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LIVE WORKSHOP: The Objective Correlative

LIVE WORKSHOP: The Objective Correlative

February 10, 2018 Conference 2018, Live 2018 58 Comments

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Leigh-Ann
Leigh-Ann
3 years ago

oh no, did something happen to the feed?

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Roberta
Roberta
3 years ago

Not seeing you…

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CarolynTara
CarolynTara
3 years ago

Rosalyn, we can’t see the PowerPoint anymore! You’re on candid camera. 😉

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Shanice
Shanice
3 years ago

I have two examples: Please use whichever you’d like and rip it apart for me.

1. “What now?” Uriel pinched his nose, making his voice nasal.
Now that her vision had adjusted to the dark, she knew where to go. “We walk.” Liv led them through the labyrinth that was the sewage system.
They sloshed through murky water. Occasionally, they crunched on bones, slipped on decaying shit and skirted around a group of rats feeding on a dead child. Liv fixed her face. Inquisitive, like working a puzzle. She shut down, dissociating herself for the sake of survival. When they came to a four-way intersection, Luca and Amirah were out of breath.

2. He handed her the screen. On it was a direct communication link to the trash chute. There she found an arm, the slender fingers on the hand, curled up near a rotten head of lettuce, more trash surrounding the limb.
“NO!” Liv heard a scream that sounded like a wounded animal from off in the distance.
It wouldn’t stop screaming, Liv collapsed to the ground, covering her ears in the hopes of drowning out the noise, rocking back and forth.
This couldn’t be happening. She wasn’t gone! She couldn’t be!
I need her, Liv thought, still rocking.
She isn’t gone, she can’t be!

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Shanice
Shanice
Reply to  Shanice
3 years ago

This was before the exercise was presented, so I didn’t use the examples you gave.

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Vanitha Sankaran
Vanitha Sankaran
3 years ago

Her baby had drifted too far away. Her tentacles could only extended so much and the waves of this ocean crested high and unpredictable. Jellyfish traveled in colonies and other mothers were as vigilant as she. But as night fell and the waves swelled, she wondered if any mother could be vigilant enough?

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CarolynTara
CarolynTara
3 years ago

Tough assignment! I chose the watch (irresistible), and here’s my quick attempt:

Terri picked up the cold pocket watch and pressed the latch firmly, forcing it open. She held it close to her eyes and waited for the minute hand to move, held her breath, wondering if it still worked or if this, too was broken. The minute hand ticked — her heart lifted — and she looked left to where Ken always stood, to share her delight with him, only of course he wasn’t there.

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Laura
Laura
3 years ago

Willow laughed and continued to swipe her net through the air. She was, at last, laughing and giggling as if she were her old self in their old backyard at their old house..
And Ashton couldn’t stand the sight of it. The invisible bees were in his stomach now, in his blood, in his brain. They swarmed until they covered his thoughts with a dark, buzzing, cloud.

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Laura
Laura
Reply to  Laura
3 years ago

Oops I did this wrong! I was out of the room for a minute!

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Flor
Flor
3 years ago

Every edge might pop me and then the truth will come out. The fluorescent lights will dull up my skin like they always do and give me that deer in the headlights look. So I turned and ran, but lightly, trying not to let my heels clack on the shiny polished floor. I rushed to my home where the tables are round, where my lamp is dim, and where my kitty politely snuggles on my cheek.

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Flor
Flor
Reply to  Flor
3 years ago

We lost your audio!

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Leigh-Ann
Leigh-Ann
3 years ago

The smell of dust, leather, and ink lifted into the air as she cracked open the spine of the book against the table. She breathed it in, straining to fill her lungs with as much of this new perfume as she could. She’d never dreamed that there were so many books in the world, and now they were all hers.

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Leigh-Ann
Leigh-Ann
Reply to  Leigh-Ann
3 years ago

Awesome. Thanks.

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Carolyn
Carolyn
3 years ago

For miles, I could see no one, nothing but white rock tombstones hard on the bottom of my feet. Was this the end? Was this all there was? I called out, but heard nothing. Only the echo of my own cry echoing back to my ears.

