M AKE A M OVIE BEHIND YOUR E YELIDS This is a technique for slowing down important parts of narratives and creating images that readers can see and sounds they can hear. How to do it: 1. Close your eyes. Concentrate. 2. Imagine the scene you re going to write as if you re making a private movie in your mind. See and hear yourself and/or the characters in action in real time. 3. Open your eyes and try to capture on the page exactly what happened in your mental movie the small details of sight and sound, one frame at a time. When drafting: close your eyes and make a movie, then capture the specifics of your or your main character s experience. When revising: close your eyes and see and hear more and richer actions, reactions, gestures, facial expressions, dialogue, tones of voice, colors, and other visual details. When polishing: close your eyes, envision the scene, and check it against the verbs of your text. Does the language you used to evoke character and action measure up to the images you saw and sounds you heard in your movie? Make a Movie behind Your Eyelids Lesson 18
L EAH:VERSION 1 When Leah got to school that morning, she couldn t find Dee and Marty. But when she went into homeroom, they were there except they ignored her. Then she found a mean note they d written about her. She went to the bathroom and cried. Leah wondered if her other friend, Carrie, would reject her, too. Leah: Version 1 Lesson 18
L EAH:VERSION 2 Leah brushed her bangs away from her forehead one last time and checked her watch. She was going to be late for homeroom. Where were they? She clutched her books against her sweatshirt and tapped her foot. C mon, guys, she muttered. When the first warning bell rang, she sighed. Were they both out sick? Crud. She looked up and down the sidewalk one last time, then headed for homeroom, disappointed that the plans she hatched that morning wouldn t come true. School felt different when her friends weren t there, like a color movie shown in black and white. Leah made it to homeroom just as the second bell the real one sounded. The first thing she saw as she slipped through the door were Marty and Dee, sitting next to each other in the front row. They were whispering with their heads together and didn t look up when she came in. She felt surprised, then hurt. Take a seat, Leah, Mrs. Orr said when the bell stopped ringing. You re late. Well, almost late. Marty and Dee still hadn t looked her way, but Leah could see that Marty was blushing as she stumbled to an empty desk two rows behind them. She felt her own face getting hot. Were they ganging up on her about something? Great. She leaned forward and whispered, You guys, where were you? I was waiting. Guys? Guys? Instead of answering, they kept their heads together, Marty s red hair against Dee s blonde. You guys, she demanded, not bothering to whisper this time. What s going on? The back of Marty s neck glowed bright red, but still she didn t turn around. That s enough, Leah, Mrs. Orr warned. It s almost time for announcements. She sat back in a daze. Now Marty and Dee broke apart and sat rigidly, eyes facing front, as the voice of the vice-principal boomed from the intercom. They were acting as if she were invisible. She tried to remember Friday, the last time they had been together. What had she done to make them so mad at her? Marty, she whispered, when the intercom clicked off. What s wrong? The only reply was the straight line of Marty s back. Suddenly Leah realized that the boys on either side of her were watching this show with interest. She opened her math book and pretended to read. She could feel tears starting Leah: Version 2 Page 1 Lesson 18
behind her eyes. Don t cry, she commanded herself. Don t let them see you cry. When the bell rang to end homeroom, Marty and Dee bolted through the door as if they were shot from a cannon. Leah got to her feet slowly and picked up her books. Her face felt as if it were on fire. She spied a crumpled piece of paper on the floor at the front of the room and recognized Marty s handwriting. It looked like a note. She hesitated, then scooped it up and jammed it into her jeans pocket. She practically ran to the first floor girls bathroom, where she locked herself inside one of the stalls, leaned against the door, and pulled the note from her pocket. Her hands shook as she unfolded it. Dee Did you see her HAIR today? How about that sweatshirt. B.O. or what? She is so weird. W.B.S. Marty Marty I can t believe we ever hung out with her. Run for it when the bell rings or else she ll keep on bothering us. Leah started to cry. Huge tears, baby tears like Evie s, rolled down her cheeks. This couldn t be happening. It had to be a bad dream, one of those just-before-the-alarm nightmares. She, Marty, and Dee had had plenty of arguments, but nothing like this this humiliation. Because of what? Her hair? Her sweatshirt? It was so stupid and unfair. Did they expect her to go home and shower and change her clothes or something? Would they be happy then? Then it hit her. They had planned this. They hadn t met her before school because at some point over the weekend they had talked about her and made a decision. It wouldn t have mattered if she had washed her hair that morning or worn a different shirt. They had already decided not to be friends with her anymore. Leah ripped the note into pieces and threw them in the toilet. She flushed it again and again until every scrap was whirled away. Then she banged the door of the stall open and, avoiding her face in the mirror, hurried from the bathroom. She had to find Carrie. She had to know if Carrie was in on this, too. Leah: Version 2 Page 2 Lesson 18
