Annotated Index

Write a narrative index. Your index will contain five headings. Each heading will name
the item you are writing about.
Write about five different mothers or fathers.
Name and list the items in alphabetical order.
Offer personal observations of each item. These observations should both describe the
item and suggest the narrator’s feeling about the item.
Vary the lengths of each section and to vary the quality of your narrator’s relationship
with each item.
Use three complete sentences. No questions, no exclamations. Choose your three
sentences wisely. Otherwise, use a concise, fragmented, notational style.
Have a theme (like “sickness” in Grider’s “Formers”) present in 2-3 sections. Also have
a single image repeat in 2-3 sections. The theme and image will help bind the index
together, and they will give us a stronger sense of the narrator.
SAMPLE
Excerpt from “Formers” (Nicholas Grider, Misadventure)
ALLEN, DOUGLAS. Like sucking a lemon. A frozen one. That was conversation with him. Not at first but fast,
lightning quick from easy grin to let’s not and say we did. And not much to stare back at. Never anything in bed and
seldom in bed, him always at work talking, when he did talk, him talking numbers and schedules and rules. It was
brief, it cooled off quick, cold as a frozen lemon, only a few months I think, him now in a refrigerator downtown
somewhere, brick-silent, thinking complicated math.
BAKER, WILLIAM. The escort. Drove me when I needed the MRI. Insisted. Called it companionship. That’s what it
was, start to stop, no tidal wave or aching thirst, just constant hum coming from another room. He cared. He did his
best to care as hard as possible. He didn’t know what to do, so eventually we shook hands, literally, we literally just
shook hands like it was a transaction ended, the whole deal done. William Baker who got to see the CD stills of what
my brain looks like. Cloudy slices of organic-looking puff with maybe here or there a dark spot.
…
KENWORTH, DUNCAN. Funereally removed and quiet. May as well have been dead. Well-dressed, though. Clean
and smelling of something you wished you could touch.
…
NG, ALAN. Contact sports a good few years before either of us knew what we were doing. Before I got sick and got
honest. We wandered around in the dark of each other. We tossed coins into mental fountains, got nowhere, bred
misunderstanding, got glassy-eyed and kicked each other out for no good reason other than young frustration like a
cloud that wouldn’t lift. Still get postcards from in the form or late-night phone calls full of garbled wish.
…
RALK, CHRISTOPHER. Careful. Not cautious but deliberate. The one you label in your inventory as the one who got
away. Careful with his smile, his humor, his constant even-pressure gentleness, a gentleman, careful with his love
and only unwrapping it in private. It was enough to live on. He was enough of something to hold onto. He was
something. He held instead of pulled, pushed instead of shoved. He wanted to be there, and, odds were, he was.
Careful not to get hurt, careful not to showcase his acid anger, careful. And then we got reckless and things tore
loose and I got lost in what could have been, and that was before I even got sick, months before the storm that
followed me around, the fog that came and clouded other, lesser men.
TRENT, SAL. Flimsy faith healer. Bad with his hands and his news.
WILLIAMS, FELLOW. All he ever did was insist. Which was everything I ever wanted when I was sick, at least for a
handful of thin winter months. I admired, when I pushed him away, how fast and far he slid. Maybe still out there,
staring out windows, hands in his lap, ready to begin.