A portrait by detour
Two words that don't belong · 20 minutes · Published
Read this first
I was just going, for example, to have given you the great out-lines of my uncle _Toby_’s most whimsical character;—when my aunt _Dinah_ and the coachman came across us, and led us a vagary some millions of miles into the very heart of the planetary system: Notwithstanding all this, you perceive that the drawing of my uncle _Toby_’s character went on gently all the time;—not the great contours of it,—that was impossible,—but some familiar strokes and faint designations of it, were here and there touch’d on, as we went along, so that you are much better acquainted with my uncle Toby now than you was before.
Laurence Sterne, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759). Project Gutenberg #1079
The prompt
Draw two subjects you would never put together, one from the passage's orbit, a coachman or a planet, and one from whatever is on your desk, then announce that you are about to describe a relative's character. Describe it, but only by way of the two drawn subjects, digressing through both and never arriving at the portrait directly. Stop when the portrait is there without ever having been stated.
Set a timer for 20 minutes.
Short version · 10 minutes
In ten minutes, draw two unlikely subjects and sketch a relative's character only through detours into them.
The move
Two words that don't belong. Let chance impose an unlikely pairing, two words or a hypothesis, and write until both belong in the same piece.
Tags: imagery and constraint.
In a group
A way to run it with a writing group:
Only what works. Anyone reads who wants to. In this format, responses name only what works in the first draft, and every text is treated as fiction.
Where the page goes next
Scrin is a home where pages grow into books: you keep writing, from an untitled line to a chapter, and Scrin keeps the rest.