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Random Writing Exercise: The Hat

  
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
09:43 / 08.05.03
Two hundred words, no pastiches, about any hat and/or the person wearing it.

You may be called upon to explain your choices.

I'll give it a while and if no one jumps in, I'll do one.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
12:57 / 08.05.03
The hard surface presses, writhing, against a weathered hood. This is the junction point of Heaven and Earth, the agony of a god. Lord Sky of the Titans, now castrated with his own sickle and stretched like a businessman’s umbrella across the new, ordered world, gasps away from contact with the frozen Earth. Beneath him, arms spread and head ducked to make the points of an uneven, shuddering triangle, Atlas strains to spare his master the torment of contact with cold, mortal matter. This is the engine which drives the world; at the centre of Zeus’ creation, the pain and destruction of his enemies is harnessed, each haphazard moment of connection between Sky’s godly energy and the hungry ice below blasting animus into the realm of men. It costs the master of Olympus nothing of himself, weakens his foes, warns his allies, and glorifies his ingenuity all in one.

Yet it turns on one grubby layer of fraying sackcloth. Should the cowl of Atlas’ garment rub through, the energy will flow from Sky into his servant, whose less rarified construction is immune to the insult of absolute zero. The chill of Earth will draw Sky’s power downward, yes, but Atlas will retain it. Sky will die, and Atlas, unchained, will be made great. Which of them knows the truth of this? Sky howls and Zeus revels. Atlas, hooded servant of both, strains in silence, revealing nothing.
 
 
Jack Fear
15:56 / 08.05.03
It's a good gig, as these things go, thinks the bass player: the crowd is well-oiled and receptive to their off-kilter cowpunk, he's locked in with the drums, and the mix is punchy and pleasingly loud. He turns to glance over his shoulder: from under the broad brim of his battered gunfighter hat, he can see drumsticks cutting arcs in the air. He swings away, looking down at his bass, at the cheroot smouldering between the fuck-off and ring fingers of his pick hand, at his foot stomping time. He does not look at the singer, only four feet away from him but too close to the crowd for his comfort: his hatbrim is pulled low so none can see his eyes.

They're opening for a national band tonight, which is some comfort—the crowd, however enthusiastic, isn't there specifically to see them. That will make it easier to get away afterwards; to push through the terrifying throng with a mask of indifference, to sprawl on the backstage sofa feigning sleep, hat over face siesta-style, counting the hours until Last Call, until the room clears out, until he stumbles out to collect his pay and go home.

Alone at last.
 
 
gingerbop
19:20 / 08.05.03
not quite on-topic, but pretty close
 
 
at the scarwash
23:06 / 08.05.03
It sits on her head like a dead thing, squashed and colorless. There's no telling how many funerals she's worn it to. How many bakesale tables she's presided over, with it her cap of office. How many of her poor contemporaries, dying in urine-smelling charity hospital beds it had scared inches closer to the grave. What color was it supposed to be? Were those things feathers or arms?

From the way she wears it, you can tell she thinks she looks like Jackie Kennedy. As she walks past Asian grocers and manicurists, you catch her sneaking looks at herself in windows as she passes. The windows know her and her hat well, and are kind with what they give back to her. A Vietnamese woman taking a delivery of of styrofoam cups steps back inside of the doorway of her shop, mistrusting. Is she going to ask me for money? The delivery man tells her, she been here forever, her and her crazy hat.

She doesn't notice the lady and her shop; she's too busy Jackie-Ohing on down the street, her and her crazy hat, like a simple-minded angel of death, on her way to some unlucky cancer ward or old folks home.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
07:56 / 09.05.03
Why and Wherefore...

1. What does the passage do?

2. Where might you go from here?

3. Why did you do it that way?


____________________________


My answers:

1. The idea is that it sets the scene for something quite big-scale. I wanted to give a sense of possibility and importance to what was happening - my imagined narrative, and this exercise - a sort of 'look, we can go anywhere' for the latter, and a 'see, this is big league' for the former. Although I didn't work the hat too heavily, it's central; a tiny pivot on which my universe will turn.

2. I'd go small, and look for my actors. This is clearly a story which would have a fantasy or a mythic dimension, but I used some modern terms so that I could go to a bank clerk in Farringdon for my central character if I wanted to. This is a story involving godly politics and the end of an age, but I'd look for some ordinary people to work with. That's the stuff of conventional myth, of course.

