| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Octopus by Frank Norris: For an instant he told himself that the suddenness of this new
emotion must be evidence of its insincerity. He was perfectly
well aware that his impulses were abrupt and of short duration.
But he knew that this was not sudden. Without realising it, he
had been from the first drawn to Hilma, and all through these
last terrible days, since the time he had seen her at Los
Muertos, just after the battle at the ditch, she had obtruded
continually upon his thoughts. The sight of her to-day, more
beautiful than ever, quiet, strong, reserved, had only brought
matters to a culmination.
"Are you," he asked her, "are you so unhappy, Hilma, that you can
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: callused, enormous.
"Stop!" he exclaimed. And Trina, watching fearfully, saw
the palm suddenly contract into a fist, a fist that was hard
as a wooden mallet, the fist of the old-time car-boy. And
then her ancient terror of him, the intuitive fear of the
male, leaped to life again. She was afraid of him. Every
nerve of her quailed and shrank from him. She choked back
her sobs, catching her breath.
"There," growled the dentist, releasing her, "that's more
like. Now," he went on, fixing her with his little eyes,
"now listen to me. I'm beat out. I've walked the city
McTeague |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: sea-breeze blew through her hair, as he saw her in mind's eye,
and brought the hardy flush of health back upon her rather
pallid cheeks. He was prepared already hardly to know her,
so robust and revivified would she have become, by the
time he went down to the depot to meet her on her return.
For his imagination stopped short of seeing himself
at the seaside. It sketched instead pictures of whole
weeks of solitary academic calm, alone with his books
and his thoughts. The facts that he had no books,
and that nobody dreamed of interfering with his thoughts,
subordinated themselves humbly to his mood. The prospect,
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
