Here’s the first short story I have written in a long time.
I joined a writing workshop recently. One meeting’s optional exercise was to be a short 500-“ish” word snippet written from the point of view of “The Other” — trying to see something through “someone else’s eyes”. It was intended to explore how a person’s personal perspective changes the way they perceive a situation. An exercise in trying to put yourself in the mind of “a fictional someone you don’t understand or agree with”.
I really had no idea how to approach this. After some thought, the first ideas I had that piqued my interest, (not too surprising considering my tastes,) were sci-fi related.
What would the ultimate “Other” be?
Why, a creature from an alien world whose very nature gave them a perspective a human could not grasp. Of course, science fiction writers have been trying to put their minds in just such a mind space for over a century. What if you could somehow literally put yourself into such a creature’s mind?…
The result of these thoughts was this story. It ended up being a little over three times the length of the exercise. But it got me writing, which was the point.
Download Through Someone Else’s Eyes
48kb Adobe PDF, 5 pages, about 1800 words.