Big Food, Big Garden, Big Life

I am having a not smooth time, so I thought I’d write about it and bore you to tears. Pull up a chair.

As a wannabe writer, I write two sorts of stories. The first sort is more traditional, in that the stories have linear timelines, although there are flashbacks. These stories differ from genre fiction (sci-fi, mystery, super hero, etc.) because they are character-based. Ordinary people/characters living fairly ordinary lives, acting and reacting to what other characters say and do. There’s plot, but the who is living out the plot is most important.

The second sort that I’m experimenting with is also character-based, but in the scheme of things, plot is the least important element of the story. And this is the sort of story that I’m struggling with.

The prompt is ‘bookmarks.’ After much thinking this is how I started. Note that this will probably NOT make it into the story, it’s more like the premise of the story.

Some of Alice’s books have inscriptions on their inside covers—names and words penned in the flowing cursive of bygone days. Others preserve faded memories in four-leaf clovers, flowers, and leaves pressed between yellowing sheets. Many have ribbons and other bookmarks pointing to pages filled with the marginalia of forgotten souls. Sometimes Alice sits cross-legged on the floor of her big, quiet house—book laid out to catch the light through the bay window—and imagines the people who had penned, pressed, and marked their lives in her books.

The story has three main sections, each only three paragraphs long. In the first paragraph, Alice turns to a bookmark (taken broadly) and imagines and wonders. For example, in the first section there’s a Polaroid of four college-aged girls which has Alice imaging they’ve been friends since junior high and are now home for Christmas vacation after their first semester away at school. Had they stayed close? …

Next paragraph is Alice thinking about her own life. In that first section she’ll think about friendship. In the next (second paragraph) she’ll think about family: I should have loved to have been an Aunt Alice. What innocent mischief we might have gotten ourselves into, my nieces and nephews and I?

The final paragraph in each section presents the reality of Alice’s life. “Alice never married.” (Third section is about lovers/spouses.)

So the first paragraphs are just little happy, pleasant vignettes–Hallmark commercials. The second paragraphs are more stream of Alice’s consciousness. The third, almost newspaper reporting–just the facts. And also in the third paragraphs the background of Alice’s life have to come out. I know who Alice is in great detail, but I need to tell you just what you need to know as we go along in those third paragraphs.

There is a timeline in the order of the three sections: Friends (Alice as young adult), family (middle age), and lovers (old). But you can see it’s not a plot timeline in the strict sense of that happens here–>what happens next.

Also I can’t figure out how to end it but I thought if I get those three friends-family-lovers sections figured out, maybe something will come to me.

Thanks for listening!