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Tiffany
Tiffany
3 years ago

Olivia climbed down from the ladder, a dusty book in her hand and walked back to one of the tables. She sat down, her body fatigued and opened the book. The pages were yellowed, worn down, and the words unseen for hundreds of years. Olivia looked at the rows upon rows of books, so many of them untouched by anyone else for years. Authors and their voices unremembered and unheard, except by her. Olivia looked back at her book, at the stacks of books at her table, stories full of people and places. Adventures and friendships, of all the things she could never have.

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Flor
Flor
Reply to  Tiffany
3 years ago

Just in case you moved on, we lost your audio right when you started mine 🙂 — Flor

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Elza
Elza
3 years ago

Wafting in currents, I heard their whispers.
“She’s soft.”
“She’s brainless.”
“She’s pretty, I guess.”
Their waves push me away from the bloom.
Be careful where you tread.
When I’m washed up and invisible, the sting will be yours to deal with.

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Roberta
Roberta
3 years ago

The blob of death creeping through blue water, toxic spines set to explode when a tiny sliver of a fish forgets to avoid the tentacles.

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Sarah
Sarah
3 years ago

Example:

The watch hadn’t ticked for one year, two months, and fifteen days. And yet, for one year, two months, and fifteen days he had carried it in his pocket.

At first, he would take out the watch and glance at it, forgetting that it had stopped. But as a few weeks passed by, and then a few months, he stopped. It just sat there, a weight in his pocket that he refused to release.

Once he’d taken it to a watchmaker, asked if there wasn’t something that could be done about it. Yet the moment the old, bespectacled man reached out to grab the watch with greasy hands, his heart clenched. He murmured “no thanks” under his breath and ran down the street, far away from the greedy watchmaker. The watch might be broken, but it was his.

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Sara
Sara
3 years ago

Thank you so much for doing this, I’m learning SO MUCH.

Heres my attempt!

Sometimes, going into the second room was unbearable. Sometimes, seeing the brightly colored animal trim half torn from the walls made my lungs forget their purpose. Her room didn’t have the overabundance in toys most children were used to, but every molecule that remained overcrowded the space. Removing her clothes and crib, my crib, did nothing to remove the images of her smiling face from my mind. It did nothing to quiet the hollow echo in my soul where her laughter once danced around.
Sometimes, the only way I could live with the loss, was to pretend she was never here.

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Hannah Heath
Hannah Heath
3 years ago

The desks smelled of lemon cleaning spray, just like they always did. As if somebody thought the fresh scent would rid the air of its heaviness.

Papers rustled all around her, dry and brittle, louder than they should be. Shhhhh. Ann refrained from glaring at the fellow students around her. Not that they would have noticed her angry look, anyway. Backs humped, eyes glazed, they labored away over their textbooks, fighting to win the ever-losing battle for an A.

Ann turned back to her Chemistry notes as it glared up at her, mocking It would not get the better of her.

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RebeccaKlay
RebeccaKlay
3 years ago

He checked his pocket watch again, hands slick with sweat as he fumbled and caught the delicate time-piece. A quick glance around him settled his nerves. No one had noticed. He checked the watch again. Not that there was anything to notice. A cold chill crept across the back of his neck. He stiffened. Frozen, his eyes followed the second hand as it haltingly inched around the dial. The cold passed. His sigh was shaky as he checked the time again.

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Emily Paxman
Emily Paxman
3 years ago

At the head of the dock was a sign that read “no swimming.” From a distance, the water glimmered clear, sun cascading over its surface like a pianist trilling her way through scales, up and down a keyboard. I walked to the edge of the pier, sandals swinging at my side as I let my feet fall naked against the warm wooden slats.

At the end of the dock, a small boy swirled a child’s butterfly net through the forbidden waters. I smiled, about to ask what he was fishing for, when he whipped the net out and dropped the gelatin mold of a jellyfish onto the dock. The creature stuck dead to the pier in seconds. I saw it now. All around us, hundreds of small bodies, chocking up the sea.

