Dockyard: new prompt/last winner

[strangeatlas]

Double Exposure

Prompt for this month (due May 17) focuses on presentation of dialogue. Submit to this link so we can vote anonymously on a winner, and also play guess the author!


Dialogue can be direct (quoted) or indirect (described). The prompt is all about using this choice to change to focus and the feel of the passage. I'll give an example of each below.

The prompt this month is:

Portray a conversation where one person is always quoted, and the other is always summarized. Now rewrite it and exchange places (the other character is quoted and the first is summarized). Without changing the substance of the dialogue, try to create a very different feel or interpretation of the scene by the reversal.

Here's an quick example I slapped together

The king said, "let the supplicant come forth and state his claim. Why is it you have come here all the way from the country?"
The wirey man stepped forward and declared that two sheep had been taken from him and killed, that they were his only ewes in his flock.
"And what sort of brigand did this to you?"
He trembled a moment before he replied. It was the king's own son.

The king beckconed the man forth, and asked what brought him so far from the country.
He said, "Two sheep have been taken from me, m'lord, and killed, and they be my only ewes in me flock!"
The king asked what sort of brigand was responsible.
He trembed, finally saying, "Well, m'lord, twas your own son!"

Also: announcing the winner of the last prompt!

Proud to present, the winner of the last prompt was....

No man escapes economics

Also, three of the other submissions were but one vote from also being a winner! Perhaps this time?

 

[strangeatlas]

If you want a one week reminder you can put a reaction to this comment and I'll send you one!

 

[Itari]

Congratulations @Kuno!!! This was fun, looking forward to reading all the next entries

 

[unanun]

Indeed Kunos was my favourite, but the nature of voting squashes others together!

I will overcome my laziness and leave feedback next round

 

[Reverie]

Maybe I'll actually manage to get myself in check and do it this time?

 

[strangeatlas]

Here's a more professional example from 100 Years of Solitude. Melquíades is always quoted and everyone else is summarized.

"Things have a life of their own," the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. "It's simply a matter of waking up their souls." José Arcadio Buendía, whose unbridled imagination always went beyond the genius of nature and even beyond miracles and magic, thought that it would be possible to make use of that useless invention to extract gold from the bowels of the earth. Melquíades, who was an honest man, warned him: "It won't work for that." But José Arcadio Buendía at that time did not believe in the honesty of gypsies, so he traded his mule and a pair of goats for the two magnetized ingots. Úrsula Iguarán, his wife, who relied on those animals to increase their poor domestic holdings, was unable to dissuade him.

That book uses switches between quotes and summaries all over the place to draw emphasis and set pace.

 

[strangeatlas]

One week remains

Time to get started!

Or for most of you, time to start procrastinating stressfully

 

[Mglo]