POV

Exercise 2:

First person:

“Why am I always so doomed?” She just looks at me with that blank stare of hers that I dislike so much. Usually, she is quite helpful and fun, but today, she is just annoying.

“I said I would help, why didn’t you call me?”

She knows I called her. She heard me scream when my candy hit the floor. She even stuck the broom in front of my face and told me to move. She could have helped me pick up the candy off the floor, but she wouldn’t.

Why does this type of thing always have to happen to me? I always help everybody, and when I need help, they are never around.



Third Person Limited:

Life had a way of either shining on Larry, or leaving him bereft. Very seldom did he experience life as a middle ground. He had a gift of being able to get out of trouble spots or over obstacles just by being charming.

Today he was juggling charming persuasion with cautious concern that the bloodsuckers would come in and charge him an outrageous amount of money for a minor repair. But she, the assistant, scared him by telling him she smelled gas and now he had to take action. He did not have time to deal with any of this.

Thankfully, the repair tech from the gas company was able to diagnose the problem. He was relieved that he would not be blown up right away. If he called Tyler, he could get the job done at handyman rates and not plumber rates. The worst part about the gas company employee is that they did not touch the appliances. Brian had to help him move the stove away from the wall to have the gas leak meter readings to be taken.

Larry had a habit of screaming every time he tripped. He was at first thankful that the admin did not come running to ask what happened. “Everything on the stove mantle fell off when I tried to move it back.” That’s when he found out Brian had left for the day and he gratefully accepted her offer to help clean up the mess.

Larry tried to hide his disappointment in her. Larry could not stand to have anything he bought just thrown away. Yet, she stuck a broom over his head and tried to pull the candy that was under the stove and against the wall into his pile of candy that could be saved. He only said, “No, don’t” to make her put the broom back and help him. Larry watched her leave with sadness in his eyes. He would have to push the stove back against the wall without any help.

That’s the way it is with Larry. He always helps everyone and no one helps him. If they do help him, they have their hand out expecting payment of some kind. Larry cradled his candy jar. They were still good. They had not been on the floor for very long. No one would know they had been on the floor. He would put them out for his guests and they would take them and be thankful he treated them with only the very best chocolate. All the time, people thanked him for his generosity. He lovingly put his candy jar back on the stove mantle. His guests would love this chocolate as much as he did.



Third Person Omniscient

Life had a way of either shining on Larry, or leaving him bereft. Very seldom did he experience life as a middle ground. He had a gift of being able to get out of trouble spots or over obstacles just by being charming.

Today he was juggling charming persuasion with cautious concern that the bloodsuckers would come in and charge him an outrageous amount of money for a minor repair. But she, the assistant, scared him by telling him she smelled gas and now he had to take action. He did not have time to deal with any of this.

In the contrast, his administrative assistant was the marshmallow he needed to hold his world together. He could yell, have a temper tantrum, lament the woes of the world, and she took it. She knew she had no worries. She told her husband that Larry collected people and that all she had to do was read his mind and find whatever he misplaced and she would have a job for life.

She knew that even if Larry did not like her opinion, he would listen and would incorporate it somehow. This day would be one that left her incredulous. She walked into the kitchen and asked Larry what he had been cooking. Checking the knobs on the stove, and feeling the surface temperature she quickly surmised that he had not been using the stove recently. She insistently asked him if he smelled gas, and he admitted that he did, and that she needed to call the gas company to have it checked.

She would be paid regardless. So she calmly arranged for the gas company to come out and check for gas leaks.

Brian felt right at home in this law office. They let him flex his schedule around his law school classes and there was a certain comfort in the clutter that was everywhere. The only thing that was not so great is that his size was often used for moving and hauling and not legal research or legal writing. Granted his hockey background gave him a certain toughness and strength that was good for the heavy duty stuff, and today was no exception. He looked the situation over and was able to move the stove out from the wall with little trouble. He would have liked to have stayed longer, but the gas smell was a little disconcerting. After moving the stove, he gathered his things and quickly exited the building. He would check later to see if the gas leak had been fixed or not.

