Go, Nellie, Go!

“I always have a comfortable feeling that nothing is impossible if one applies a certain amount of energy in the right direction.”  ~Nellie Bly

Nellie Bly
Colombo, Ceylon
November 1889

“Well, I guess the time will pass quickly seeing beauty like this.” Nellie breathed in deeply and filled her nostrils with the warm, moist ocean air. The clouds skipped and danced across the gray horizon, where water and sky seemed to meet and merge.

“You be waiting for the Oriental?” asked the porter. His crisply-starched white jacket remained unmoved while he pointed out to the sea.

Hmmm. Where, indeed, Nellie wondered to herself. “Yes, I’ll be sailing for China when the Oriental comes in.”

“Will you stay with us, Miss?” the porter asked.

“No, I just came to see the view today. Thank you, sir,” said Nellie.

I wanted to do this “quick” write when I read the nonfiction prompt two days ago at the Teachers Write blog at Kate Messner.com.  The author who designed the quick write was Nancy Castaldo, author of The Story of Seeds. It wasn’t a quick write for me, though, but I found some fascinating reading about Nellie Bly. (You can see a list below.)

I like this sweet thought from Nellie’s own words in Around the World in 72 Days when she came upon a crow eating the early morning snack left for her:

I was not then used to having toast and tea before arising, as is the custom in Ceylon, so I let the crow satisfy his appetite and leisurely take his departure without a protest. I arose earlier than was my habit, because I had a desire to see what there might be to see while I had the opportunity.

After a cool, refreshing bath, I dressed hastily and went down below. I found almost all of my friends up, some having already started out to enjoy the early morning. I regretted my generosity to the crow when I learned that breakfast was never served until nine o’clock, and as everybody endeavored to have the benefit of the cool, sweet morning, toast and tea was very sustaining.

Because of that image, I wanted to write a scene about Nellie between 6-9 a.m. using this that I wrote:

“I wish I would have chased that bird away this morning and eaten my tea and toast myself. I’m famished,” Nellie said, under her breath. “Anyway, I hope the crow enjoyed it.”

Instead, I found myself becoming a bit distracted trying to figure out the different hotels mentioned.

The first thing I read was Rosemary Brown’s account of her trip around the world in the footsteps of Nellie. She said, describing the Mount Lavinia Hotel:

It is a “castle-like building glistening in the sunlight … on a green eminence overlooking the sea.”

Then Rosemary went on to describe her experience at the Lavinia:

With its grace, gardens, history and fountains, the Mount Lavinia transports you back to the most lavish of Victorian times. I adored it and so did Nellie.

I kept reading because I didn’t know for sure that Nellie adored this particular hotel–that’s about all she said about it. There were three hotels Nellie writes about and Rosemary later visited in Colombo. Besides Mount Lavinia, there is also the Grand Oriental and Galle Face Hotels. It seems she stayed at the Grand Oriental for the five days she was in Colombo. Thus, my scene got off-track because she was at the castle-like hotel overlooking the sea, Mount Lavinia, but that’s not where she let the crow eat her toast, and I realized she wouldn’t have gone to visit before breakfast.

Hmmm…I’m afraid I would get too distracted with the facts if I was going to write narrative nonfiction!

Just an aside, I found it curious that 125 years after Nellie’s trip, Rosemary was not able to find records of Nellie’s visits at any of the Colombo hotels. I guess Nellie Bly’s trip around the world wasn’t as big a deal in Ceylon as it was for us.

Resources

  1. Grand Oriental Hotel – Colombo, Sri Lanka
  2. Galle Face Hotel
  3. Mount Lavinia Hotel Wikipedia
  4. Around the World in 72 Days by Nellie Bly
  5. Nellie Bly in the Sky by Rosemary J. Brown

Character Study

I’m late on this writing assignment from the TeachersWrite Summer Writing Camp. I was inspired by reading Sheri’s camp work!

The prompt, on Kate Messner’s blog, is about getting to know a character through multi-media by Julia True Kingsley.

