Brain Boggling challenge

[Robert_Gore]

Recently my teacher gave me the following as a writing exercise. I quite frankly struggled. I'm interested to see what you can come up with;

-Describe a tree in a pasture using the thoughts and feelings of a woman who's husband died recently and has dicovered that he has been cheating on her.
-you cannot mention the death of the husband
-the husband himself
- or the woman
Go for it.

 

[RaNDM G]

Wrong forum, bro.

 

[Khedive Rex]

Not strictly appropriate to the forum, but a charming kind of problem. And frankly, near as I can tell this is the creative writing forum, in function if not in name. I think you posted it in the right place.

It seems to me this is an exercise in showing instead of telling, and a good one at that. The trick would be to imply everything related to the actual circumstances of the narrator through the vehicle of describing her feelings about a tree. So in that sense it would also be a nice exercise in metaphor.

I'll have something posted for this later. I'm busy writing something else at the moment and its already late or I would indulge myself. But I'll certainly be back and thank you for posting the prompt.

 

[RaNDM G]

@Rex: Whatever you say man. I suppose I'll take a whack at this.

*ahem*

A tree.

Those two words make up the whole story. From a realistic viewpoint, a woman who just lost her husband would not likely stop and stare at a tree in the middle of nowhere. If she did, she would not likely think much about it. She'll be thinking of her own damn problems.

What would she have to say about it anyway? She will stop, stare at it for maybe an hour, then walk away. At the end of the day, she will return home. Someone will ask her what she did that day. All she'll say is, "I looked at a tree. How was your day?" Of course she will likely tune out the ensuing conversation and her mind will drift back to her own problems again. Then she'll go to bed, think about her problems some more, maybe have a good cry and fall asleep. She'll wake up in the morning and forget about yesterday.

In other words, it's a tale of indifference.

That probably wouldn't fly in a creative writing course, but trying to come up with something flowery or brutal in its imagery will feel contrived and unnecessary. At times, it is better to take things at face value.