no one around except the few stumbling home after a long night. I tried the clubs once, but a sober man can’t enjoy himself among drunks. I understand what the Pastor said. I’ve found a small pub here that needs a door-man. Walking hills and handling sheep has given me the ideal physique for managing drunks – so says Andy, the manager and my roommate. I’m staying in the flat on top of the pub, which makes it easier for us both.

            Andy’s shown me all around Soho. It’s such a bright and interesting place with something new around every corner. I miss the sound of the wind on the heather, but here there’s music, and colour, different rhythms dancing together, different people to meet. There are no black sheep here, Ma. This flock is so varied that differences are accepted.

            Give my love to Angus, Helena, the kids, and Father,

                        Sincerely,

                                    Ross

These are the bits I've cut from the lists above, I hope that you can see where I've managed to infer meaning and transmit a message that links to them.

*- Ross is lonely and a little confused. He has been raised in a strict Christian society where he cannot explore his own sexuality, or even discuss his feelings. Where his father has clear opinions on what is wrong and right, his mother and older brother both understand and appreciate his decision to leave.

**- He has found a community that is accepting and open to differences.

REFLECTION

These are my reflections on my writing. Use the starters below to reflect on your own work.

I think that I did/didn't manage to infer the idea that Ross was unhappy at home because of his father's opinion on his sexuality, and that he has found acceptance in the community of Soho.

My favourite part is, "there are no black sheep here," because it reflects on some unseen comment Ross' father has made in a way that clearly indicates Ross is no longer under the sway of island societal expectations.

I was not successful with the punctuation, next time I will focus more on the flow of words and spacing.

Extension Task

Now you've written one letter, try another. Write a response from a member of CM's family, you will have to re-answer the questions to build their foundation this time.

Terminology Check

Do you know these words? Look them up if you don't, and try to add them to your vocabulary.

Fable

Narrative

Flashback

Transmit

Trait

Contrast

Inference

Readily

Croft

Presbyterian

Undercurrent

Complexion

Physique

Expectations


 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reflections

Image
  Reflections Reflections are not about beating yourself up for not being good enough, they are intended as a way of identifying where you need to improve. And – most importantly - to provide you with personalised targets to work towards. No one should finish a task and be completely happy, but you should be satisfied that you’ve done enough – for now, which is why my reflection questions are always a combination of positive and negative elements, ‘I did well with this,’ and ‘I could do better with that.’ You need to have done at least 3-4 of the prompts from this blog, more would be better, because then you can pick up on patterns of things that you struggle with and balance them against the things you do well. Now, here are some of the more common targets that I have set for my students, based on their work and reflections. I’ll give you a few tips on how to improve your work for each one. First – Use of correct and ambitious SPAG Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar are...
Read more

111 - Outside

Image
  111. Write a description of what you can see through a window. Your blue is not my blue, subtle changes in the cells of our eyes mean that we all see colours differently. Over the centuries we have developed a complex colour language, comparing colours to other things or even giving particular names to very specific shades. Colour vocabulary is useful for building interest and detail in descriptive work so this is an opportunity to explore these specialist adjectives. Starter - Name a Colour [5 Minutes] Pick one or two of the basic colours - Blue, Red, Yellow, Orange, Green or Purple - and list as many variations of that colour as you can. (Don't Google!) For a Challenge, try White or Black... DON'T SCROLL DOWN YET! My Lists Blue - Navy, Royal Blue, Turquoise, Sky Blue, Baby Blue, Ultramarine, Indigo, Cornflower Blue, Electric Blue, Denim, Aqua, Cyan, Ocean Blue, Teal, Cobalt Blue, Peacock, Azure, Cerulean, Berry, Sapphire and Arctic Blue. Yellow - Buttercup, Buttermilk, But...
Read more

67. Childhood Shoes

Image
  Prompt No.  67 – Describe a pair of your childhood shoes, what memories do they evoke?   This prompt has a similar root to the reflection task we did a couple of weeks ago, but instead of creating a character from a reflection of us now, we’re building ideas from the seed of the person we were in our childhood, which is more interesting, creatively, because a seed may develop into many different new ideas. Starter For the starter task we need to find these childhood shoes. If your parents are the sentimental type, then they may have kept your first little booties, some people even have them coated in copper as an ornament. You might need to dig through the baby photos. Or you can try to remember your first pair of shoes. Close your eyes for a few minutes and try to recall any early sensations you can remember in your feet - use the simple meditation I've included in the video. As soon as you open your eyes, write down everything you can remember about wearing ...
Read more