First, I chose a picture. This beautiful photograph of her aunt was taken by Bev Sykes and shared on Flickr with a CC-BY-2.0 license.

Fictionalized Character Study

A winning smile, bright blue eyes, straight white teeth mark Matilda’s beautiful face. All those teeth are hers, except for the caps on the front two that broke off when she dove into the neighbor’s pool when she was ten. Looking at her, you’d never know she was sick. She’s physically able and robust. When she was first diagnosed with Alzheimers, she realized her stoutness would be a detriment. She often said, “It’s not like I had to go to the hospital  with two broken legs and a broken arm after a car accident. I don’t have anything wrong with my body, but I had to come anyway.” In spite of her initial fear and sadness about her illness, she now doesn’t remember she has anything wrong. She doesn’t actually even remember where she lives, a nursing home called Happy Siesta, with a renowned Alzheimers unit.

Tilda loves to walk the halls of her nursing home.  Most of the time she is happy and singing. Her grandchildren, still forced to come and visit her, cry whenever she sings, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” knowing that she won’t. Vestiges of her wit and intelligence linger, but lucid moments are fewer and further in-between.  In the moments that aren’t lucid, she is content and oblivious, enjoying her happy siesta with continued good health.

External song – I’ll Be Home for Christmas

Internal song – Oblivion Soundtrack 

Story Stew

Today Jo Knowles gave us a recipe for this story stew.

Here are the ingredients:

• An elderly woman
• A young girl
• A hat
• A piece of paper
• A hospital waiting room
• Nostalgic
• Anxious

I took up her challenge and cooked up this story stew:

“Gram, I don’t think I want to wear that hat.” I squirmed away as she tried to put the dirty (and possibly bug-infested) bucket hat on my head. Where did she find that anyway?

“You’ll see, dear. It’s a magic hat,” she said, holding it up to the light and turning it gently, looking at each stained surface with wonder and awe.

“Magic? Is it really a magic hat, Gram?” I asked, blinking, remembering when we used to wear magic hats, magic shoes, magic eyeglasses. Anything could be magic. We always played the ultimate in dress up and story time combined. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Theseus and the Minotaur, Odysseus and the Cyclops, the Tar Baby and Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Fox. There was no story she didn’t know!

“Magic, schmagic! Why are you always talking to me about magic?” Gram asked, angrily, as she dropped the hat onto the floor, forgetting she had even held the hat. Forgetting again she had a granddaughter. Forgetting she was in this nursing home waiting room. Waiting. Waiting for them to call her name. Waiting to be admitted to the special unit where people have forgotten about magic and buzzers sound when the doors are opened.

“I wonder when Mom will be back,” I asked, changing the subject. I wished my mom would hurry up and get back from filling out the paper work.

Busy and Wasting Time

I’ve been busy — on vacation, at a state reading conference, watching ball games, baking for the farmer’s market, preparing for a class. Many excuses, some legitimate, for not keeping up with my summer writing camp. I do want to get back to it.

I’m not always busy, though. Sometimes I’m just dawdling, at my computer, but refusing to write. Here is my latest procrastination gadget. Try this slogan generator. It’s great fun when you insert a favorite noun or your name. Here are some that made me smile…

You Like Krebs. Krebs Likes You.

Enter a word for your own slogan:

Generated by the Advertising Slogan Generator. Get more Krebs slogans.

Snap! Crackle! Krebs!

Enter a word for your own slogan:

Generated by the Advertising Slogan Generator. Get more Krebs slogans.

Genius Born and Bred.

Enter a word for your own slogan:

Generated by the Advertising Slogan Generator. Get more genius slogans.

Genius – It Looks Good on You.

Enter a word for your own slogan:

Generated by the Advertising Slogan Generator. Get more genius slogans.

All You Need is a Genius and a Dream.

Enter a word for your own slogan:

Generated by the Advertising Slogan Generator. Get more genius slogans.

Bank of Writing Ideas

 

My first word on the noun generator was chair.

