Week 6!
Welcome to Week 6 of CU This Tuesday Writing Group! I’m continuning to use these prompts to create little scenes or character sketches or little bits of an idea for a next novel about a frenemyship between two child actors as they grow up and become women. I’m using this as a way to work my way into this novel, to see who these characters are and where their lives might take them. This Monday’s Wordle was RANGE and my random number generator came up with 3, so we’ll do RANGE in third-person POV. Here are some ideas for a writing prompt for you:
A Type-A helicopter parent is observing (with disgust) a “free range” parent with her kids at the playground.
A woman is cooking a pot of oatmeal the way her grandmother taught her and is grieving/reminiscing about her grandmother.
A child who’s been through some sort of trauma ranges his toys in a certain order while his mother/father/therapist tries to bring him out of his shell.
Writing Prompt: RANGE in 3rd-person POV
What’s your vocal range, the man asks.
Before Clem can begin to wonder what that means, her mother says, It’s big. Very big.
Her mother sits upright, spreads her shoulders back, causing her blazer’s shoulder pads to rise like muffin tops. She throws Clem into these situations unprepared, unarmed, such faith has she in what? Clem’s talent? More likely, Clem’s mother’s faith lies in her snake-oil salespersonship, her ability to launch this frightened mouse into the mouths of cobras and convince them to swallow.
Clem sings “Mary Had a Little Lamb” to the man and even she can hear how awful she sounds, the lack of joy in her voice. She doesn’t smile as she sings, the way Mrs. Downs instructed her to. All she can think about is the car ride home. The backseat belt chafing the red lines on her thighs, her mother berating her for everything she knows she should do but is not doing.
There is a little girl that lives inside her head, tightening the reins. This little girl is the one who tells Clem to stop, to be careful. This little girl alerts her to the man’s eyes on the hem of her dress, on everyone’s eyes watching and judging. She tells her there is no safe space where her shoulders can drop, her jaw can relax. There is no place where she’s not being watched.
Clem has finished the song and the man is still watching her. He talks to her mother as though she’s not there. They use the word “potential,” which Clem knows means she’s not good now but she might be later.
Her mother frowns in that way that makes her lips disappear into her teeth. Clem knows there will be no dessert tonight.
Her mother shakes the man’s hand and Clem turns toward the door, which is now open a crack. There’s a little black patent leather toe poking through. A perfectly shiny little shoe attached to a chubby leg and a girl with a sanctuary of dark hair draped around her face. This girl dips her chin and smiles at Clem and Clem knows then she will go to all the stuffy rooms that smell of paint and stale coffee and she will smile at all the men who look at all her body parts aside from her eyes, then men who speak about her but never to her. She will do all these things if it means she’ll be able to see this girl again.
Afterthoughts
I feel like what I came up with was probably a bit cliché, but that’s the point of this exercise, to kind of dig through stuff and see what works. I’m interested in getting into Clem’s relationship with her mother further and also what the beginnings of this relationship with the girl - who will end up being Astrid, the frenemy relationship I’ll follow through the novel. Also, in my hand written bits, I forgot that Clem is my main character and Astrid is the frenemy (oops!). I fixed it when I typed it out. Anyway, happy writing! Let me know what you’re working on! I’ll CU Next Tuesday.