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Rosalyn Eves
Rosalyn Eves
Reply to  Emily Paxman
3 years ago

I like the shift here–how the opening paragraph is warm and soothing and suddenly we get the disturbing “gelatin mold” and the terror of a sea full of jelly fish.

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Cassy
Cassy
3 years ago

I remembered the first time he’d brought them into our home, they’d been as clean as a can of freshly opened paint. I’d once wrinkled my nose at their strong leathery scent, but then the smell became familiar. A comfort. He’d worn them to the market, to the park; were his first choice when we’d go dancing at Beverly’s each Sunday night. He’d loved them. Just as he’d once loved me. And then with one simple walk into that muddy wood he’d ruined them, and no matter how hard I’d scrubbed, I’d never been able to get them clean again.

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Rosalyn Eves
Rosalyn Eves
Reply to  Cassy
3 years ago

I really like the sense of heartbreak, how you’ve imbued the leather jacket with meaning specific to the character and then “muddied it,” and how the destruction of the jacket parallels the destruction of the relationship.

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Sara
Sara
3 years ago

Oop! I did it wrong.

The feed cut out, so I didn’t see that I needed to pick one of the objects. Sorry!

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Robin Q Woodward
Robin Q Woodward
3 years ago

The landscape was barren, broken. Unyielding rock stretched in every direction. Even the sky was stony, a flat gray unwilling to admit a single ray of light. Sand travelled on the wind, attacking the skin of her face like a million needles. Her feet shuffled across the hard soil in a mindless rhythm, and her destination seemed ever out of reach.

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Rosalyn Eves
Rosalyn Eves
Reply to  Robin Q Woodward
3 years ago

Great sense here of pain and desperation, inspired by a brutal landscape.

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Stephanie
Stephanie
3 years ago

My chest clenched up as my mother held out the pocket watch. She pulled her hand back slightly before shoving it almost in my face. I recoiled, raising my palms as flatly as possible. “Take it,” she insisted, her voice quivering. “Please.”

I shook my head emphatically, but I was overwhelmed with the smell of the brass. That’s what they used to make everything out of, right? Why this watch? What was so special about it all those years ago? “I can’t. You know how I felt about him. How I still feel.” I stepped away from her. “Don’t wave that trash in my face.”

Something sparked in my mother’s eyes as the color of her cheeks grew so hot that I could almost see steam. “How dare you!” She raised her hand as if to slap me. It wouldn’t be the first time; however, she thought better of it, immediately backing down, just like always. “Your grandfather insisted that it go to you. It was his last request. I… I already miss him. Please.”

My stomach gurgled angrily. “I hated him.” I made eye contact as I tried to regulate my breathing. “I still do.” I will never forget what he did to me. Bile rose in the back of my throat. “I won’t take it.”

She jammed the watch into my shirt pocket, which knocked my breath out. “No, no, no, no, no…,” I wailed. My head swam as the world grew fuzzy.

And my mother… She ran away, splashing through a puddle as I found myself vomiting onto the nearest stone on the pathway. I will never forget.

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Rosalyn Eves
Rosalyn Eves
Reply to  Stephanie
3 years ago

I think you do a nice job here of illustrating the MC’s feelings through her body language, the way she pulls away even as her mother pushes the watch on her. If you wanted to enhance the revulsion, you could focus on the way you describe details, like the watch: maybe the glass face has a hard edge, or the bronze looks tarnished or fake, something to add additional clues for readers as to how she feels and creates a mood.

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Christine
Christine
3 years ago

Kind of sleepy here, but here’s my try!

She saw shadows in the metalwork. Hulking silhouettes that slid into her peripherals the moment she focused on them. Every jaw-clicking tick sent her nails digging into the gold edges. If she stared too long, phantom nails created tiny ghost crescents on the beds of her shoulders. She knew they were fake, of course, of course. But that never stops her from flinching. From chomping down on her tongue until brittle metal sings in her mouth. The shriek of the timepiece clapping closed the only thing saving her from biting clean through.

