Just this past week in my Creative Writing class, my teacher did an interesting activity with us. We are learning to apply our five senses into writing; in order to know how to write about something, you need to have experienced it. Our task was to try to identify and describe mysterious food items that my teacher had brought in.
This is how it went: we partnered up with someone in the class and we sat with our backs to each other so that one individual couldn't see what was being brought around to the other. The first partner then had to take a whiff of the mystery-food and explain it to the other person. The idea was to try to uncover what the food was.
This really was the hardest part about it: the description. When it was my turn to smell what was placed before me, my brain new exactly what it was-garlic. But trying to explain that to my partner? Not so easy. I found it incredibly difficult to give any kind of description.
All I could think of was "it smells garlic-y"...but I very well couldn't say that. My partner needed to figure it out for themselves.
It was a really fun activity to try and my perspective on writing completely changed. It takes incredible talent and skill to be able to describe something you smell so vividly so as to cause the reader to imagine smelling it themselves. I strongly encourage you to try it yourselves. Grab a partner and see what kinds of descriptions you can come up with.
This is how it went: we partnered up with someone in the class and we sat with our backs to each other so that one individual couldn't see what was being brought around to the other. The first partner then had to take a whiff of the mystery-food and explain it to the other person. The idea was to try to uncover what the food was.
This really was the hardest part about it: the description. When it was my turn to smell what was placed before me, my brain new exactly what it was-garlic. But trying to explain that to my partner? Not so easy. I found it incredibly difficult to give any kind of description.
All I could think of was "it smells garlic-y"...but I very well couldn't say that. My partner needed to figure it out for themselves.It was a really fun activity to try and my perspective on writing completely changed. It takes incredible talent and skill to be able to describe something you smell so vividly so as to cause the reader to imagine smelling it themselves. I strongly encourage you to try it yourselves. Grab a partner and see what kinds of descriptions you can come up with.
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