MONDAY CREATIVE WRITING EXERCISE because it’s a good way to start the week – first person point of view
This exercise is about exploring first person point of view (I said, I thought…etc).
You can work with any fairy tale you know well, but just in case your mind has gone blank I’ve given a brief outline of Hansel and Gretel below.
Your task is to write a SCENE – not the whole story – in the first person from the perspective of one character. You are inside their head, giving a voice to their thoughts.
Things to consider
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You only have the vocabulary of your character to work with….and you need to give characters a distinctive way of being. For example, if you were working on the classic Snow White story would the girl use the same words as her step mother? How could you make Snow White sound young?
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You can only reveal what your character knows. Hansel and Gretel’s father doesn’t know that his children are alive but in danger. The witch fattening up Hansel for a fine supper doesn’t know that Gretel is a resourceful young woman with a plan…
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Remember that you are inside another person’s skull. A bully doesn’t think he or she is a bully (they were only have a laugh…) a stepmother doesn’t consider herself wicked…
Now you’ve worked with one character write up the same scene from another character’s perspective – again using first person. Good luck!
HANSEL AND GRETEL
A very poor woodcutter lived in the forest with his two children, Hansel and Gretel. His second wife ill-treated the children and convinced her husband to abandon them.
Hansel overheard and was determined that he and sister would not get lost. He took a supply of pebbles with him and dropped them one at a time as they were taken deeper and deeper into the forest. When their father left them, Hansel and Gretel were able to find their way back home.
However, their stepmother was furious and forced the woodcutter to taken the children out again the next day. This time Hansel left a trail of breadcrumbs and when he tried to find they way home discovered that the birds had eaten every crumb.
They were lost and walked and walked, until they came upon a strange cottage made of chocolate and icing and good things to eat. It was a trap. It belonged to an old witch who caught children and ate them. Hansel was locked in a cage to fatten him up and Gretel forced to do the housework
When the witch lit the oven to cook the boy, Gretel gave her a tremendous push and slammed the oven door shut.
The witch was the one who was cooked.
They found their father who had been searching for them: their stepmother was dead and they could all live happily ever after.
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