T HE M OON,MY M OTHER, AND I: VERSION 1 One night I was doing homework when my mom told me to come look at the moon, so I did. Then I had an idea: Let s go ice skating. It was really cold. I had trouble getting my skates on and lost my balance. My mother and I skated all around and looked at the stars. Then we found a neat place in the ice. I ll never forget it. T HE M OON,MY M OTHER, AND I: VERSION 2 The bay has been there as long as I can remember. Its twinkling waters have awakened me every morning, and the laughter of geese has been my lullaby. There was a night, though, when the water was silent and the geese had taken flight, when I discovered what it meant to be loved. A bright full moon shone through my window as I rushed to finish weekend homework, neglected because of my turning ten on Saturday. I tried to concentrate on my math book. Circumference, umm... what is that? I thought aloud. I was about to move on to the next easier, I hoped problem, when my mother burst through the door. C mere, honey. Come look! I glanced up from my homework. My mom was smiling, and her eyes flashed with excitement. The only other time I had seen her this happy was when she found out she was going to Nevis for her birthday. I slammed my math book and followed her down the stairs. I prayed that she hadn t brought me down to show me some new frying pan or kitchen appliance; plus, I had homework. Uh... Mom? I really should She cut me off. C mon honey. It s right over here. Mom guided me into the dark living room. She grasped my hand and led me to the back window. Look, she whispered. The bay had transformed into a sheet of pure silver with the moon gleaming above the ice. The trees along the shore twitched in the silent The Moon, My Mother, and I Page 1 Lesson 18
breeze and, for the first time, the gulls were calm. With thoughts of homework fleeing from my mind, I whispered to my mother, Let s skate. The wind bit our cheeks as we made our way across the barren, snow-covered backyard. Although it was plenty below thirty, I felt anything but cold. We walked down the small path made by children in the summer and stepped out onto the rocky shore. I sat down and struggled to pull my skates over thick, woolly socks. After a few minutes of tugging, with no progress, my mother came over and gave my skate such a hard yank that I lost my balance and skidded down the rock and onto the ice. (To this day I can still find the spot where my skate scraped the rock.) I tied my skates on, pulled myself back up, and watched my mom slide gracefully onto the ice. She gave me a look-what-a-daintyskater-i-am smile, then grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the center of the bay. The ice was even more beautiful once I was skating on it. I felt as if I were dancing on silver water, and everything I saw and touched was made of moon-swept ice. Now I knew how Midas felt. I attempted a twirl and fell with a thud on the ice, but I got back up and curtsied, then tangoed with an invisible partner. My mother soon caught on and started waltzing, while twirling a twig of pine needles in her hand. By this time I had left my unseen partner and was laughing so hard I had to sit down. My mother sat down too, and our laughter broke the frozen silence around us. I looked up. There were only a few stars. I searched for the Big Dipper and Orion s Belt but found neither. I imagined that in the morning Orion would come for his belt, and that maybe a chef would come and fetch his dipper. Perhaps this is why we didn t have stars during the day, I thought. I told this to my mother. She nodded and said it was a good idea and that the chef s son would have to get the Little Dipper. I smiled and leaned close to her. After a few minutes she turned her head abruptly, whispered something to me, and started to skate away. After a few panicked seconds, thinking that the ice was giving way, I skated after her. My mother, with thirty-four years of skating under her belt, raced across the The Moon, My Mother, and I Page 2 Lesson 18
ice, while my legs did their best to stay straight. When I finally caught up with her, I was so out of breath that I had to sit down. Mom pointed west towards the tiny island we call Small Island; we d been told that it was so small that when Maine became a state, it still belonged to Massachusetts. She held my hand to pull me up, drawing me closer and closer to the island. After a few minutes of guiding me over the ice, Mom stopped. I took a breath and looked around me. We couldn t be on the bay anymore. In front of me stretched a sheet of transparent, untouched ice. I could see the frozen underwater world beneath me. The seaweed, as if caught off guard by the coming of winter, was still, mid-sway in the current. Frozen bubbles never popped. Time had stopped. Mom looped her arm in mine and slowly we skated into a new world, just I, my mother, and the moon. Siobhan Anderson The Moon, My Mother, and I Page 3 Lesson 18