Welcome back! I hope you are excited for your creative writing exercise! Admit it, you’ve been waiting for this post ALL WEEK. I at least hope you’ve been enjoying the book so far because we are closing in on the final pages. Somehow Milo’s journey is going to come to an end. But before I get ahead of myself, let’s get to the creative part. I can’t wait to read what you come up with. Please make sure to share your writing in the comments.
For these last 15 chapters Milo has been quite the traveler. He has made his way through pretty much the whole map at this point. Along the way we’ve met a ton of strange characters. While we’ve been pretty focused on our main character, I thought it wise to use this opportunity to give these secondary characters some attention. Although completely different from one another, what all of these characters have in common is their unique way of seeing things. If you haven’t already guessed where I am going with this, this week we’re focusing on point of view. (pause of applause). As Alec Bings would say, "It's all in the way you look at things."
Each character we meet sees the world in a different way, and their point of view, or perspective makes them interesting and unique. Can you remember all of the people we’ve met so far? There has been quite a lot.
The Whether Man, The Spelling Bee, Officer Shrift, The Dodecahedron, The Soundkeeper, Dr. Dischord, Dynne, Chroma, Alec Bings, Faintly Macabre, who else am I missing?
For your creative writing prompt, I’d like you to pick a character that we’ve already met and write about their experience meeting Milo from their perspective.
Ok, so how would you go about doing something like that? First you’d want to pick a character that you would like to write about. Easy enough. Then get familiar with their perspective and voice. You may want to go back to the book to refresh yourself on this. For instance, how do they speak? How do they see things? What is recognizable about their behavior? Are they emotional like the Dynne, bossy like Officer Shrift, are they kind and gentle like Faintly Macabre?
To get you started, you may choose to begin something like this, “I’ve met the strangest boy today. He grows up instead of down! Can you even imagine something so bizarre as that?” Just make sure it’s in the 1st person. Meaning you use the word “I” to tell this story. You want to be talking as if you were actually them. Below is a cute graphic from Grammarly to help you with the difference between first, second, and third narration.
If it helps, you can imagine them writing a journal entry or talking to a friend. The main idea is to say and think what this character would say and think. Doing so helps to better understand them. Which is a good thing. Because as we can observe from Milo, seeing things from another point of view, expands our own. And expanding one’s mind and world is always a good thing.
If you have any questions, need clarification, or want to share writing. Please post in the comments. Thank you for sharing and subscribing.
The Phantom Tollbooth 6/8