A Writing Exercise: Setting

One page. Describe a train ride – the rhythm of the rails clicking, the sound booming back from a close wall, the sensation of motion when a parallel train moves and yours doesn’t, the sticky beer stains on the floor, the smell of new towns and so on. (Or if you prefer, describe a different kind of ride – on a boat or in a car, for example.)

Objective: To show the experience of travel. Journey is one of the basic story forms. Maybe you carry a story that the setting travel will give birth to. Try it. (For example, a friend of mine wrote a dozen postcards from Germany to the states, and when she got back was surprised that nobody got them. She had mistaken a clean German garbage bin for a mailbox.)

Check: Have you shown us the train? Go back over the description and delete adjectives – beautiful, menacing – that tell us what you’d like to show us. Have you described the corridors, signs (in what languages?), lights?

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Published:
02.07.05 / 11am
Category:
literature