3. It seemed interesting to do something which showed the amount of information a small focus on something which is not a priori important could give about the macrocosm. I'm not keen on stories which only involve heros, and I actually have a kind of knee-jerk against stories with classical gods in them. As an antidote, I'd want something modern, so I'm getting myself into a Tim Powers-type tale. There's immense possibility for cosmic promotion here - turmoil and revolution, mortals storming the gates of Olympus, directly or not. I almost always end up telling stories about transfiguration and rebirth, immortality or transcendance. Perhaps all stories have those elements and I just focus on them.
 
 
Mr Messy
11:15 / 09.05.03
James’ had been wheeled out onto the back lawn. He lolled quietly in his chair, staring without interest at the precise yellowed square of lawn. A sunshade had been propped up over the chair. Its tasselled edge swung out in front of him like some dusty theatre curtain that proclaimed “Here’s the world. Enjoy it. Its all for you.”

Within that drab square, flies buzzed lazily back and forth; blades of grass twitched sporadically under the slight weight of ants; somewhere nearby, the wheezing of a lawnmower. At the corner of his mouth, a gathering of drool fattened to a bubble, popped abruptly and softly rolled down his chin. James sat.

And suddenly his mother is there, her tender presence looming, tissue dabbing at the dampness with one swift caress. She holds a small soft white cotton cap. Its floppy fringe dotted with neatly stitched ladybirds. Her careful hands ease it around his still pliant skull, keen to afford his delicate pinkness every possible protection from the sun. She recedes slightly, smiling at the cap’s jaunty angle. He’s ready. And then he is lifted, up, out, into her arms and all of the world.
 
 
Ethan Hawke
11:49 / 09.05.03
Two Pink Hats

I really, really wanted to hang around and see someone buy one, but I was on a mission and could not stop and wait for that improbable event. Besides, being armed with a camera and all, I wouldn't be able to contain my impulse to photograph the purchaser, which probably would not be taken too kindly.

Still, in and of itself, it's fascinating - a baby-girl-pink Yankee's ball cap. Adult sized. Not for children. For adults.

There were other odd colors, too - a baby-food orange, a poison tree frog green, a blue the color of a drowned man's lips. I can picture Yankee stadium filled with this spectrum of headgear, each neighbor wearing a different color hat. I bet there are enough colors here so that no-one would have the same color as their neighbor, were we to distribute the caps according to some algorithm. Yankee stadium would look like a bowl full of jelly beans.

I don't think the Yankees would like that, personally.

----------------------------------

"Busby" is a word I learned yesterday. I'd probably read or heard it before, but it never made an impact. It was outside of my culture, my ken. What do I have to do with busbies or any busby-connected behavior, anyway?

True, I can think of a few instances where it could have come in handy - if I had not skipped Buckingham Palace as part of some inchoate political gesture (or because I'd heard it was pure crap) when I visited London, I could have been smart and pointed out the be-busbied guards. If I had known the word "Busby" when at the Guggenheim a few weeks ago, I could have made a sharp comment about Matthew Barney wearing a busby the color of the Financial Times. I'm still not quite sure what the Barney busby signifies, nor the the matching kilt. If anything.

Can I say my world is any poorer without the word "busby?"
 
 
Whisky Priestess
12:54 / 09.05.03
Business slow, eh Nick?
 
 
Jack Fear
13:33 / 09.05.03
Words are Nick's business, Priestess.

And business, apprently, is daaaaaaaaaaamn good.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
15:00 / 09.05.03
Oh, hi, Whisky. You want to play, too? Or are you too busy?

Jack: it was fine until last week. Now it's grotty. Next week it will be fine again. 'S the biz, innit?
 
 
Whisky Priestess
15:02 / 09.05.03
I'll just lurk and appreciate for the mo ... saving my creative juices for the forthcoming orgy of blood in the Mafia thread.
 
 
Jack Fear
15:37 / 09.05.03
For Whisky, then:

Little Enzo is holding a porkpie hat. It's cold in the parking garage, and he wishes he could put it on his head instead, but he can't: that's not why he has it. Wind whips 'round his ears. Goddamit, something, a stocking cap, anything: but wearing one hat while holding another is a sure way to attract attention, and Little Enzo does not want attention.

The porkpie is not Little Enzo's own hat—he's got a couple of nice fedoras, but he didn't want to sacrifice either of them for this job. The porkpie is, frankly, not a good match for the suit and topcoat he's wearing, but it's all that was lying around the club, and damned if he was going to go uptown and pay actual money for a hat he's only going to use once.

