Recentering Characters on the Margins
Let's rewrite a narrative to center a character previously disempowered or pushed to the side.
Television handles point of view a bit differently than books do. When we get a character's perspective, it doesn't mean they're the one holding the camera. Instead, they're centered in the scenes. It's like they're choosing which parts of the story to show. A frequent writing prompt is to shift the perspective of a story, but we're going to ask you to shift more than perspective. We want you to recenter the whole thing.
Prompt: Take a character on the margins of your story -- someone powerless, perhaps -- and hand the story over to them. This character should not only narrate, but should choose which scenes and which details of those scenes to include. See what changes.
If you don't want to use your own story, go ahead and do this for a TV show. Like, what if Art got to be in charge of an Orphan Black episode? You could write the Night Nurse's spinoff in the Defenders franchise, an episode of The Handmaid's Talecentering a Martha. Or who doesn't get enough attention in Yellowjackets? You decide.
Recommended viewing and reading: Battlestar Gallactica 2x18 ("Downloaded); Doctor Who Who 6x4 ("The Doctor's Wife"); Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys; Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. Other ideas? Tweet them! #MSWprompts
Reflection: As we were choosing our examples from TV, we noticed the likelihood that characters of color were relegated to marginalized and/or service roles. We suspect that (white) writers want to populate their worlds with diverse characters, but by failing to center them, they end up merely tokenizing. Are there other commonalities to the characters at the margins of the stories you read or watch? How can you disrupt that pattern in your own writing?
The Minneapolis Storytelling Workshop is a project of writers Erin Kate Ryan and Allison Wyss, who also have books coming out.
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Minneapolis Storytelling Workshop is a project of professional writers Allison Wyss and Erin Kate Ryan. All rights reserved.