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Rosalyn Eves
Rosalyn Eves
Reply to  Christine
3 years ago

Ooh, I like how the words you’ve chosen create a chilling, discordant world (from the hulking shadows to phantoms and ghosts and the shrieking timepiece).

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RebeccaKlay
RebeccaKlay
3 years ago

I can hear you 🙂

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Kristina
Kristina
3 years ago

Her fingertips traced the unsettled lines of its tendrils, searching for a pattern between two worlds separated by glass.

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Rosalyn Eves
Rosalyn Eves
Reply to  Kristina
3 years ago

This is very evocative. It feels lonely to me–is that what you were going for?

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Shanice
Shanice
3 years ago

“Do you want to see it?” I shook my head.
Moments later the morphine had kicked in and Mom picked me up to drive me home. We wound up and down through the streets, coming to the woods that lined our house. Spiderwebs shone brilliant in the sun, entangled in moss. I couldn’t tell where the webs ended and the moss began. The lichen on the tree bark was a piercing, lush green. Years ago, before we’d bought the land and built the house, the woods had been burned down.
I was six when I’d found out but Mom explained to me that sometimes when you lose something dear, it’s a blessing in disguise. You get to start afresh. And in the case of our woods, it had grown fast and wild. In the short 10 years since I first heard the story, the woods had grown from neat and manicured to wild and unruly.
It was my special place. I’d learned how to climb a tree, shoot a shotgun, and swing from the vines, like a wild woman, in those woods. It wasn’t my special place anymore. No amount of burning would ever make it beautiful again, would ever make me beautiful again.
That little girl was long gone.
“Mel, you ok?” Mom asked.
I shook my head, “I lost her, Mom. I lost the baby.”

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Rosalyn Eves
Rosalyn Eves
Reply to  Shanice
3 years ago

I like the metaphor you’re working with here, how the beautiful and lush woods parallel the girl she was and the unruly state parallels the girl she is now. You have a lot of good detail for the original state of the woods–I’d like to see just a little more parallel detail for the new, unkempt state of the woods.

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CarolynTara
CarolynTara
3 years ago

We lost you! No audio.

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Roberta
Roberta
3 years ago

Ironically when you asked if we could hear you, you cut out, at least for me…

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Leigh-Ann
Leigh-Ann
3 years ago

No audio! you stated to read flor’s and it cut out

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Sarah
Sarah
3 years ago

The noise of pencils scratching echoed louder and louder through the room so that I couldn’t focus on the words in front of me. I glanced up at the tiny watch that Professor Turna had put on the desk, trying to make out the hands. It was just far enough away to be unreadable. I peeked at Lisa who was bent over, scribbling furiously and looked back at my paper. I pressed my fingers to my eyes, then refocused on the page, hoping the words would stop swimming. No luck.

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Rosalyn Eves
Rosalyn Eves
Reply to  Sarah
3 years ago

This gives me anxiety! I like how the scratching pencils creates an uncomfortable atmosphere and the tension mounts from the watch she can’t read to the student who seems to have no trouble on the exam. Maybe just a little more detail on the watch to emphasize the discomfort?

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Hannah
Hannah
3 years ago

This was so helpful and fun! Thanks! I chose the ruin for mine.

Caiden watches silently as a clump of decaying rock tumbles down the side of the wall. It smashes into the tough ground and shatters into dirt among its brethren. She slumps down, taking a seat alongside it. The dim and hazy light filters through the thick clouds, casting shadows across the crumbling building. She squeezes her eyes closed and just breaths, the scent of dirt invading her senses.

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Rosalyn Eves
Rosalyn Eves
Reply to  Hannah
3 years ago

Thank you! I’m glad it was helpful.

Here, I get a clear sense of someone feeling discouraged and possibly trapped (decay, shatter, dim–all those words underscore the negative sense of the scene). Maybe substitute “earth” for the last “dirt” just for a little variety.

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Sara
Sara
3 years ago

Hmm, the feed cut out again for me.

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Shanice
Shanice
3 years ago

Umm, Rosalyn has left the building…
Where’d you go?

