Sunrise Classroom #2 (BLUE)

Discussion topic 4
1. Was is it difficult to complete the above assignment (part two) without ‘explaining’ or telling the situation? Yes. Listening for the sounds around me and not being able to say where they came from was difficult. It was like I wasn’t telling the whole story.

2. Did the exercise trigger your imagination, make you want to write about any of the characters you reported on? I heard/noticed more sounds that I feel I can use during dialogue instead of, he said, she replied. As an example: Max turned to look as the wheel chair rumbled across the threshold and I didn’t see his smile, or, the loud voice on the overhead intercom drowned out Max’s reply.

3. Which of the 5 senses focused on in this lesson did you find easiest to use in your Part one of the assignment? Which is the toughest to add in a story? The easiest was sight. As a police officer my reports had to give a visual perspective to what I wrote, so maybe that was practice for this exercise. The toughest was smell, even taste was easier than smell, I think. Trying to describe how something smells and using very few words to do it was difficult for me.

4. Take a moment and look at a few of your pieces in your portfolio. Now that you've conditioned your mind to focus on sensory details, do you see any areas in your work where you might apply what you've learned in this lesson? Explain why or why not. I have tried to use as many senses as possible when I write. In my story, Coming Home I wrote, “ a vendor was napping in the train station lobby while the pretzels he sells warmed over a light charcoal fire.” I was hoping my reader would remember how that smells. I also mentioned in the same story that, “as the electric motors whined and propelled the train out of the station, ozone filled the silence left behind.” With that sentence I was hoping for the sound and smell of a train station.




Bikerider