“The hard oaken chair under her butt was as irritating as trying to discipline oneself in a fancy bakery. It caused her to squirm and wonder what in the world she would write next. Instead, she got up and ate a cookie.”

Thanks, Jody. It was delicious.

And thanks to Rosanne, for the ideas below, which will serve me well in the future. One hundred setting and character ideas from which to glean.

Settings

  1. Ten places I’ve lived in my life. (I didn’t realize I have actually lived in this many different homes.)
    • Fairlock house
    • Virginia house
    • Clark Ave. apartment
    • Veurink’s apartment
    • 16th Street house
    • Grand Avenue house
    • Superintendent’s home
    • College house
    • Sutton Place
    • Hearn Rd.
    • 5th Street
  2. Ten places I have a strong emotional connection to
    • the backyard-filling, ground to sky avocado tree at Uncle Arthur and Aunt Thelma’s
    • the California desert
    • Disneyland
    • Trinity Bible Church
    • Lander, Wyoming
    • Yellowstone National Park
    • Spalding
    • Huntington Beach
    • Aunt Josephine and Uncle Ellery’s farm
    • my kitchen
  3. Ten places I have visited on vacation or places I’d love to visit in my lifetime were money and time no object.

    By Mike Vondran on Flickr with CC-BY-2.0

    • Seattle
    • Surrey, B.C.
    • Nespelem Community, Washington
    • Christ the Redeemer statue and Sugarloaf Mountain in Rio de Janeiro
    • Australia and the Great Barrier Reef
    • Boston
    • Washington, D.C.
    • Paris
    • London
    • Rome
    • the moon
    • Angel Falls in Venezuela
  4. Ten places from which my ancestors or in-laws come. (My daughter and I just took a 3 hour break on Ancestry.com! Yikes–it is amazing, the information that is there about our relatives.)
    • Wales
    • Bern, Switzerland
    • Germany
    • Georgia
    • Alabama
    • Texas
    • Los Angeles
    • Ohio
    • Michigan
    • Maryland
    • Washington, D.C.
  5. Ten books or movies that have settings I’ve found particularly captivating.
    • The Help – I felt myself tempted to speak with an accent and I became more interested in southern culture as a result of this book.
    • Larklight – I was fascinated with the historical science fiction setting in this book. It was during Britain’s colonial period where they colonized outer space, as well, with big wooden spaceships.
    • James and the Giant Peach – Being inside the peach pit of a giant peach is pretty intriguing.
    • The Odyssey and O Brother, Where Art Thou? – The whole epic journey story and fighting against the elements and bad guys were enjoyable in these stories.
    • The Trumpet of the Swan – I love the northern Canada woodlands for a setting, as well as the crazy world where a trumpet-blowing and writing swan makes sense.
    • Animal Farm – Maybe it’s the characters that are more captivating than the farm setting, but the whole idea captivates me.
    • Saving Private Ryan – World War II is a time in history that is so interesting. I can’t watch this movie without getting motion sick, though.
    • Alice’s Adventures Wonderland – I would love to go to this crazy place!
    • Lord of the Flies – I wouldn’t want to live their story, but the island would be interesting to visit.
    •  Indiana Jones series – The setting in these movies is wonderful. Dangerous, but always conquerable if you keep close to Indy.

