As though I could feel the heat of the neon orange. Inferno. Lava spilling onto the horizon.
Splattered paint atop a tired blue mother watching her lively child. Vegas lights, woven through
Hot pink, transparent ghosts dancing…slow, like electric molasses.
Seemingly illusive. You reach out to touch her but she creeps further into the horizon, dimming slightly every moment. Intrigued by her boldness. Bubble gum ice cream and pink cotton candy clouds. Unbridled passion and wild eyes.
So this is my first post. Describing an Arizona Sky. I found this challenging… Can’t wait to learn how to do this correctly!
You did a great job, especially for your first time! Glad to have you here. You have some really good visual imagery here. The lights, colors, the reference images (lava, cotton candy, etc…). You also captured the motion and passing of time (that is a different sense (electric molasses, creeps, dimming every moment). Also, the contrast is really cool from beginning to end, where in the beginning it’s hot and moving slowly. By the end, it’s all unbridled and wild.
Really wonderful first go. With some time and practice, you’ll begin to expand you sensory language. Don’t worry about it if you can’t incorporate too many senses at first, you can make up for it with high quality images (like you have done here). Wonderfully written, and welcome to the site.
Yep agreed this is really good especially as a first attempt, my first attempt was a shocker but thats a word document for my eyes only haha. Nice and visual, one thing you could say to blend in other senses might be the cotton candy clouds providing a sweet smelling rainstorm in the distance, and might be able to hear the slot machines from vegas blowing in the wind, linking the woven vegas lights. Just keep at it!
I can feel you. Nearby you provide warmth and I can feel you smile as you kiss me. I don’t lift a finger or call your name, because I know you are forever there. Last summer you did have to go away. Hiding because I set fire and the smokescreen hid you from me, a blanket I knew I didn’t want, but didn’t know until I saw. You were gone.
Cool and crisp, a smell of an evening breeze, your odor changes from place to place, even though you remain. Constantly I try and feel you, but the more I chase you, the further away you seem to be. The bigger you seem to be. Pillows are provided as an illusion to comfort, when I know they are just pieces of you I can never feel. Big old sky.
Hi David, and welcome to the community! Really great to have people starting their way through these exercises, and we would love to hear about who you are and where you come from in the introductions thread!
I like these “ode to the object” framings, where you speak directly to the thing. As you will learn the feedback for these exercises is always “show me don’t tell me”, for things like “Hiding because I set fire and the smokescreen hid you from me” is a little bit too explanatory, show us these things by developing the sensory associations with fire and smoke.
That being said I particularly like the words from the bedding family, blanket and pillows are really comforting words and I like how you have juxtaposed the former against the cloud of smoke - a really nice metaphor.
Great start and I hope you enjoy all the exercises to come!
Blue, today. A blue of opportunity. When the sky is blue I feel like I could do anything, go anywhere, be anyone. Just by looking at it. The hilarious thing is that I will close my eyes and imagine it. The sky is blue today therefore I can drift of anywhere, with my eyes closed. I can feel the adrenaline building in my chest, the excitement swoop into my shoulders and neck, and launch my mind into limitless opportunities. There’s an airplane. A reminder of the physical world, but also an ode to limitless opportunities, places yet undiscovered, adventures yet to be lived.
Grey. Oh I am stuck. It feels like events have conspired against me. How am I meant to smile, be happy, find enjoyment? It is borderline claustrophobic, as though in this instant I could touch the clouds if I tried and, if I’m not careful, in the next instant, they will have sunk so low they will be lying on top of me, draping over my head. Somewhere, the other side of those gloomy woolly sheep shapes is the emerald blue of opportunity.
Hi there Nosy, and a big welcome to the community! I really like how you have taken two very different emotional tones, exemplified using these two colours of the sky. It captures how we oscillate between being open minded and expansive in outlook and demeanour, and being closed and confined. I like the bodily sensations you have employed to make this a piece of internal perspective. One thing you might like to try is keeping it more objective in your descriptions, as this is where we practice the fine skill of painting the raw imagery, creating a sense of emotion through word choice alone rather than explicitly telling us things. Show don’t tell. Anyway great start and look forward to reading more of your words!
Whenever I look up at the sky, I’ve always felt tiny. I would wonder if the earth has met the sky or do they always stay apart, just a hands reach from each other. There was a time when I would find patterns and look for animals in the puffy clouds. My hair has started turning grey, and now while lying down on the wet grass of the early morning I am looking for something similar. The gentle breeze would blow my hairs, kiss my cheeks and run away. Prayers from the nearby temple accompanied by the orchestra of birds on the mango tree.
Got interested in Object Writing after reading the first chapter from Pat Pattinson’s book. Thanks for this amazing community!!!
Hi there Homesh, and a big welcome to the community! It is really great to see you starting to work through these exercises!
For the first day I think this is very good indeed! I love the personification of the Earth and the sky, wondering what their relationship is. The orchestra of birds on the mango tree provides so much sensory description. I think there are a couple of areas you could shave down to make it more show than tell, and also a good rule of thumb is that the listener loves specificity - for instance, you could tell us which animals you used to see in the puffy clouds, a horse galloping? A heard of clouds?
I really look forward to reading your progress through these exercises - good luck!
