Experiments in style: breathless

A decididly excited account

One of the things I’ve been trying out is reworking a piece of text into completely different styles. A full exposition and explanation are given here:

Experimenting with styles

In today’s experiment I’d like to write the story as if it were a juicy piece of gossip.

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.

Breathless

OH. MY. GOD. You will never guess what happened to me. I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the loo, OK? Well silly me, I turned right instead of left and BAM! I went straight into the wall. I couldn’t believe it! You’d think I would know where the bathroom is by now! I mean, I’ve been living here for like forever! I should have tunred the lights on but I thought if I do that everybody will wake up and I’ll be in the doghouse and everyone else will be like a bear with a sore head! Actually, I ended up being the one with a sore head! And I felt a bit sick with it! I can’t remember the last time I felt that bad. Anyway, nothing much was getting done in the way of writing so after a day or two I dragged myself to the local hospital to get myself checked out. As soon as I walked into the waiting room I was like what the — I mean virtually nobody was wearing a mask and the ones that were must have thought we breathe through our chins or something! As for keeping three metres apart, forget it! People were so close to each other I thought it must be some sort of encounter group! I was like please see me soon, please see me soon! The gods must have been listening because I was seen in like quarter of an hour or something! Mind you, I still managed to read about 17% of my book. I read more quickly when I’m nervous! Anyway, some doctor or other saw me and then he sent me to a room with a nurse and she waved a pencil in front of my eyes and then bashed my elbows and my knees, so it was all a bit weird to be honest! Then she asked me how many pencils I could see. I almost said half a dozen! But then I thought she didn’t seem like the joking type and I didn’t fancy being made to stay so I was sensible and said one. Then I thought, what if that was a trick question and she was actually holding up two! Anyway she said I could go but not to over-exert myself for a week or two. Shame I didn’t get any writing done but at least I’m in one piece! Just about!

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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. Indeed, next week I’ll be publishing some notes about today’s version.

If you’re new to the series, you can see the index of my experiments here: Index.

Thank you for reading!