Characters

  1. Ten jobs I’ve done in my life
    • packing tacks with a tiny scale in my house as a kid
    • farmer’s market baker
    • gardener
    • teacher
    • reading specialist
    • Hallmark card store clerk
    • secretary
    • staffing clerk at a hospital
    • babysitter
    • editor
  2. Ten famous people, historical or contemporary, that I would love to share a meal with.
    • Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain – I would want to share a meal with these two together, so I could just enjoy the ensuing conversation between the two.
    • Barack and Michelle Obama
    • Golda Meir
    • Margaret Thatcher
    • Indira Gandhi
    • George Washington
    • Abraham Lincoln
    • Norman Borlaug
    • Theodore Seuss Geisel
  3. Ten ethnicities, religions, tribes, cultural groups, gender or sexual orientations, or political philosophies that are represented in my extended family.
    • Protestant Christian
    • Catholic Christian
    • Christian Scientist
    • Jewish
    • white
    • Mexican
    • Vietnamese
    • Japanese
    • straight
    • gay
    • Democrat
    • Republican
    • conservative
    • liberal
  4. Ten people who can make you laugh.
    • Cheryl W. – storyteller extraordinaire
    • Brenda O. – ditto
    • Steve Martin
    • Tina Fey
    • Seth Myers
    • Krayton – talented, warm, inclusive
    • Cesar – smiling, dancing, laughing
    • Katie – dry, rich sense of humor and funny sounds when she gets going
    • Mr. Thornberg – high school business teacher
  5. This sentence ten times. “I’ve always wanted to _____ like ____________.
    • I’ve always wanted to sing like Carole King.
    • I’ve always wanted to converse like Keith.
    • I’ve always wanted to relay stories like Cheryl.
    • I’ve always wanted to confront like Chris.
    • I’ve always wanted to save money like Katie.
    • I’ve always wanted to innovate like Steve Jobs.
    • I’ve always wanted to be a problem solver like my mom.
    • I’ve always wanted to never give up like Joey.
    • I’ve always wanted to read as fast as Maria.
    • I’ve always wanted to cook like Julia Childs.

What’s in the Hand of A. Lincoln?

Kate, thanks for the mini writing assignment and virtual field trip. I enjoyed visiting the Met. I have hands on my mind lately, so I stopped at this picture of a cast of Abraham Lincoln’s hand.

What’s in the hand of A. Lincoln?
a bucket handle carrying family food,
an ax splitting rails to make fences,
a ring–should he or shouldn’t he? Love is eternal,
a disarray of papers in a stovepipe hat,
the cold hands of Willie and Eddie, too soon gone,
a farewell speech from Springfield before his inaugural journey,
a pen promising freedom for the slaves in the south,
a needle and thread to stitch together a torn up nation.

“Abraham Lincoln” photo by Cliff, shared with CC BY 2.0 license on Flickr.

Mindassa

OK, I decided to start a project. After only one week of the #TeachersWrite Summer Writing Camp, I was already tired of not knowing what to do for the writing challenges and assignments, so I have dusted off my 2010 NaNoWriMo novel. I am going to revise it, incorporating the writing camp assignments, for “publication” for my classroom library. (I try to order novels from Create Space each year, but in 2010 and 2011, I didn’t order my own–only students’ novels.) This will be the encouragement I needed to keep modeling for my students.

Here is the beginning of my sci-fi Bible story about Queen Esther.

Sinede here, a clown in the king’s court. Everything you will read in the pages before you is true. It really happened. A story, a story, let it come, let it go—but always know, it is true, every word of it. The story starts soon, but a little background first. Have you ever heard of platform shoes? Many times in human history people have worn shoes that made them look taller. In the Earthly cultures of Asia, Europe, Latin America, and in the United States of America (that ancient self-centered and pretentious society of the second millennium) there have been several forms of the platform shoe. Sometimes they raised the back half of the foot to platform height, so the heel was up high and the toes were closer to the ground. Yes, I know it sounds strange.

Well, in my land, Visul, we don’t wear shoes—platform or otherwise. However, we do have an unusual evolutionary adaptation—the platform foot. Most humans on the scores of colonized planets in the Milky Way have developed feet similar to what folks have on Earth.

On Visul, however, we needed tall feet. You should see my country—yuck! It’s got a layer of fine dust, well, maybe I could call it “moondust” something you might know about. The visuldust is four to six inches thick! How could we ever walk around in that? We couldn’t, so our feet evolved. We have a platform of cartilage and thick skin—kind of like a giant bunion across the bottoms of our feet. No pain, though. (I don’t know if they are like bunions really. Do bunions hurt?) We walk barefoot wherever we go because our landscape is literally all the same. Dark black visuldust everywhere! Little atmosphere rests on Visul, so we get no wind. At least the dust stays in one place. The land is flat or very slightly rippled over large areas. There are no mountains, no bodies of water, nothing interesting.

