Snip! and Photos of the Best Little Village

hotos of Founex and beyond! And the promised snip...

Rainy day roses

Early morning roses

Another rainy day

Rainy days at the Palais des Nations

Sunny day!

Bus stop roses

Spot the peacock...

There he is!

Food truck!

Bastard burgers at the Hamburger Foundation

A standard burger...

Swaf beer!

Swaf is a play on soif = thirsty in French

An older view of Lake Geneva/Lac Leman

Giant hourglass!

Lunch near the giant hourglass

Burgers at the United Nations Beach

My main ROW80 goals-related writing lately as been my snip for the July writing exercise on the thelitforum.

These are the original rules set by Barbara Rogan:

"SHOE EXCHANGE: An Exercise in POV

“You can never really know a person until you walk in his shoes.” An old saying, but one perfectly suited to fiction writers. We can’t know our characters unless and until we immerse ourselves within them: an act of radical empathy on the part of the writer which allows readers to join in the experience. And that experience can be transformative.

POV determines many things in a work of fiction. One of its functions is to create empathy, by putting both writer and reader to the shoes of its POV characters. This month’s exercise explores that particular power of POV.

ASSIGNMENT: imagine a confrontation scenario that hits strong emotional triggers. Ideally, it would be one in which you tend to sympathize with one side or the other. Then write the scene of the confrontation (or one leading directly to it) twice: once from one character’s point of view, then from the other’s. One scene only please, not the whole story. Immerse yourself in each character, so that readers see the world entirely through his/her eyes.

Use all the usual accoutrements of scenes, or as many as you can, to flesh out the scene. Description, dialogue, setting, internal monologue (thought)--all the tools at your disposal.

Choose tough scenarios that elicit strong feelings in you. The choice of POV should be determinative. ... Don’t fudge on the character for whom you feel less sympathy. Poor yourself into him/her as well. Take into account that most people see themselves as morally justified and will if necessary adjust their perceptions and memories to bolster that self-view. If one character was clearly in the wrong, how does he/she handle that? Denial, justification, defiance?

Word limit: This is an exercise that requires 2 scenes, or partial scenes, so I'm going to allow 900 words total. Extra points if you can do it in less! I will try to read all submissions, but can't promise, as I've no idea how many of you will undertake this challenge.

Possible focuses for critiques:
Were you able to see the incident clearly through the characters' eyes and perspective?
Did reading the second version of the scene affect your understanding of the first?
Did each character's actions make sense in the context of their mindset, experiences, and perceptions?"

And here is my submission:

CHRISTIANNE

They neared the bottom of the hill, on the road into the village square. Rory sucked in a breath. “I lied to you.”
“I know.”
“Eh? What?” He halted, tugging at her arm.
She tugged back, kept him walking. “I went to fetch my scarf. I saw you.”
She kept reliving that first instant, when she’d spotted them at the restaurant. A visceral reaction that wouldn’t abate. Her mind had frozen, unable to decide what to do. Like the time when, travelling with Amelie as a toddler, she’d arrived at the airport and looked up at the departures board, only to see her flight marked in red: cancelled. The same numbness that had pervaded her then, the same inability to act, had come over her at the sight of Rory with his ex. And there was no Customer Service desk for a relationship.
“Why didn’t you say something?” he asked.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Fair enough. I... Oh, I had a hundred reasons that seemed to make sense at the time.”
“Start with the first.” All too often with Robert, she’d jumped in, offering excuses before he’d even begun to talk. She was adamant not to speak more than a few words until Rory explained himself.
She directed him into a cafe fronting the square, and for a few minutes they slipped into a false calm, shrugging off coats and gloves, ordering espresso and sandwiches, as if she wasn’t seething with two days’ worth of pent-up emotion and rehearsed dialogues, and Rory -- well, she still didn’t know his side. Deeper than her wish to start out differently than with Robert went the hope that she’d understand whatever reasons Rory put forward, and could easily lose the frustration she’d carried since Monday.
“Take your pick,” he started, once the waitress had left their side. He sat with his back straight, as if poised for flight -- or to receive a blow. “She called last Friday. I answered without seeing the number. Otherwise none of this might’ve happened.” He paused, an appalled look on his face.
Something drastic had obviously taken place. Yet that didn’t explain his omissions. “But you talked with her.”
“Aye. It’s like...after that many years, she has a right to a claim.”
That needn’t negate her own claim for the truth. “Bien sur,” she said. Agreeing, not conceding. She let the silence drag on, not leading the suspect, as if they were in an interrogation room. A grinder switched on, and the tang of freshly ground coffee hung heavy on the air.
(424 words)
***
RORY
He had a few minutes to collect his thoughts as they hung up coats and ordered lunch. Christianne was stiff, as if afraid she’d explode if she loosened her shoulders for an instant. He wondered what she was like with suspects. Just as self-contained, and deadly with it, or an explosion of cop fury? He might like to see that, sometime.
“Take your pick,” he began. He kept his back straight, palms on the table, as if not slouching would make a better impression. “She called last Friday. I answered without seeing the number. Otherwise none of this might’ve happened.” Could it all be his fault? If that bastard Kurt had found out, and it had tipped him over the edge... He raced through what he could recall, guilt compounding in his gut, as if he’d kissed Mer across the table or something. He wouldn’t have -- but what if she’d tried something daft and Christianne had spotted it? If he’d owned up from the start, Christianne might have joined them, and Kurt would’ve had no reason to be suspicious.
“But you talked with her,” Christianne broke in.
“Aye. It’s like...after that many years, she has a right to a claim.” Christianne had once said she wouldn’t badmouth her first husband, and he’d resolved to try the same where Mer was concerned.
“Bien sur.” Short and clipped. Not accusing, but he had to justify himself.
“It was her tone that got me to agree to meet. She was scared, and I wasn’t used -- I thought I should find out why.” I wasn’t used to real emotions from her, he’d almost said. But that seemed callous now, given she was in hospital.
Christianne didn’t respond. A grinder whirred, and the bitter tang of coffee pervaded the cafe. He jumped in to fill the silence between them. “She wanted to meet. I couldn’t tell you then because, er, we were arguing.” That was one way of putting the fiasco of Friday morning. “I didn’t want to ruin things after. Then we went to Fey, and I couldn’t tell you on Sunday, and I couldn’t tell you on Monday, not after your tests -- but you knew, after lunch. Why didn’t you say something?”
“What if I asked, and you kept lying? Even now --”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Why didn’t you say something?” she asked again.
The only way to get them back on their usual wavelength was to be completely open. “I didn’t want you to criticise me. Over choosing to go. I haven’t had any contact with her. But when she called, there was that fear in her voice. I thought I owed -- no, not owed her. I don’t need her in my life. But after so many years... Still, if it hadn’t been for that voice, I’d never’ve done such a thing. But I couldn’t figure out how to explain all this, not last weekend, with everything else going on. And after... Oh God, I put her right out of my head.”
“What’s happened?” She reached over and took his hand.
He curled his fingers into her palm, pushing against her touch. “He tried to kill her. Or maybe it was a warning --”
(539 words)

Has it been rainy or sunny where you are?

Which flowers are blooming?

Have you tried switching PoV when stuck on a scene?