MFA workshop — Move the camera in a scene

Start in a place you have yet to explore and see how many you can hit

• Web of connections
• Varying needs
• Microscope/telescope
• Diction
• Locations, history, and time
• You, the writer

From Aposematism — Kira

• Web of connections
  • Self
  • Riley
  • Parents
  • Shitty high school friends?
• Varying needs
  • Kira
    • Needs space
    • Validation
    • Friendship first?
  • Riley
    • Needs to comfort
    • Needs to fix
    • Codependent
• Microscope/Telescope
  • Internal: cautious/suspicious/down on self
  • External: spiky, snarky, intense
  • Far away: lonely, but it’s their own fault, Riley wants to fix
• Diction
  • Kira:
    • Quiet
    • Intense
    • Aloof
    • Occasional goofiness, quickly tamped down
  • Riley:
    • Friendly
    • Shy
    • Eager to please
• Locations, history, time
  • Sawtooth (restless, etc)
  • Kira didn’t grow up there, thus feeling like a misfit in a small nothing town
  • Moved long enough ago that it’s still home, but not quite comfortable
• Me
  • I sure as shit am a different person than when I started

Maybe a good way to move the camera would be to duck into the past via conversation over dinner.

Kira had practiced this, rehearsed it in their head over and over and over again, something to talk about, something to bring a little bit of reality to the evening and come to a more mutual understanding with Riley. A guaranteed bit of conversation to avoid awkward pauses.

Now that the time had come, now that the they’d sat down to eat, though, it felt more like an apology as it left their mouth. “I was born up in Boise, parents yanked me down here when I was in high school.”

“Oh yeah?” Riley said. “Me too, weirdly enough. Bit later, I guess. I came down here for university.”

His grin half-soothed Kira. It seemed to be a subtextual way of agreeing that this was a good direction to take the night: a bit of backstory, a snippet of plot from earlier in their lives. Might as well continue reading that mental script. “Sawtooth’s a bit different than Boise. Still fucking Idaho, no luck getting out, but dad found some job out here or something, so we all moved. Not quite the same scene, though, you know?”

“What kind of scene is that? Uh…punk? Industrial?” He laughed. “I suck at labels.

“Industrial scene, punk aesthetic,” Kira said, feeling that