the room with the garden view

As stated, this is a writing practice.

The piece of work I appropriated was a typical story of a moody teenager who was jealous of Mary - a girl from school - who was popular and got all the attention from the boys. Towards the end of the short piece, the protagonist throws a tantrum, falls asleep, and wakes in Mary's body. Very unoriginal.

I gave myself just under 5 minutes, including prep time, to change the story dramatically, while using the same storyline. I changed the point of view from first person to third, and replaced both the setting (high school) and the characters. 

If you haven't already picked it up, the same storylines are floating around our entire store of media. Example: (and this is one of the obvious ones) Romeo and Juliet. Boy and Girl meet, fall in love, can't be together for specific reasons. Don't tell me you haven't seen that outside of the Shakespeare appropriations.

I think it is super-important to recognise these storylines and to have the ability to manipulate them into ways that are both original and impressive, and so without further ado, here is an example.

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Rachel wanted to stomp up the stairs. She wanted nothing more than to clash her way brazenly all the way up to the second level, where she could sneak into the staff kitchen and pinch some of that crappy coffee. Maybe she’d get lucky and find some of Jerry’s alcohol in the top cupboard, and she could have that too.

Rachel, however, was in a wheelchair. And the possibility of stomping up sixteen stairs while maneuvering the vehicle, was an unlikely one.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that Mary – pious, goody-two-shoes Mary – got the room with the garden view. After all, Mary was older! She was turning ninety-eight, for goodness sake.

Burning with indignation, seventy-four year-old Rachel swiveled around in her wheelchair, and zipped off towards the bingo room, eager to let her anger out on Jim – the new resident – as she cheated in the game.

However, Rachel never made it to the bingo room.

Her wheelchair – which was whizzing down the hallway at a surprisingly fast speed, stopped. It was very sudden. First it was moving. And then it wasn’t.

And when Rachel opened her eyes again, she was lying in a soft bed, with a real feather pillow. And she could hear the garden fountain rippling outside. And she thought, this is more like it.

But then Rachel sat up, caught her reflection in the window and gasped.

Because she was Mary. Or in Mary’s body, at least. And she was ninety-eight. And as Rachel stood up, on wavering legs, she cursed under her breath. Because she’d probably be dead within the year, and what good was a room with a garden view when you only had twelve months to live?