In the 1930's a young writer and mathematician named Raymond Queneau published a short fiction collection entitled
Exercices de style, later translated into English as
Exercises in Style. Inspired by Bach's Goldberg Variations, the book consists of a single short vignette, about encountering the same stranger twice in the same day, told in 99 different ways, from dramatic to casual to poetic to deconstructionist to silly.
When I first heard about this idea, my first thought was, "Oo! Oo! I wanna do that! I wanna do that!" My second thought is, "Wait, I want all my LJ friends to do it, too."
This is where you come in.Here is the Theme I came up with, from which all the Variations will derive:
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The Photograph: ThemePerson A is enjoying a meal.
Person B approaches Person A and asks for a sip of their drink, in order to take some medicine. Person A agrees.
After Person B has taken the medicine and is leaving, s/he accidentally drops a photograph of a person. Person A looks at it, then calls back Person B to return it to them.
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I have deliberately made the theme as bare-bones as possible, leaving such decisions as setting, characters, form, style, language, point of view, background, etc. up to the author. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to write your own variation of "The Photograph," in whatever way you like. The only prerequisites are as follows:
a) your piece must follow the basic outline as described above; anything not explicitly described in the Theme is up to you.
b) your piece must be titled in the format "The Photograph: __________________" as if it were a movement in a long musical work.
Here are two examples I've come up with. I'm certain you can do better:
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( The Photograph: The King's Daughter )( The Photograph: Dish )