ruptured by the sentence, ‘So he threw those plates’. This acts as a very
striking metaphor. It compresses into an image, a whole series of incidents
that lead to the breakdown of the relationship:
Example 9.2
He couldn’t decide if a tear or a raindrop had splashed on his cheek.
Early on, she seemed to have hidden herself away in the darkness,
her spring sprung tight. Then there was the moment they kissed—
she cried ‘kiss me on the eyelids!’. He once said hello to her on a
rattling bus but no sound had come out.When she smiled, her eyes
always flashed uncertainly. He mistrusted love, it reminded him of
long, boring movies set in dark rooms; wet eyes and wet kisses. So
he threw those plates.Years later, he saw her crossing the street, her
lips middle-aged and shrivelled. It rained all night, splashing blackly
against the window.‘synoptic novel’ (Lobb 1994)Now try the synoptic novel for yourself, and look out for similar or related
examples, such as ‘A Radically Condensed History of Postindustrial Life’
by American writer David Foster Wallace (2001).
DISCONTINUOUS PROSE
Discontinuous prose (Exercise 2) is a versatile form which breaks up nar-
rative or expository writing: it is the bread and butter of experimental prose
writers. Discontinuous prose is written in sections, and breaks up any con-
tinuous narrative flow. Each section can enter a topic in a different way, and
can be written, if desired, in a different style. Sometimes in discontinuous
prose each section has its own subheading, marking it off from the previ-
ous one. A good example of this type of writing is by an Australian, Inez
Baranay. It is called ‘Living Alone: The New Spinster (Some Notes)’:
Example 9.3
When I began to live alone, long-ago, I’d stay up all night, so excited.
Your own space! Everything stays the way you left it. The good
chocolate you’ve been saving for the next craving remains in the
fridge.You can be obsessively neat or disgustingly messy and no-one
cares. You can watch TV at 3am, sleep at 7pm, red wine in the
morning and breakfast at night and no-one cares. You don’t have
to put clothes on, you can cry for no reason and talk out loud to196 The Writing Experiment