An Impromptu: Nonfiction in Fiction 1
Here’s the situation. You’re sitting quietly in class one day and notice that the sound of the teacher’s voice and the rustle of the other students’ movements and the ambient noise of the street outside and the electronics in the room have begun to fade, seem more and more distant. You yourself seem to be leaving your body, drifting away from the class, drifting above the room, then above the building. You sense yourself turn in midair and looking around you, you see two figures in the distance. They are small and far away at first but as you concentrate on them you feel yourself propelled slowly forward towards them. The rest of your vision is blurry but the images of the two of them are getting clearer and clearer. You realize that you recognize one of them from public life, a figure you know well and have read about or seen or perhaps even written about before. The other figure is someone very much like you but not you; instead it’s a fictional version of you, transported into a specific time and place and circumstance.
Move closer. Who is the character—the historical figure or public personality or celebrity—that the fictional version of you is talking to? What can you tell about the period and place where the conversation is taking place? What can you tell about the fictional version of yourself from appearance and behavior?
Try writing the scene you are witnessing, making the historical figure talk and behave as you believe he or she would have in real life, and the fictional version of you talk and behave as you would if you lived in that time and place.