Welcome to week 14 of CU This Tuesday writing group! I missed a couple of weeks due to (a) being busy marking final essays one week and then (b) being on my way to Vancouver to see Le Tigre the next! Now I’m back and ready to keep writing my way into a new novel about an eating disorder clinic on a Gulf island. I’ve been reading Unlikeable Female Characters by Anna Bogutskaya, and it’s been making me want to write a female villain character who does *not* end up dying in the end. Maybe Dr. Binet? In any case, Monday’s Wordle answer was: Folly and my random number generator came up with 4, which represents the first-person collective POV. Here are some ideas for you:
Your character does something foolish:
Stays out all night before a bit presentation at work or a job interview.
Sells all their possessions to chasea love interest they’ve met once across the world.
Betrays someone close to them with a spontaneous act that seemed like a good idea in the moment.
Writing prompt: FOLLY in 1st-person collective POV
On nights when Dr. Binet feeds us pills before bed, we know to hide them under our tongues and spit them out when she retreats. We keep all our pills inside a teddy bear under Thelma’s bed. We save them for when we want to leave this island for the cloud island in the sky. We don’t know why we stay here, but one reason we all know but don’t say out loud is so we can listen to Dr. Binet’s Follies.
We wait until the doorknob turns again and we hear Dr. Binet’s dragon breaths in the doorway. We count five breaths, in and out, one for each of us—Maisy, Hazel, Thelma, Olive, and Jane.
Once we hear the swish of Ripple Jackson’s socks—grey wool with red stripes on top, smattered with burn holes from a feral childhood spent around fire and cigarettes, slouched around his ankles—on the hallway rug, our eyes pop open.
We slide off our beds and huddle like minnows on the floor. The floor hurts our bones, we are only bones, though we notice a bit of pudge in Jane’s thighs. Was it always there? Is she leaving us?
We squirm like one little mass of baby garter snakes into the drawing room, and we press against the wall. We sit in a row like puzzle pieces, legs spread to accept the girl before us, and we press our ribs, shoulders, and skulls against the wall.
On the other side of the wall is Dr. Binet’s bedroom, the bed she normally shares with Harry. We don’t sneak in here to hear Harry snore and Dr. Binet wrestle with her sheets and sigh. We’re here for Ripple. Ripple Jackson is one reason we stay on this island and don’t leave for the clouds, which would be so much softer.
We’re here for all of Dr. Binet’s Follies, but Ripple is our favourite. We think Dr. Binet brings him here only to make us happy. We can smell him through the wall, his vinaigrette. Everything about him is earthbound. We want to use our tongues to lick the dirt from his cheeks. We all agree we would eat the detritus of Ripple Jackson.
Afterthoughts
This one seems like a to be continued … I obviously need to do some more thinking about who these characters are and what their arcs will be. I’m wondering if we need Harry or if maybe Dr. Binet should just be on her own. Is that tension necessary or is there enough? Or maybe Harry should just be a memory? It’s nice now to bring in a few more island-dweller characters into the mix and see what happens. Let me know how your writing went, and I’ll CU Next Tuesday!