An empty gray sky meets the horizon. An Autumn grey canvas never paints quite as well as a summer’s white. Summer cloudy skies are filled with possibilities. I stand under the expanse, wondering—always wondering. Do others feel the comfort of the wind? Or are they pushed and pulled about, cold buttons grasped tightly in colder hands, wrapped around themselves? Not me. The cold brings back the warmth of old, those days looking out the window; feet too close, too warm, then too far and too cold—the cycle repeats. Rhythmic crackling playing an out of time tune with the pattering drops against the window. Grandma’s famous homemade chocolate chip cookies tease me through the air amidst burning citrus hardwood. My stomach growls at the thought. Autumn’s kind touch brushes the hair out of my eyes, bringing me back.
Welcome to the community Cosmo! It is always a pleasure to welcome new members through the door as you have such an exciting journey ahead in sharpening your descriptive writing skills! For a first post you have painted a lovely picture and taken us with you across the rich associations of your mind. As you go through these exercises, just keep on asking yourself “am I showing the reader something or just telling them?”. It is worth re-reading your piece with that question in mind, and trying to identify the areas which aren’t adding to the pure sensory experience of reading it. Great work and I look forward to reading what is to come!
Welcome! You paint a great picture contrasting between the summer sky and fall sky. That leads to an internal sense of tension. Then to contrast your feelings to those around you builds on that tension, and introduces more senses like the wind, cold, tightly grasped, wrapped around themselves. Those evoke our senses, specifically our tactile sense. Then, you introduce the internal sense of comfort (warmth from the cool weather) and nostalgia. The auditory cue is there, but I feel like it could be beefed up a little. It is brought in and dismissed fairly quickly. The smell and taste senses are great here with cookies and hardwood. The stomach growling adds back to the internal sense of hunger and builds on the contrasting tension (you were just thinking of delicious cookies, and now your stomach feels empty - losing that comfort you have been building). The final line is also really well done, the reader feels not just the wind, but the hair across their forehead. This is a great piece. Keep it up!
those ocean skies makes me wanna cry reminds me of the blues swaying and dancing my heart, soul and mind. the clouds are like passerbys on a blank page with no lines, a city with no life. empty citys painted in shades of heartbreak and hopelessness. i bet someone lives up there, someone like me. someone who sees life in shades of blue and cries at the sight of beautiful scenes.
Welcome to the community @ilovetaylorswift! For a first post you have some very nice imagery throughout this piece. The clouds being passerbys in a lifeless city, and giving the sky a personality and thoughts of it being a similar individual to yourself, which is a very nice concept.
You’ll find that along your journey here your skills will sharpen, and a main focus of these exercises are to engage as many of the 7 senses as possible. e.g what did this lifeless city sound or smell like? And as you will read we want to show the scene to the reader/listener rather than tell them about it. This will make sense the further you go along with the exercises.
If I were to recommend anything, it would be to not overuse participles. This doesn’t really matter so much for these exercises but I think it is good to keep our attention on in writing overall.
As I look up at the sky I’m brought back to my childhood mind, fresh-cut schoolyard grass and passing tufts of white, the sensation of weightless anticipation every time the airplane comes to a bumpy landing, then the terrible goodbye as I’m again pulled off the ground as the plane flies. From this height, the ground feels like a mighty extension, but nothing to an even more boundless blue comprehension of space and dimension. The expensive in-flight meal pales to land grub, but I’m happy either way to fill my tummy up, along with a side of salty freeze-dried crunch and not enough water to sate my thirst.
I got away from senses, the stream of consciousness went into cognition and rhyming. Ah well try again tomorrow!
A big welcome to our community! Well done on this first post, already painting strong pictures and associations in the reader’s mind. It is interesting following your trail of consciousness from the sky into the plane and onto the meal - you can take us wherever your mind leads you with these exercises so long as you stay tightly bound to your senses. I find exactly the same thing with beginning to introduce little rhymes when writing these things, which is no bad thing, but obviously not the focus (at least until a few weeks down the line).
Anyway I hope you enjoy these exercises, and if you can get into the habit of turning up each day you are bound to develop your craft!
A big, bright blue expanse. Holder of the world’s development. I remember it most fondly when I would wake up for the school every morning during the end of spring. The air was cool on my skin and felt damp to walk through. The smell of dew hanging onto my front lawn. I’d sometimes keep my mouth open and inhale, trying to drink up the air. It was thick and heavy but you could just feel the endless opportunity there every morning. We used to get a lot of birds where I’m from, being in rural Tennessee. You’d look up and see them light bobbing on the powerlines, chattering amongst themselves. If you stared too long, you’d feel yourself moving with them, so I would close my eyes to try to decipher what they were saying. The sky was also too bright for me to look at, I could feel the backs of my eyeball seize up every time I tried to keep them from squinting. My favorite thing though was watching the sunrise in the horizon. The blending of refracting light as the delicate balance of life is set in motion once again. The heat slowly warming my skin up as it’s deep golden rays peaked up over the hill behind my house. I always loved the way it changed the whole view, no part of the sky was left untouched. My heart would swell just as the sun rose, realizing that I had stayed alive another day. I’d hear the reeving engine rumble in the distance and then a halting squeal as the bus pulled up in front of my driveway. I’d take one last deep breath and get on the bus.
A little late to the party but excited to try all of these exercises out!
