The opening scene of The Bark of the Bog Owl takes place at the edge of the forest—or, if you prefer, at the edge of a clearing. Edges and boundaries, the meeting of two worlds, are fertile ground for storytelling.
For this week’s exercise, write a scene that takes place at an edge or boundary—the edge of town, the edge of a forest, the boundary between two neighborhoods or two countries. Let’s see what kinds of things happen where two worlds overlap.
At the end of the first chapter of The Bark of the Bog Owl, Aidan throws rocks into the tree, and the rocks keep coming back down at strange times (and right on his head!). The limited third-person narrator shows us what Aidan sees.
Retell that scene, again in limited third-person, but this time your point-of-view character will be Dobro. DON’T write in first-person. You still have a third-person narrator, but that narrator is telling us what things look like from the treetop.
Think of a familiar character from literature, history, or folklore, and drop that character into a setting that is familiar to you. What happens next?
Examples: Rip van Winkle wakes up in a Starbucks; Cleopatra makes a Zoom call; John the Baptist visits First Baptist Church.
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