Assignment 1
During the lesson were were asked to choose a person for whom we would write a piece on the five senses. We were instructed to identify occurrences that included those five senses either on the way home, or within a couple of days, and then email the tutor to say we had done so. On receipt of the email, the tutor would give us the real assignment, which turned out to be writing about the sensory experiences from the point of view of the chosen person. My person was younger daughter and the assignment can be seen here
The tutor's feedback was extensive and generous and essentially said that the piece was mostly about me and not nearly enough about younger daughter. It was my story and my quest with younger daughter not really having a structure that differs from mine. He hoped as he read it that he would begin to get as strong a sense of younger daughter as he has of me. He received some consolation with the mention of Mombasa during the visit to Nogs Super Market but couldn't quite dismiss the possibility that I had also been on that trip. What he really wanted was some detail of which I had no knowledge eg what does the back of my head look like. The section with the fur hat: he wasn't persuaded that younger daughter would think that way ("One down. OK"). He suggested thinking "eye line". In other words think in terms of what only younger daughter can see. I'm tall, she's small. How do I look to her? She will see sky or tops of buildings behind me. I will see the ground. Etc. In the piece, the looking is done mostly by me whereas it should be mostly by her, particularly as looking can tell the reader a lot about the character. Does younger daughter take the task on as her own? He also counselled against use of language which, while familiar to me, would not be familiar to a disconnected reader and would simply confuse them, using as an example "One time flattered" and the slightly unconventional use of "Sibling"