He sighs. He could've gotten hats by the armload, back in the day. He had to go to Milan for the suit he's wearing, but his father, Big Enzo, may have been small potatoes, but he had a closet full of suits no less fine that had fallen off the back of a truck. As they used to say.

But business changes, the stakes get higher, the niceties and the perks fall away. The elevator dings, the mark exits, and Little Enzo moves forward, absurd porkpie hat hiding the pistol in his fist.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
15:56 / 09.05.03
Cool.

Anyone want to answer my questions three?
 
 
Jack Fear
16:25 / 09.05.03
Ahh, jeez. I hate talking about writing: good writing is supposed to explain itself, isn't it? Everything you need should be right there in the piece. But, since you're asking... all right, I'll try to cross your Bridge of Death.

For the first—the musician in his gunfighter hat...

What does the passage do?

It's absolute, naked autobiography, 100% accurate in all its details. It's an attempt to render as truthfully as possible a moment in my life, a feeling—and through it the paradox of being an introvert doing an extrovert's job, of a peculiar love/hate relationship with live performance.

I still have that hat. I don't think I've worn it since that gig, nor needed to.

Where might you go from here?

Might tell the whole story of my convoluted, tortured history with this band, and particularly with the singer, a relationship that was weird and intriguing on a number of levels—exhilarating, frustrating, ultimately enlightening—and which ultimately taught me a lot about myself as a person, about the artform, and about the creative process in general.

Or springboard into a Bartleby the Scrivener type story, a parable of the artist utterly devoted to his art but ill-prepared to function in the environment surrounding it, his eventual and continual withdrawal making him a purer artist but a less effective one...

Why did you do it that way?

Entirely dictated by the brief for the exercise. I'm a hat person—I have many—and, determining to write something quickly and with a minimum of premeditation, I cast my mind over my own hatrack, selected one, and worked with the first memory it evoked, off the top of my head (ho ho). The memory dictated the sense-impression approach, and the quick fast-forward of para 2 (which is the thing I really remember most about that night) is the punchline and point.
 
 
Jack Fear
16:38 / 09.05.03
Second: Little Enzo and the porkpie...

What does the passage do?

It amuses Whisky, I should hope—that's the only real reason I write it. And it makes a sideways comment on the passing of elegance from the world, as business practices become more cutthroat.

Where might you go from here?

It's more-or-less complete, I think: given a higher word count, I'd go a little more into the contrast between Big Enzo's variety of organized crime (cf. Henry Hill's early impressions, from the early sections of Goodfellas: the Mob as almost a community-service organization, and the mobsters seemed to drift in clouds of style, untouched by life's vagaries) and Little Enzo's more ruthless and dangerous breed.

Why did you do it that way?

Because I wrote it very, very quickly, and latched onto a stock situation that's been used to great effect in everything from Pinter's The Dumbwaiter to Pulp Fiction.
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
17:35 / 09.05.03
This man, who was no longer so young, was returning home on a drizzly May evening. His hands, feet, and lower back ached, his throat tasted like dust, and his heavy denim pants chafed at the backs of his knees. The ragged urban trees, an intense slick green, had been drinking mist and half-light all day and seemed almost to pulse with life.

It was a good wide street in a working class neighborhood. Harry Houdini's brother the Great Hardeen had lived here in he 1930's, and H.P. Lovecraft's estranged wife Sonia. Now it was a place where immigrants and civil servants raised their families. A ballpark, currently a huge pit of mud tracked by great yellow rubber-footed beasts, lay on one side, empty just now of teenagers and women with small, happy children. On the other side, the apartment buildings suggested a bygone day of easy afluence. The wrought-iron fences in Egypian-deco style, and the soot-stained masonry shields and angels, were neglected now, but maybe even more handsome for that.

The man who was no longer so young neared his own block at the end of the street. The storm drain was blocked up and the intersection was submerged under a huge, serene puddle. Floating in the puddle was a tiny glove and a child's knit cap.

What does the passage do?

It tries to describe the strange character of my neighborhood.

Where might you go from here?

No idea.

Why did you do it that way?

The wordiness of the first two paragraphse is meant to offset the straightforward description of the image at the end.
 
 
grant
18:24 / 09.05.03
The hat gleamed now, in its transparent plastic shell, like a taxidermed hawk in a glass museum case. I wanted to touch it, to feel the cracks in its leather band, and maybe even hold it up to my face and breathe in a faint whisper of old sweat and sunnier days. To smell the residue of that legendary concentration. To feel some last remaining electric tingle, impressed in the old cloth by the furious calculations that must have taken place underneath it.

