Here’s an exercise I highly recommend doing outside, but you can do it wherever you are.
It’s a simple exercise about being present in a place, centering yourself, and using your entire body to take note of the world around you. Use your eyes, ears, nose, and fingertips to observe everything. What does the place smell like? What does it feel like? What are the textures? Be specific in your descriptions.
Just make a list. You don’t need to write lush, vivid sentences right now—just be as specific as possible. If you hear birds singing, try to identify what kind of birds they are. If you notice flowers, determine their type. If you smell an herbal scent, figure out if it’s lavender, oregano, or something else.
The goal is to dig deep into specifics.
Just this morning on my walk, I brushed a hand over a short pine tree and came up with the following sentences on the fly, which might open a novel someday:
Despite their name, pine needles are actually soft, almost silky, to the touch when caressed the right way. Rub them the wrong way, and they’ll stick you. My mom was the same way.
Will it win a literary award? No, but it’s a vivid image, ain’t it?
For example, one of my students went out to her front porch and sat on the “red brick step” off her porch. Just those three words already create a vivid image.
Then she noticed she couldn’t sit there long without a pillow for her back, which tells us a lot about her if she were a character. Imagine opening your story with such a specific detail: “Frances sat on the red brick front porch steps, thinking she would need a pillow before too long.” This one sentence reveals much about the character.
Another student mentioned going out to her back porch and watching a neighbor hosing down beach furniture. While not highly specific, this detail suggests proximity to a beach. Instead of saying, “Frances lived on the beach,” you can show it through specific observations.
In crafting your story, choose which details to keep and which to trim. You might start with specific details and then refine them in revision. For instance, instead of saying someone walked a dog, specify the breed, color, and characteristics. A detail like “a white hypoallergenic Labradoodle” tells us much more than just “a dog.”
Allow your sensory memory to influence your writing. One student described a ceiling fan’s pull chain tapping against the base, a sound many of us recognize: tick tick tick tick tick. Such sensory details can draw readers deeper into the story. Consider what memories those sensory details evoke—whether they bring warm, fuzzy feelings or negative associations. Does that ticking sound take you back to grandma’s kitchen baking cookies? Or does it take you back to terrible room in a terrible house where terrible things happened?
There’s no right or wrong response, only that you banking that sensory memory for later use in a story.
One student mentioned jasmine bushes around her house. A lovely detail, but it wasn’t the plants themselves that stood out to me as she talked about this exercise. What captivated me was when she said her husband planted them after their trip to India. This detail reveals so much about their relationship and evokes a powerful memory. A simple line of description like that in a story would give the reader instant insight into the character of the husband.
When crafting your scenes, decide what emotions you want to evoke and use sensory details to achieve that.
So: go outside (if it’s safe for you to do so) and immerse yourself in your surroundings. If you can’t go outside, use your immediate environment to practice sensory observation. The more you practice, the richer and more vivid your descriptions will become, resonating deeply with your readers.
I hope this helps!
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