English 11: switching it up

You don’t really need to know the backstory – though you’re welcome to ask if you’d like to – that led me to Sarah Selecky. I’ve been following her career since I met her in Pemberton years ago. She is talented and funny. That’s all I will say. Oh, and she wrote a book of short stories I loved (and should re-read).

Now, I follow her for writing prompts and for inspiration – not that I have written a single thing – for my classes. You, lucky ones, will be fortunate enough to dive into a project called “Six Weeks, Six Senses”. You are going to love it.

She writes: “for each weekly assignment, I encourage you to write by hand, in a notebook. I know this may be frustrating at first, because you want to write quickly, to keep up with your thoughts, and the pen slows you down. Yes – I know it does.

During these six weeks, slow is okay. Slow is actually good. When you make marks on a page, you’re activating the right side of your brain – the side that processes images and pictures (not concepts). This is what you want in your scenes. When you’re writing a scene, you’re an artist, not a stenographer.”

This is your first assignment:

Look at the three photos below.

Describe what you see in detail.
Don’t limit it to the pictures themselves – instead, use these as starting points, and then close your eyes and imagine your scene.
What is visible?

Now try this:

You can write in the point of view (POV) of the character who is pictured above or you can write in a different POV and describe how that character sees this person.

The point of view will organize the way your scene is described. For instance, if you write a scene from a child’s point of view, some information and language will be different than if you wrote the same scene from a teen’s point of view.

Make sure you:

Take time and go slow. the whole point of this writing is to get out of your head.

In your scene:

what’s behind the character?
What’s above?
What’s under their feet?

This week pay close attention to

what is visible
what it looks like
what can be seen/not seen

Think about:

How does sight become important in this story?

April 24, 2019 English 11

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