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Josie
Josie
3 years ago

I squinted my eyes and drew my hand to shield my vision from the harsh sun. The crumbling facade of the home we once shared was now held together by the skeletons of vines long dead. I never thought i’d stand on the soil of my family’s land again, i’d hoped i never would. The dust of memories i thought long dead trail behind me and start to awaken as i make my long awaited return home. But only the ghosts are here to greet me.

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Rosalyn Eves
Rosalyn Eves
Reply to  Josie
3 years ago

I like the mix of nostalgia and sadness here–all the references to the dead help underscore that (skeletons, dust, ghosts).

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Lauren
Lauren
3 years ago

Tiny bubbles rippled from underneath the tentacles of the jellyfish. The thin membrane veil pulsed erratically pulsed in an attempt to propel the sea creature upward. A sudden pressure enveloped her delicate body. Plummeting toward the ocean floor, she watched as her baby drifted further out to sea.

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Rosalyn Eves
Rosalyn Eves
Reply to  Lauren
3 years ago

I like how visual this scene is–I can picture the moments of the jellyfish quite clearly. I wasn’t quite prepared for the loss at the end, when the baby drifts, so you might want to create a stronger contrast to emphasize how the jellyfish is at the mercy of the ocean currents around her.

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Alicia
Alicia
3 years ago

I chose the watch:

As soon as my footsteps stopped echoing throughout the empty tunnels, I noticed how quiet it was. I slumped onto the hard ground, panting. I couldn’t imagine where I was after what seemed like hours. But then I caught my breath and noticed. This place had never been so silent. The darkness was closing in on me, like a weight on my chest. I drew the freezing-cold pocket watch from my dirty clothes and realized what was different. The regular ticking was gone. It was like a heart that had stopped beating. Gently, I brushed its back with my fingers, running them over the engraved name of my mother. The last piece of her, always resting against my chest. It was broken. A mere piece of metal, like a soulless corpse.

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Rosalyn Eves
Rosalyn Eves
Reply to  Alicia
3 years ago

I like that the watch has a clear significance to the MC. The sense of darkness as a weight helps me feel the discouragement and fear of the MC–I think you could add to that with a few more descriptive details of the tunnels (what do they look like? smell like? What kind of hard, cold words can you use for them?) This will also help the description of the watch stand out by contrast.

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kate
kate
3 years ago

Thank you so much for this workshop! I learned so much and really enjoyed it!

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Rosalyn Eves
Rosalyn Eves
Reply to  kate
3 years ago

You’re welcome! Thanks for joining in.

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CarolynTara
CarolynTara
3 years ago

This was a superb presentation. I think a different title might have attracted more people.

Rosalyn, I have a question for you: I’m going to be writing from the POV of someone only days after she’s experienced tremendous trauma. Given that I have never gone through anything near what she’s suffered, it’s a real challenge for me to write from her perspective. I’m wondering if you have any advice for such an undertaking — both in terms of doing justice to her suffering, and in terms of not overwhelming readers with it.

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Rosalyn Eves
Rosalyn Eves
Reply to  CarolynTara
3 years ago

That’s probably true! Usually I call it “Writing Emotion: The Objective Correlative” but I forgot to add the emotion part this time. 🙂

Your question is a good one–I think you’ll probably want the style of the prose to reflect her trauma (probably broken in some way). I’d start by looking up similar books that deal with characters in trauma. Tahereh Mafi’s Shatter Me does interesting things with the prose style, and Jolene Perry’s Stronger than You know did a good job (I thought) of showing a character recovering from trauma. It might also help to look up memoirs from people who have written about trauma to see how they approach it. I think this is also something you’ll want lots of readers for, to determine if you’ve indicated the trauma clearly enough, or if it makes it too overwhelming to read.

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Jenni Enzor
Jenni Enzor
3 years ago

I watched this after it went live. This was an amazing workshop. Although I’ve seen the objective correlative in others’ writing, I’ve never heard it explained like this. I will definitely be applying this in my own writing.
Thank you for sharing with us!

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