But that was out of the question.

"It's from his 1939 season," Schultz said. "Check out the embroidery. It's still almost perfect."

"1939?" I said, wondering if he knew what that meant.

"Yeah, '39 – the record year. That’s why it cost me so much. It's my baby."

I wanted to break the case open, to wrap my hands around his fat throat, to hear him slowly choking to death on blue cotton. Even then, I doubt he'd understand. I wanted him to understand.
 
 
grant
18:33 / 09.05.03
1. What does the passage do?

The difference between comics collectors and sports memorabilia collectors is that the heroes are real - they actually did those superhuman things.

So it's a collector/user thing. Mystique of the object. Sets up a scary opposition, too.

2. Where might you go from here?

I sort of decided that the narrator was gonna be a psychotic, angry version of Kevin Costner's character in "Field of Dreams." Or maybe even Ray Liotta's (ghostly) character.

So obviously, he'd be inflicting his madness on Schultz (who's flabby, pink and wealthy). Or else, as a reincarnated spirit of an embittered old-time baseball hero, lead a one-man assault on the modern day New York Yankees. Maybe both.

3. Why did you do it that way?

When given instructions, I always like to explore the negative. In this case, a hat that is no longer worn - an unwearable hat. That's where I started from.

It's a frustrating setup. I also, like Jack, have a lot of hats, which I've worn in a variety of situations. I like wearing hats. I like reading my comics -- even the ones in the mylar bags.

I'm not a baseball fan, but if I was, I'd get a kick out of wearing a hat worn by Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle. More than a kick, really. I'd want to use the damn thing. Just to be Babe Ruth for a couple minutes, you know?
 
 
Mr Messy
19:36 / 09.05.03
So, to the questions. This is actually damn hard, coz now those words are out there I want to take them back. Well, a bit anyway.

1. What does the passage do?

Well the first behatted image that came to me was myself as a baby in my pushchair wearing this cute little hat. I just started to write about that. My mother appears because I'm wrestling with that whole mother-love thing at present. Surprisingly, given some of my feelings, I've painted her in a pretty good light.

2. Where might you go from here?

I've got my whole life

3. Why did you do it that way?

It just sort of happened. I suppose that halfway through I realised that this baby actually sounded a bit like a some guy in a wheelchair or something of that ilk. So I played with that a little. At the end there I just wanted to get it done and dusted. This writing lark does my head in.
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
19:50 / 09.05.03
Where might you go from here?

No idea.

Thinking about this, I might go for a plotty sort of mystery story where the main character, who is new to the neighborhood, gets involved with the family down the hall. Something bad has happened with them and he's drawn into their psychodrama. Constant suggestions that something happened to one of their children. Not sure how it would turn out.
 
 
Jack Fear
19:57 / 09.05.03
QalYn: For what it's worth, the image of the child's hat & mitten floating in the puddle has immediate sinister undertones—a child abducted &/or murdered...
 
 
at the scarwash
21:21 / 09.05.03
What does the passage do?
It creates an old lady with a hat. More the lady than the hat, I think.

Where might you go from here?
Well, I think we'd find out that she's black, which she is, not that that's important so much. This street, now predominantly Asian, was the main shopping street of her neighborhood growing up, and every building on the street has a different memory for her. She's crazy, and lives in the past. I'd really have to write it to find out anything more.

Why did you do it that way?
My concern with writing these days is that it sounds truthful. I used to make a lot of snarky, supposedly funny remarks in my fiction, and I try to watch for that now. Leave it to the Dave Eggers of the world to be cute. If I write a line of dialog, even one as short as my Vietnamese grocer lady's, I have to find an analogous character in my head and see if it fits their mouth. If I write a metaphor, it has to not be so trite as to slip right through the reader's mind. "like Jackie Kennedy" wasn't perfect, but it was much better than "like a queen," and it did lead to "Jackie Ohing down the street," which I liked.
 
 
8===>Q: alyn
03:15 / 10.05.03
Jack, I think that's where the protag -- and the reader -- would naturally go with it. But you see lost gloves and hats all the time -- kids lose things. I wonder if it wouldn't be more interesting if the kid were actually healthy, but mistreated in some other way. Or a Bad Seed maybe.

