Writing Journal #7

I chose option d, which was offered in the museum since the Judith was not on display. I chose to write about Caravaggio’s Flagellation of Christ because when we were looking at it I was wondering why the men were beating Jesus with a bundle of sticks instead of proper whips, and from there I had fun creating characters who would embody my irritation with such a historical incongruity. I think that something that is difficult in writing dialogue is capturing the way people really speak and what that implies about your characters. The visual works gave me an easy starting point for my story but made it more challenging to bring the ending to where it needed to be, and since the painting is a moment frozen in time the story seems to just end. I think Naples was just a bit sketchier than Rome was and the motorini were meaner, but I don’t feel that had an effect on my writing. I think it was irrelevant because I was not in Naples long enough for it to seep in and have an effect on something as intrinsic to myself as my writing.