Creative Writing

Our brief this week is to write a dark and compelling short story, or the beginning of something longer, using either a picture or a title for inspiration.

I was struggling to choose a title so I decided to start by creating a character first then use that character to choose a story. I already had the slight idea about what I wanted my character to be like so I began by answering the questions from the powerpoint in class then once I had a more rounded out vision I could write a character synopsis.

Character synopsis

Arthur has eaten the same three meals 7 days a week, 4 weeks a month, 12 months a year since the day he turned 18 and promptly moved out of his mother’s home. For breakfast he has a bowl of Cream of Wheat followed by half a glass of water. For lunch he has a ham sandwich made with two slices of white bread and no butter that he carries to work in his briefcase in a small plastic sandwich bag. For his dinner he has 8 new potatoes, 11 baby carrots and half a tin of chicken which he boils in the same pan for 27 minutes before eating it from a tray on his lap in front of his small television. He tends to watch old black and white films about various world wars. Every weekday morning, he wakes up at 7:15, washes his face in the bathroom sink, eats a bowl of Cream of Wheat and gets dressed in one of his two suits. He starts with his socks then his boxers then a white shirt then a pair of grey trousers then finally he ties his tie in a Half Windsor Knot and puts on his shoes. He has 7 versions of each of his items of clothing, apart from his suits (which he has two of) and his shoes (which he has one of). This routine takes exactly 45 minutes, as he is a rather slow eater, so at 8am he walks the 9 minutes to the bus stop and catches the 577 to the office. He carries a medium-sized black briefcase that contains his ham sandwich, two black biros, an umbrella and a little book of crosswords that he does on the bus.  On Fridays he saves exactly a quarter of his sandwich from lunch and at 5pm he goes and sits on a bench in a park and feeds the pigeons. Unless it is raining, if it is raining he stands next to the bench with his umbrella. His biggest fear is that his favourite brand of Cream of Wheat will be discontinued, or he will stand in a big puddle on his way to work and his one pair of shoes will be ruined. On his bedside table there is an angle poise lamp and a glass of water that he keeps half empty in case he knocks it over in the night. In his fridge there are 7 packets of ham and 7 bags of new potatoes, in the small cupboard next to the fridge there are 7 boxes of Cream of Wheat, 7 cans of baby carrots in water and 7 cans of boiled chicken. He has two pans, 1 plate, 1 bowl, a spoon, a fork, a knife and two glasses. He keeps one glass in his bedroom and one glass in his kitchen. He started balding at 18 and by 25 he was completely bald; however, he has never minded this as it saves him time in the mornings. Twice a week he does shave his upper lip as he went through a phase in his twenties of trying to grow a moustache until one day on the bus he made a small girl cry just by sitting next to her. He does not have or want any friends and his mother had died the night before his 35^th birthday which to him seemed the right sort of time for a mother to die. Arthur and the postman were the only people at her funeral, he did not cry. He is not sure whether his father died before his birth or simply never existed at all and by now it is too late to ask. He lives alone in a 1-bedroom flat above a fish and chip shop, fortunately when he was 7 he fell off the small brick wall in front of his childhood home and broke his nose causing him to lose all sense of smell. He does not know what the people in his office, or on the bus, or in the small corner shop where he buys his food, think of him, and frankly he does not care. He has not felt a strong emotion since 1982 when he found half a spider in his bowl of Cream of Wheat. His biggest secret is that he has a copy of Parade Magazine, that he found at the back of the bus one Monday morning in 1987, hidden down the back of his sofa. He rarely looks at it but he likes to know it’s there, hidden in the dark.

When I imagine it as a visual piece I see it as quite a dark and grimy claymation/ stop motion animation like the film Mary and Max so not necessarily anything spooky or horror but more depressing and uncomfortable to watch. I find the monotonous/every day can sometimes be a more interesting concept than something fantastical. When I picture Arthur in my head he is not necessarily depressed or unhappy about his living situation it just is how it is.

https://padlet.com/lwilliamson03202111/krpc7wvmdz2r4nkj

The Story

If anyone had ever asked Arthur why he had decided to stay in the park and feed the pigeons for an extra thirty minutes that Friday he would have had no answer, like a lot of things in his life it was unexplainable. It just was and how it always would be. The day had started exactly how the past eight-thousand-seven-hundred-and-sixty days had started, with a bowl of Cream of Wheat. He had eaten slowly, chewing each mouthful with care as he had once watched a late-night documentary about a woman who had died in her house without anyone noticing and her cats had eaten her right arm off. Arthur did not own any cats, but the idea frightened him nonetheless. At exactly eight am he had locked his front door and set off on the nine-minute walk to the nearest bus stop. He had got the same bus five days a week for the past twenty-four years. The thought of missing the bus did not worry Arthur as it had simply never occurred to him. 

At exactly five pm Arthur set down his work, packed up his briefcase and walked the short distance to the park next door. He sat down on his bench and got out the quarter of the ham sandwich he had saved from lunch. Five thirty came and went yet Arthur was still sat on that grimy little bench, in that grimy little park feeding those grimy little pigeons with seemingly no intention of leaving for the bus. To understand the sheer magnitude of this occurrence you have to know a little about Arthur’s life. Arthur has eaten the same three meals seven days a week, four weeks a month, twelve months a year since the day he turned eighteen and promptly moved out of his mother’s home. Every weekday morning he wakes at seven fifteen, washes his face in the bathroom sink, eats a bowl of Cream of Wheat and gets dressed in one of his two suits. He has seven versions of each of his items of clothing, apart from his suits (which he has two of) and his shoes (which he has one of). He carries a medium-sized black briefcase that contains a ham sandwich, two black biros, an umbrella and a little book of crosswords that he does on the bus. On Fridays he saves exactly a quarter of his sandwich from lunch and at 5pm he goes and sits on a bench in a park and feeds the pigeons for exactly twenty-seven minutes, thus giving him three minutes to walk to the bus stop to catch the five-thirty bus home. In essence Arthur was a man who enjoyed routine.