Just rambling here, though.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
11:21 / 10.05.03
Jack - thanks for breaking the habit of silence on whys and wherefores. I dislike talking about this stuff, too, which is why I'm doing stuff specifically for this which I wouldn't necessarily follow through on if I were just writing for me. I can be a bit more clinical about it - sort of a dry run.
 
 
kingofsnake
20:15 / 10.05.03
Young Billy Shaftoe was fishing the river Tyne near his hometown of Haydon Bridge, Northumberland. Looking upstream he noticed a small black object coming his way. As it drew level he noticed that it was an upturned bowler hat, bobbing along on the current. Perplexed, he watched the hat as it floated downriver and disappeared into the distance. Further downstream a farmer tending to his herd looked across the large field that bordered the river and saw a small black object on the water, shrugging he returned to his work.
Two charvers walk at pace across the Scotswood Bridge, Jimmy passes the joint to Paul who slow’s and look’s down to the river below.
“Is that a fuckin hat man jimmy?” Shouts Paul, Jimmy stops and looks down at the water.
“Aye, it looks like it man”. Paul takes a deep toke of the joint and they both carry on towards Blaydon.
Danny stands on the deck of the ferry to Bergan, Norway. This will be the first time he has seen his father in ten years. A group of Norwegian shoppers pass, smoking cigars and drunk on the cheap whiskey available in Newcastle.
As Danny looks over the side of the ferry he sees a black hat being turned over by the waves, he watches, as it sinks into the depths of the North Sea.
 
 
kingofsnake
21:07 / 10.05.03
1. What does the passage do?

Well on a personal level, I wanted to reconnect with my homeland kind of thing. It is a sort of journey with abstract links to different people. So hopefully it takes people on a brief trip down the Tyne, showing the different types of people who inhabit the area.

2. Where might you go from here?

It would probably be very easy to write a convoluted story about how these people were connected But I wanted to convey some sense of how people can be connected without realising it, a quantum/chaos type of thing regarding observation. Each character can have a story and of course the reason why the hat got into the river is a story.

3. Why did you do it that way?

Well it was linear and I feel that you learn a little more about each new characters as the narrative continues.
 
 
Char Aina
01:15 / 11.05.03
three years.
three long, formative and knowledge-giving years.
have i ever known a girl that long, apart form my mother?

the story of how we met, it's terrible really. it was lying broken on a shelf of many like it, too big with its broken elastic for the enormous head of alisdair, its original owner and keeper; and i just happen to have an even bigger head. a head so huge that there really was no other i could have known as well and trusted as deeply as i do this one, this green and silver spitfire cap.




i have pictures of us together, and pictures of us alone.

a hat.

i have cried, and lied, and connived just to keep it.

a hat.


i have seen the world, and it has followed me, and it was better company than all of the rest of them.

a hat.


i would gladly donate a single testicle rather than let the world see the bad hair days it hides and the black eyes it shades.

my hat.
 
 
Char Aina
01:21 / 11.05.03
1. What does the passage do?

2. Where might you go from here?

3. Why did you do it that way?




1.
it describes an unhealthy attachmnent to an inanimate object, a relationship that while not the most pivotal, will become fairly typical of all others in the life of the charcter. self absorbed and easily amused.


2.
two places.
'my' relationship with the hat's previous owner, or a description of 'my' travels.


3.
i like the mundane become fascinating to the individual, the way one can become totally lost in what others might find trivial and uninteresting.



ps
sorry about the late starting. i know ive only myself to impress, but i still feel bad. in fact, i think feeling bad helps.
 
 
slinkyvagabond
18:08 / 11.05.03
Below the brim I could see your smile. Never seen anyone smile so wide before, laugh like they were taking the world in their mouth. My friend pointed you out, said what do you think of him, said here tell him I put his wine on the mantelpiece. Too slow to figure out why she wouldn’t tell you herself. I wanted to talk to you anyway, you pulled your cap off as I approached...take your hat off boy when you’re talking to me...almost like you had mistaken me for a lady. I hung around after my pronouncement. You flipped the cap back on.

I never liked baseball caps, they reminded me of jock Americans and corporate logos and my dad. Not things I wanted to be reminded of. But after you things changed. Now everytime I see a tall loping guy in a red baseball cap I feel my breath shifting to the base of my lungs. I mistake them for you and I get so excited just for a second and then I realise. It’s not your smile beneath the brim. Never since seen anyone with a smile that wide.

1. What does the passage do?

It attempts (very ineptly) to capture the way an impression of a person can become centred around a particular possession of theirs and the way in which that possession can seem as though it's completely unique to them. It's also trying to capture a memory (though it's not really autobiographical) hence I deliberately used naive, un-flowery (ok, simple...) language (and bad punctuation).

