See you next time

That’s the end of this lesson. By now you should be getting the hang of this technique of drawing out action with first person narration, and continually connecting environmental and relationship details to thoughts and feelings in a way that tells us about the narrator and the world at the same time.

We’ve also seen how you can use understatement and indirect observation to both downplay and heighten extreme emotions.

What normal routines do people still have to maintain during a tragedy? Imagine something terrible happened in your life. What would you still need to do? How would you feel while you were doing it? How would you appear to other people?

When you read, see or hear accounts of a tragic event, how much of what you see is extreme emotion? And how much is people trying to maintain their routines? (News footage might not be the best source for this, because it tends to capture the emotion and move on, but longer accounts such as recounts, novels, and documentaries might have more examples.)

'That Eye, the Sky' by Tim Winton is about a boy in a country town whose family struggle after the father of the family is paralysed in a car accident, then are targeted by a mysterious stranger claiming to be a preacher come to help them (Source)

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