The Voice of Little E

I've been checking out as many links as I can over at Rinda's Scavenger Hunt. There has been something so compelling about admiring many different takes on the same list. We all seem to be noting our favourites. Out of my own photos the one I like the best will always be the first I found: the dinosaur which came out of Little E's trip to the museum, back in June.

So I jumped at the chance to finally put in in my album when Get It Scrapped asked for a page using "a voice". This is something I love to do. Everyone knows about my "dangerous notebook" which has a habit of appearing when I think you might be about to say something funny. Or smart. Or quick. Or thoughtful. Or even just plain bad. I'll write it down.

Or, at least, I'll write down the good bit.Because, of course, the thing about everyday conversation is - quite a lot of it is filler. We all "um" and "aah", we ramble about the weather, we pass the time of day. It's companionable, it's the stuff of life, but it's not killer.

So, know what I think? It's okay to leave a lot of it out. You can reproduce someone's "voice" by picking their best bits. Show what they intended to say, but not all of how they said it.

That's how I made a quick story out of Little E's trip.Everything in it is true. He really did ask those questions, in that order, on that day. But of course he also said he was hungry, said he was tired, said he was too hot, said he wanted to go home - not because he's the most annoying child on the planet (definitely not!), but simply because he's like any other four year old boy....

...or is he? We all hear extraordinary things come out of the mouths of the people we love. Our challenge is to pin them down accurately, but authentically. Too much detail in a dialogue and it dies. Go short, cut to the chase. Catch it while you can. Then scrapbook it.

In the end I turned Little E's chat into a little bit of theatre. I typed it out so that it looks like the first page of a stage script, with a big coffee splash stamped on it to show that it has been used, and some stage directions for fun.

The circle embellishments, banners and buttons are there to add some colour. You can't have a Little E page without a bit of colour: it just wouldn't be right.