Another difference in our evolution is the star shape at the base of fingernails. I think it was a smile and a shout-out from Providence to the “stars” of the galaxy. Let me tell you, my friends, we are stars! Jugglers, jokesters, singers, musicians, orators, actors, poets, puppeteers, writers. Visul is such an ugly boring planet, that we have had to make our own color. We have more than our share of talent. The stars of the universe! That’s for sure! Platform feet and star-shaped nail bases—just two of the obvious differences in our evolution—the interesting and colorful ones, as it were. I am not a scientist, but there are dozens of other traits that had to evolve for us to live on this planet.

One such evolution is our lungs. The air we breathe for instance is not 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1% argon like you have on earth. (What is argon? you ask. It’s an inactive noble gas. More later, in science class.) Our lungs, however, have evolved to breathe the composition of our atmosphere, which includes oxygen, sodium, potassium, and primarily helium. (Yeah, we hear those jokes all the time about sucking helium. And, yes, our voices are a bit higher pitched than those of the humans on earth.)

One more way we, and all humans on the outer planets, are different than humans you may have heard of, or, you are, if indeed you are human yourself, is we have learned to genetically modify our population within the womb. The Visulians are a peaceful and loving people, so we have chosen modifications that enhance our artistic sides. We have also chosen to eliminate disease and other physical malformations that plagued humans for generations. Just as earlier Earthly generations took out small pox, black plague and yellow fever. Continuing in the 20th century, polio and German measles were wiped out. Now, in the 24th century, we have totally removed the cancer gene from our society; muscular dystrophy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, multiple sclerosis, diabetes—all gone from human development; and presently we are working to perfect the total elimination of obesity, which leads to massive social suffering and related heart diseases in the human condition. (I do actually love science.) I digress.

Let’s get on with the exposition.
Blakinon gave an unlikely proposition.
She said yes, and now we have a wide-eyed queen.
Would the king have picked her, had he foreseen?
We were so proud of her; Mindassa’s her name.
The joke was on Joryk who took all the blame.
Between those last two lines, comes most of the plot.
Sit back and relax, I think you’ll like it a lot.

(OK, OK, I’m not a poet, just a clown, just a clown. Don’t you dare set this book down! Oh, there I go again, making rhymes. I best get going, before I’m out of time. Maybe, I am a poet and didn’t know it.)

Well, I always wondered as he stood before the firing squad if he said something like, “Well, I guess the ‘Joryk’ is on me! Har har!” Probably not. I’m the clown. He was just a pompous ass. He never would have thought of a great pun like that one. Before we get back to the story, here’s a triple shout-out to all my NaNo friends: The Roman wino, Iron Woman, ate a warm onion. What’s funny about this true story is it’s very sad and serious. It’s a story replete with violence, death, hatred, slavery, attempted genocide and terrorism. But, at the very same time, it is a comedic tale as old as life. The arrogant fool gets what’s coming to him in a whole comedy of errors. And now, our story commences.

Real Research

What am I supposed to do? I don’t even know what to research. What is research anyway? Mrs. Krebs said I had to have my topic today by Period 5. What is a topic anyway?

Tommy had no idea what he wanted to research. Mrs. Krebs was always talking about passion. He wasn’t passionate about anything. What is passion anyway? Tommy wandered over to the sports section, hoping to get distracted from the task at hand. He reached for another football book. This one seemed new. Mrs. Stokes proudly asked him if he had seen it yet.

“No, I never saw this one before. It’s all about the greatest touchdowns in history—college and NFL. It looks great. I have to see if…”

“Is Doug Flutie’s hail Mary pass against University of Miami in there?” asked Mrs. Stokes.

“Let me look…” Tommy paged through the index and found it. “Yes, here it is. Do you remember that pass, Mrs. Stokes?” Tommy asked, a bit flabbergasted she would remember a football game from 25 years ago. He sized up the 60ish gray-haired librarian. “Cool.”

