EXERCISE 3:
Which topic did you choose to write about first?
The Alaskan remote hunting trip.
Which topic did you automatically focus more attention on?
How fast the weather can change
Which topic did you generate the most ideas about?
A dangerous situation.
Which topic do you feel the most attracted to? Which one interests you the most?
How we deal with this situation
OPTIONAL EXERCISE:
Write about a conversation that had an impact on your life. Show the scene where the conversation happened, and try to reconstruct parts of the dialogue word-for-word on the page so that readers can “hear” it first-hand.
I open the cabin door and a slight breeze of freezing air stings my face. Walking out to the lake I see Dick pacing up and down on the shoreline, he is jiggling those three bullets in his pants pocket, and I want to scream, Stop it!
Het walks a few feet down the shore line with his neck craned out over the icy water, looking like he can melt the ice with his stare.
Today is our fifth day, two more days before we’re picked up. The cold front has been with us for two days, and in the last twenty-four hour , the ice has increased twelve feet into the lake at the landing strip.
Dick knows that he can walk out but no way does he want to take me on that journey.
As fear of freezing to death swarms though my being, I have the thought flash though my mind, he is thinking that it would be better for us to stay here and freeze to death than for him to take me on the twenty-mile journey.
My feet are so cold, my toes feel like they are going to break off. I have to convince him that I can do the walk out. “Whey aren’t we walking, we are running out of fuel, we have no trees to use for fire, when we reach the end of the lake, we’ll find wood to build a campfire.”
“Betty Jo, it’s not that simple, wouldn’t be a straight walk out.”
“What does that mean?”
“There are areas where we would have to hoof it though streams and there is also a river to cross, and your not strong enough, and we would have to leave most of our stuff behind.”
“So who cares!! I just want to go home, I snap. If we don’t walk we die! The pilot said, If ice starts to form on this end start walking, and the ice started to form two days ago. What part of, we are going to die, do you not understand! “
This is not a pretty picture, I’m thinking. I am well aware that being cold and wet is the recipe for hypothermia- threating hypothermia. At this thought, I just loose it.
Dick puts his arms around me and I feel his body shaking. We just hold each other and have a milt down.
We are both filled with fear.
Very powerful scene and writing. It makes me want to read more.
Thanks Alan for the encouragement. I really appreciate your comments.