Experiments in style: Bandit poem
What difference does layout make?
Greetings!
One of the things I’ve been trying out is reworking a piece of text into a completely different style. A full exposition and explanation are given here:
The aim of these experiments is to explore how different styles and approaches can affect the tone of a story.
For today’s experiment I wrote the story as a bandit poem, of which more below.
But enough of this persiflage! Here is the original text on which these experiments or transformations are based:
The original (template) text
In the middle of the night, I woke up (if you can call being semi-conscious being awake), walked purposefully towards the door to go to the bathroom — and almost knocked myself out.
The reason was that in the twin states of entire darkness and semi-somnambulance I was facing in a different direction from the one I thought I was facing. As a result, instead of walking through the door, I tried to walk through the wall.
The next few days brought nausea and headaches. After much prevarication I went to Accident and Emergency, where I waited petrified among people for whom “social distancing” means not quite touching you, and who wore their masks as a chin-warmer.
An hour and a half later I emerged into the twilight, secure in the knowledge that I had nothing more serious than mild concussion. I failed to do much writing, but I was pleased to have read a further 17% of my book.
Bandit poem
A bandit poem is one of the constraints found in the Oulipo1. In this approach, nothing in the text is changed, except the layout. In other words, you set out a piece of prose as if it were a poem.
That’s what I’ve done here, and I should be interested in how you think the changed layout alters the tone or feel of the piece — or not, of course.
Enjoy!
A Bang on the head
In the middle of the night
I woke up
(if you can call being semi-conscious being awake),
walked purposefully towards the door to go to the bathroom
— and almost knocked myself out.
The reason was that in the twin states of entire darkness
and semi-somnambulance
I was facing in a different direction from the one I thought I was facing.
As a result,
instead of walking through the door,
I tried to walk through the wall.
The next few days brought nausea
and headaches.
After much prevarication I went to Accident and Emergency,
where I waited petrified among people for whom “social distancing” means not quite touching you,
and who wore their masks as a chin-warmer.
An hour and a half
later
I emerged
into the twilight,
secure in the knowledge that I had nothing more serious
than mild concussion.
I failed to do much writing,
but I was pleased to have read
a further 17%
of my book.
I hope you have enjoyed this version of the story. Comments are welcomed, as always. If you’d like to dig deeper, I often write an ‘Experiments in style extra’ post to explain how a version came about, or how I did it. That’s for paid subscribers.
If you’re new to the series, you can see the index of my experiments here: Index.
Thank you for reading!
If you are interested, I am running a one-day course in London about this.
Excellent exercise, Mr. Terryman! You asked for opinions, so here is mine. In general, I find prose written with the odd line breaks of poetry, is harder to follow. And something about it seems "affected" or "pretentious to me. (Though, I admit I have done it, myself, on short 50-word pieces.) A few writers I subscribe to take perfectly lovely prose and stretch it all out of shape with inexplicable line breaks down the page. And I find myself asking, "Why?" (Even Sherman Alexie is prone to it, and his work is otherwise genius!) Just my opinion. As for the AI generated art: No. In your photo this man seems to have too many fingers on his left hand. And his vest is buttoned incorrectly for a man, left over right. AI is artificial, yes, and not often intelligent. Also, just my opinion, my friend.
Certainly adds a certain Je ne sais quoi, although I ain't quite certain how else to describe it.... yet. Yet certainly encourages one to boldly go embrace adventure, but that's what you always do do for we readers.... literally, cheers my friend, Maurice