This post is an exercise inspired by a post by Chuck Palahniuk:
Before the advent of writing programs, writers including Truman Capote learned their craft by keyboarding the published work of writers they admired. We all have our ingrained patterns of thought. We all have that monkey mind that dictates the story the way we’d tell it to a friend. But a good way to break out of that rut is to just sit and type out a copy of a Dorothy Parker story. Or a Fitzgerald scene. Choose who you’d want to be. Learn their tricks by imitation, and keep the tricks you like most.
I read the poem Life Story by Tennessee Williams recently and it caught me off guard with its wit and humor. I laughed out loud several times reading through it, and love the way it uses line breaks to create an additional meaning to the previous line. The poem’s end is a great example of what Chuck refer’s to as “Shock Authority”, read to the end to see what I mean.
Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published
Life Story By Tennessee Williams After you’ve been to bed together for the first time, without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior acquaintance, the other party very often says to you, Tell me about yourself, I want to know all about you, what’s your story? And you think maybe they really and truly do sincerely want to know your life story, and so you light up a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you lying together in completely relaxed positions like a pair of rag dolls a bored child draped on a bed. You tell them your story, or as much of your story as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, each time a little more faintly, until the oh is just an audible breath, and then of course there’s some interruption. Slow room service comes up with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee and gaze at himself with the mild astonishment in the bathroom mirror. And then, the first thing you know, before you’ve had time to pick up where you left off with your enthralling life story, they’re telling you their life story, exactly as they’d intended to all along, and you’re saying, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, each time a little more faintly, the vowel at last becoming no more than an audible sigh, as the elevator, halfway down the corridor and a turn to the left, draws one last, long deep breath of exhalations and stops breathing forever. Then? Well, one of you falls asleep and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his mouth, and that’s how people burn to death in hotel rooms.
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