First person in That Eye, the Sky 5: Racing to the scene

I just swallowed a whole egg

In the next snippet, we plunge straight into Ort’s head.

I don't know why, but I feel like I just swallowed a whole egg, shell and all. I can tell something bad's happened – I'm not stupid – but no one has told me yet. I don't know. If my Dad is dead, we just won't live anymore.

That Eye, the Sky(1986)

This snippet gives us several discrete elements of Ort’s inner world.

Feeling using simile or metaphor: How the narrator feels, using a vivid simile (expanded with the phrase ‘shell and all’).

Reading of situation: What does the narrator think is happening?

Limitation: In what way is the narrator's knowledge limited? 

Belief: What does the narrator believe about the world/future if their fear turns out to be true?

Take another look at just the phrases about knowledge and perception in this snippet:

I don't know why, but I feel like I just swallowed a whole egg, shell and all. I can tell something bad's happened – I'm not stupid – but no one has told me yet. I don't know. If my Dad is dead, we just won't live anymore.

First person narrators have limited information. We can use this fact to emphasise the stress of not knowing what’s happened. Try to fold this feeling into your variation, even if you just use the phrase “I don’t know”.

I don’t know what’s happening to me, but I feel like my heart is trying to gallop out of my chest, an impala jumping thorns. I can tell Emmanuel is afraid—he’s squeezing my hand—but I don't know what he is afraid of. Nothing feels real. There is no world in which Imani dies, because the world itself would vanish.

I don’t know why, but I feel like a needle being hammered on an anvil, sharp and hard. I know something terrible has happened—I could tell from the voices—but what or where, I don’t know. What I do know is If Grandma is dead, I will take the Woodsman’s axe and level every tree in the forest.

Write your variation here.
Previous page