The Admin put on her best long suffering persona and took over the job of learning all the details about where the gas leak was and how it needed to be fixed. She took on the responsibility of calling the handyman to effectuate the repair. That’s when she heard the crash and the scream. She watched Brian practically running out of the office and then went to investigate. She saw Larry gathering his chocolate into a pile and cradle the jar that they had been in. She offered to help but could not get around Larry to do the sweeping. When he said, “No, don’t” she asked him if he really intended to keep all that chocolate. He said yes. She could only handle watching him put the chocolate back in the jar for a little while and had to leave to push down the gag reflexes and the churning in her stomach. She had to admit that she heard scraping, and when there was no scream to accompany the sound, she went back to investigate. There was Larry looking quite sad that she did not help him. Instead of feeling sorry for him as she was want to do in the past, this time she made a mental note to herself to never accept anything he offered ever again.



Observations: I notice that although I like writing in first person for the intensity of emotion, I gravitate toward the Third Person for the 3D character development. I did notice my narrative voice became a little harsher or maybe less compassionate when I went into 3rd person. I do not have a preference for Third Person Limited or Omniscient other than the work becomes more detailed and expansive when it moved from Limited to Omniscient. Personally, for short stories, I think 3rd Person Limited is best for my writing style. I prefer 3rd Person Omniscient for longer work when a lot of information has to be relayed quickly and in the most effective manner possible.





Writing Assignment.

She vaguely remembered hitting the snooze button on the alarm. She knew she overslept when The Boy’s alarm went off. Boy was an endearment that she and her husband put on their only son. She was now in turbo drive to get ready and on the road in less than half an hour. It might not be possible to get to work on time in these frigid temperatures, but she had to try.

She was muttering laments to herself. “I don’t have time to even brush my teeth. I don’t have time for breakfast. I don’t get to catch the weather report. Boy! Where did you put my keys?”

“On the hook. There’s something I have to tell you.”

“No time. We’ll talk later.”

As she pulled out of the heated garage, she thanked all the powers that be that she did not have to clean ice and snow off the SUV. She could just get in and go.

Mr. Levine would be ticked. If he did not practically live at that place, he would not know that she had been late every day this week. If he were not such a skinflint, she would probably be on time more often. But with the wages he paid, he was lucky to get any help at all.

Driving down the street, she barely noticed the black sporty car that pulled in behind her, until the idiot started honking his horn with a determined relentlessness. If it were not so dang cold, she would have gotten out and given him a piece of her mind. Instead, she cranked up the radio to drown out the steady and insistent rhythm of the horn being sounded. In a futile effort, she shouted in the rear view mirror, “Shut up, you idiot! I can’t go any faster than the other drivers!”

She could see his face and actions in the rearview. He did look like he could hurt her if she was not careful. She bit her lip as she tried to hide her concern as she mutter to herself, “At least the freeway is close by.”

The SUV did not respond as agilely as it usually did, but she managed to get up to freeway speed without too much trouble. One last quick look in the rearview and sighed in relief when I saw the guy shrug his shoulders and move off into the next lanes.

She stayed in the downtown lanes and breathed a sigh of relief that she would get to work without a bully following her. That’s when she heard the pop and the chatter of rubber hitting the fender well. Pulling over into the emergency stopping lane, she let the tears fall. This was one more thing she did not need.

She wearily unstrapped her seatbelt and crawled out of the vehicle to inspect the damage. She felt the tears freeze into icicles on her cheeks when she saw the hole in the tire and that the rubber had unseated from the rim and spread out in a black heap allowing the rim to rest on the ice slicked pavement.

She hefted her girth back into the driver’s seat, dragged her gloved hand across her cheeks as she unceremoniously sniffled the mucus back into her nose. A brief rummage in her purse and she was able to locate her road emergency card and her cellphone. “Great, 30%.”

She was so disappointed in that boy. First he promises to put air in the tire if they just let him borrow it for his date – and then forgets. Then he drained first his phone and then hers – and then did not charge either one. This was not the type of day for nonsense. The tears slid down her cheeks again.