2. Where might you go from here?

I think I would have to characterise my narrator a hell of a lot more to go anywhere but perhaps I could take the "person inherent in the possession" thing further. Maybe "I" could develop some kind of metonymic confusion and begin to people only through their representative parts. Then "I" could go from being a rather sentimental girl to becoming a sociopath with a disjointed world view. Or "I" could develop an interest in psychometry and it couls become some sort of crazy, psychic detective story. I think I prefer the latter suggestion - sociopaths and their ilk have been done to death, though I do like the idea of a "metonymic disorder".

3. Why did you do it that way?

Because I wanted to convey the mental confusion that lust creates. And because if I did develop it I like the idea of the red baseball cap being a visual motif - random red basball cap sighting would have strange effects on my narrator. Also beacuse I'm so out of practice at fiction that curently I can only write very simplistically and somewhat autobiographically. Oh yes, and because I wanted it to just be a little moment in the girl's slightly confused mind, yet I wanted it to round off.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
19:15 / 11.05.03
It is blue with a broad brim and a string that hangs down to her chest. It's not quite a cowboy hat. She and her siblings each have one alike; she embroiders hers, ties a scarf around it sometimes. She paints shapes on it in white, adds little touches of glitter. Makes badges, pins them on, takes them off. This isn't the kind of neighbourhood where you do stuff like that but she does it anyway. As she gets older, she becomes embarrassed about the hat. She doesn't wear it anymore, blushes everytime she thinks about it even. Older still, and she smiles to think of it; regrets ever having laid it aside, ever having become the kind of person who'd be ashamed of wearing a hat like that.

She is in touch with her Inner Hat.
 
 
Sax
09:44 / 13.05.03
He disembarked wearing the hat, but he knew he couldn't take it back. He'd taken it from the store-rooms of the SS George Weems, more to cock a snook at the first mate than anything else. That bastard hated him. On the way over he'd made him climb to the crow's nest for no reason at all, during a heavy storm with the ship tossing this way and that and the rain coming down and the wind trying to rip him off the ladder. Jack was tempted to piss in his food, but didn't dare.

He looked at himself in the wing mirror of a car parked by the docks, a tiny British car. He tried the cap this way and then that. Finally he settled for pushing it back at a rather jaunty angle, a lick of curly black hair looping from underneath the leather peak. He stroked the gold braiding and wondered briefly what it would be like to be an officer. Maybe he could send that first-mate up the crow's nest himself.

Jack checked his watch. A forty-eight hour furlough. He looked at his reflection once again then headed out into Liverpool, looking for love.
 
 
fidrich
10:04 / 03.06.03
Everything in the courtyard of the aparthotel is still and silent. The noisy, busy birds are asleep in the palm trees. The family entertainers are long gone, the bar is closed, the white plastic chairs are packed away. The pool is clear and smooth, and would be perfectly so, if it weren't for the child's hat that floats near the centre. Pink, with yellow flowers. A little girl's hat.

When her father dropped her in the pool, her two little pink and white trainers and her hat came off immediatley. She was very small, and in the deep end; her clothes weighed her down; the water, cold under the Spanish sun, was freezing under the Spanish stars. Her father stood by the side with his hand stretched out for her but she could not reach him - she was busy trying to keep herself afloat.

When the stranger man sitting by the plastic chairs for those watching the entertainment jumped into the pool fully clothed, he retrieved the little girl, but not her shoes or hat. It was her father who noticed them. The little girl stood a little way away, crying and shaking and spitting up, as her father stripped down to his boxers. Then he lowered himself slowly and carefully into the water. It didn't take him long to get the trainers, as they were heavier and hadn't floated so far away. But he didn't see the hat.



1. What does the passage do?

It describes an incident that happened on the last day of my holiday. A few hours before we were leaving, about half eleven at night, a guy threw his daughter - about 7 or 8 years old - in the pool as a joke. She almost drowned. It was a really awful thing to see... I feel a bit guilty for writing about it. The only fictionalised part is the hat itself; she wasn't wearing one.

2. Where might you go from here?

I can't really go anywhere with it. I left for home that night. There were rumours going around like crazy, and I know for a fact that the police were called, but... the only way I could continue would be to make the rest of it up (which I wouldn't feel right doing).

3. Why did you do it that way?

Because I don't know anything about those peoples lives, only that incident. I don't even know their names. And why I wrote about it in the first place... I wanted to write about an incident that truly horrified me, but in a neutral tone. I'm not entirely sure if I've accomplished this though.
 
  
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