Writing Challenge: Reflect on your first feeling of being different from others and use it as the basis for an idea for a historical novel.
Itâs the year 1885, under the rule of her majesty, Queen Victoria. The son of a carpenter and a maid. A humble and common upbringing. From the time he was young, he knew he was a little different. The term empathy was only something he knew about in books, something that seemed to be a duty to have rather than an innate feeling. Nevertheless, lacking tears for others wasnât something he took as a defect, even when his mother called him heartless repeatedly. Lacking relations with others was never a problem for him, it wasnât a weakness, and it definitely wasnât a defect. At least thatâs what he thought until he returned to school after a particularly hot summer harvest.
At the start of the new school year, the other children seemed to group together in tighter circles. Â Speaking amongst themselves about the latest scandals, packed like wolves, shoulder to shoulder. They smiled at each other, laughed together, and as the year went on, they worked on their schooling together, broke bread together, and some fell in love. What was he doing wrong to always have the seat next to him empty? What was he doing wrong to only see their backs to him? He longed for someone to laugh with, to smile with, and at the very least sit with.
The one thing he never doubted was his own intelligence. Not the top of the class but he was close. He was intelligent enough to correct his incompetent professors on the most basic math problems which he himself took pride in. Speaking of useless subjects, Professor Hutchinsonâs period usually related to the workings of catapults and other woodwork, useless concepts when electricity is up and coming. Â But today is a treat, today was the study of the scientific theory. Finally, something he can work with, something new, something to help him with his âsetbackâ. And so, he began to form his hypothesis with acute observations. He watched them, from afar, like animals in their habitat. He studied them like a scientist with a microscope, dissecting every twitch before their smile, every eye aversion, every breath they hitched before the laugh. He watched. He learned. He noted. Nothing escaped his observation.
