What he says next
Answer it · 20 minutes · Published
Read this first
"I don't understand," he said softly. "What is it you want?" She hid her face on his breast and pressed close to him. "Believe me, believe me, I beseech you ..." she said. "I love a pure, honest life, and sin is loathsome to me. I don't know what I am doing. Simple people say: 'The Evil One has beguiled me.' And I may say of myself now that the Evil One has beguiled me."
Anton Chekhov, The Lady with the Dog (1899). Translated by Constance Garnett, 1917. Project Gutenberg #13415
The prompt
A woman has just told a man that sin is loathsome to her and that she does not know what she is doing; he has only managed to ask what she wants. Write what he says next, or her answer if he says nothing, in short speeches with one gesture between them, so that neither of them explains themselves fully. The same move works in any scene of yours where one character has just said too much: let the reply say too little.
Set a timer for 20 minutes.
Short version · 10 minutes
In ten minutes, write his answer in three short speeches and one gesture.
The move
Answer it. Write the text's reply, the letter back, the missing retort, the other side of the contest, in the form of the original.
Tags: dialogue, voice and imitation.
In a group
A way to run it with a writing group:
The writer listens. The text is read or handed round and the group talks about it. The writer listens and does not answer until the end.
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.