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Exercise #14: Craft
Posted 8/1/03
Setting is where a story takes place. It evokes memories of similar places in us when we read. The “warm aromas in a Thanksgiving Day kitchen” are sure to trigger your own favorite Thanksgiving food fragrances.
“Where Memories Go,” a short story by Lauren Fitzgerald, starts:
I am not far. Already I can feel a wet, salty wind against my face, rich with the scent of warm bread and roses. There is nothing but sun-painted desert within my sight, yet I know the sea is near.
Can you hear the surf? Smell the salt? Feel the desert heat? Setting does that for the reader. Sometimes the setting is important to the storyline, but it is always important for grounding your reader in the time and place you’ve chosen.
We often take for granted the things we see, smell, taste, hear, and touch everyday. A friend of mine is blind, and her email is read to her by a software program. Setting for her is a very different thing than it is for me.
For this exercise, do something usual in an unusual way.
Pick a common, quick task, and experience it the way someone without one of your senses would. Watch your favorite show with the sound off, and earplugs in. Make a trip to the bathroom with your eyes closed. Have lunch in a group without speaking. (Mind, now, nothing dangerous! No driving to work with your eyes shut, or cutting up vegetables with your hands wrapped in towels.)
Then come back and give us the setting, the way you experienced it without that sense.
Word limit: 1200
Please use the subject line:
SUB: Exercise #14/yourname
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