Lake Story Excerpt 2

In my Creative Writing: Advance Fiction class I wrote two versions of the same story beginning, with very different styles of narration. These exercises demonstrated the ways different narrators not only have different voices but also have access to different information. This is the second version, using a narration style similar to the one used by Haruki Murakami in After Dark.

Photo by Rahul Pandit from Pexels

Our consciousness switches on above a lake. Our viewpoint is floating high above, so we can see the whole area. The water is still, except for the waves caused by a few motor boats on the east side and the ripples from birds diving for fish towards the center. The lake is surrounded by forest, punctuated by houses and docks.

The west side of the lake is less populated than the east. There are only a few houses, and they are spread far apart. Our invisible camera zooms in on one of these houses, small and gray with a hammock and a picnic table covered in slightly chipped white paint. Somehow we know that this house is not always inhabited, but that as of recently it is.

We shift our view as the camera zooms back out slightly and moves along the front of the property to a tiny rocky shoreline and then back out over the water.

A third of the way across the lake is a tiny island. It is more rock than anything else, but the center has dirt and trees and bushes. The ground is hilly enough that one side of the island has a spot that rises up, all raw rockface, fairly high above the water, a small cliff. Someone has tied a rope to a robust old oak tree near the edge.

On the other side of the island, we see two people, on whom our viewpoint now focuses. A young man is draped over a large rock. He must have just been in the water, because he is still wet. His hair, a dark blonde or light brown made darker by the water, is dripping on his shoulders, which are sunburned. The redness continues on his cheeks and nose. He is smirking at his companion.

His companion is a young woman, probably the same age as him. She is treading water. Her face is flushed, too, but we do not think it looks like a sunburn. It could be her body trying to regulate her temperature – we know that the water here is cold – or it could be embarrassment, or lust, or frustration.

Our actors have not spoken to each other with words while we have been watching them, but their eyes are locked. The man raises an eyebrow.

The woman dives below the water. We can see her path towards the man, but his face – smirk slipping just a bit – shows that from his angle it is unclear where she has gone. A moment later, she pops up right next to his rock, splashing a big crest of water at him as she does. He gasps and recoils from the water, wobbling and almost falling off the rock. She laughs.

“Race you to the cliff,” she says.

She swims off, and he shakes his head and jumps off the rock to swim after her. Our camera can do nothing but follow her.