The task of imagining a story from another point of view became a famous classroom exercise in the Middle Ages. Augustine, a fourth century African Christian author, tells of how he composed these exercises as a school child, and listened to other students’ efforts. This exercise has been used down to the present day, as a way to encourage students to understand the world from a point of view other than their own (one of the learning outcomes for a Gen Ed class!).Pick a scene or episode or maybe a couple of short scenes from ANY of the works we have read. Write me a SINGLE SPACED composition AT LEAST ONE PAGE LONG in which you imagine and retell in your own words how the scene would have looked and felt and been experienced from the point of view of ANOTHER character. Not the character that in the original scene is 1) telling the story, or 2) whose experience is the focus of the story. Somebody else in the story, or even a new character who you add.For example, what would the Barbarians say about the day of Waiting for the Barbarians? What would the grandmother feel in the final scene of The Women’s Swimming Pool? Here are some tips to make your imagined story more interesting and more fun to write.Think about the character, feelings, life history, and perspective of the character you’re putting at the center. Just as if you were acting. Put some time into imagining them in the scene, maybe visualize it as if you were watching it.You can tell your piece of the story IN THE CHARACTER’S OWN WORDS or else have a NARRATOR who tells us what your character is thinking and feeling.Either way, DIALOGUE makes a story more lively and interesting. Include the direct words that characters say to each other, if that makes sense for the scene. Even imagine new dialogue if it is not part of the scene in the original.DESCRIBE. Put some effort into thinking about how things look, sound, smell, feel, for your character. Describe the whole scene, and describe their experience of it.You’ll want to make sure you include the things that happen in the original scene! It might be easiest to write a bare bones plot summary of your scene then build your composition around that.You will be graded on a) how much detail from the original scene you include, b) how well you reimagine the scene from another point of view, c) how creative you are (if you’re worried about that, read the tips again). 

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1MUnX-hEygogX0bOiSKqBV0Iu02whZ3RL/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108066108645568813255&rtpof=true&sd=true
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1blOuyq3afktjK3TWwiySml3wTRNsjM0j/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108066108645568813255&rtpof=true&sd=true