You can see other writing exercises here.
On Tuesday, I challenged the readers of this blog to share first-person diary entries. I encourage you to write diary-style entries regularly – whether they are your actual diary or diaries as written by characters residing in your head.
The Door I Chose – My experiment with first-person POV in a sci-fi inspired drama
I shared the opening of The Door I Chose, I story I wrote as a series of diary entries from two possible realities. The main character, Sean, stumbles out of his parents’s car after an accident, and goes back to the car to open either the driver’s side door or the passenger’s side. That’s where the timeline splits – if Sean opens one door first, his father survives, and if he opens the other, his mother survives. The story splits into two narratives, each one following a possible outcome of that fateful crash.
Flowers for Algernon – a great first-person novel
If you want an excellent example of a sci-fi-ish story told in the first-person, I encourage you to read Flowers for Algernon if you haven’t already. It follows the story of a mentally disabled adult who undergoes an experimental treatment. The complexity of the narrative increases as the main character’s intelligence is boosted by the experiment – it’s a really cool way to show how the character and his view of the world changes and evolves.
In your writing, I hope you will find cool ways to use first-person narrative. It lends itself very well to dramatic, life-changing and world-view-changing events!
Below is my opening for The Door I Chose – I hope it will inspire you to share your own work.
