Your task specifics:
Imagine that you’re part of a dynamic family unit located in some unique (remote/congested/dull/exciting/exotic) part of the American landscape. Whether it’s in the city or the country, your family exists in a kind of physical and/or psychological isolation. Your fictional family is on a journey…a trek.. a crusade if you will, and this is to be documented via the perspective of three family members. Each family member documents (via the disembodied narrative voice) in his or her colorful way, his or her own participation and experience and provides insight into the other characters through documentation. Perhaps the past is never past..it’s always present. It’s almost uncanny, if you will. If this is starting to sound a lot like our favorite Faulkner novella, that’s because it should. Choose a location in the United States from where your fictional family hails and from where it begins its journey. It’s up to you to decide what that particular journey will be, and while you’ll all begin from one place, only you (and your annoying travel companions) will decide where you end up.
*Consider how language is used, regionally, and its ability to empower even as it fails to express the full breadth of the human condition. ALSO consider how the characters in As I Lay Dying are, to a degree, alienated as they are nearly living on top of each other. They live closely bound yet apart, keeping their darkest secrets inside and often feeling vastly distant, both emotionally and intellectually.