“Oh, yes, my husband and I watched it. I always like to root for the underdogs. That was a great game and Boston College was going to lose it with 5 seconds to go. I think we watched it at my mom’s house–maybe Thanksgiving? Was that when it was?”

“It was the Friday after Thanksgiving,” said Tommy, right away. “Great connect with Gerard Phelan. One of the best.”

“It looks like you know your touchdowns, Tommy!” said Mrs. Stokes. “You didn’t even have to look any of that up in the book.”

“Yeah, it’s just as well. I came in because I need to find a topic for my research. I guess I better get one before the bell rings.”

“May I help you? Did Mrs. Krebs give you any guidelines?”

“Just something about being passionate. Whatever that means.”

“How about football? It looks to me like that is a passion of yours. You read every football book I can get into the library.”

“I can research football? Really?” Tommy asked, hopefully.

Interesting that in the short piece above, I am the teacher who didn’t explain research, topic, and passion adequately to Tommy. I’m reading Nonfiction Matters right now, by Stephanie Harvey. It was published in 1998, so it’s somewhat dated, but the basics are incredible and inspiring. I will be a better teacher of nonfiction reading and writing next year as a result of this read. In addition, I will be more able to steer my students into meaningful genius hour projects. I highly recommend Nonfiction Matters.

The prompt for this entry came from the #TeachersWrite Summer Writing Camp courtesy of Margo Sorenson and Kate Messner.

Okay…ready to write? Today’s Thursday Quick-Write is courtesy of guest-author Margo Sorenson!
A student walks into the library/media center at lunchtime. What is she/he thinking? Worried about? Dreading? Hoping or wishing for? What are the risks/stakes for him/her? Show us in a paragraph or two.
Note from Kate: Some possible formats for this quick-write:
• A journal entry from that character, written later on
• A letter from that character to his or her best friend
• A letter from that character to his or her worst enemy
• A poem in the character’s voice
• A monologue in the character’s voice
• A conversation in dialogue between the character and a friend/the librarian/an enemy
For those of you in the middle of a work-in-progress, try this with your main character, or better yet, a secondary character you want to develop more fully. Imagine him or her walking into a room and feeling uncomfortable and awkward. Why? You can write this from a third person perspective, from the focus character’s point of view, or for a twist, try writing from the point of view of a disinterested observer in the room — someone who has no idea who the person is or what’s going on. What would he or she observe in terms of mannerisms and body language?
Feel free to share a paragraph from your Thursday Quick-Write in the comments later on if you’d like!

Chuck Wagon at Moose, Wyoming

Moose (Before)

Teepees lined up in a circle fire pit in the center. Black smoke on the inside of the teepee. Smells of dinner coming from the big cast iron pots. The food was BBQ chicken, stew, beans, bread—cowboy food. Nothing that special, but it was the setting that made it great. The Grand Tetons were beautiful in the distance, looking like the Himalayas.

“Grand Teton Sunset” Photo by TomKellyPhoto, shared with CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0 License on Flickr.

Chuck Wagon at Moose, Wyoming (After)

“Eureka! I’ve found it!” shouted my nerdy cousin, as he saw the first teepee several miles from our destination. He never missed an opportunity to practice his vocabulary.

As we piled out of the green Country Squire station wagon, the rich and familiar smells of cowboy food made us happy to have arrived at the circle of teepees.

Each teepee, as tall as the peak of a two-story house, had a fire pit in the center. The supporting beams were as big around as one-pound coffee cans. They reached much taller than the white canvas tent, and stuck out the top at varying angles and lengths. Most of these teepees had picnic tables inside, hewn from rough lumber, where us children would always choose to eat our dinner. (How often does one get to eat a meal in a life-size teepee?)

The other teepees were for cooking the food. The food and family tradition were why we made this annual stop on the road connecting the national park jewels of Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. Inside the main grub teepee, the big black cast iron cooking pots were so large I could have crawled inside an empty one. Tonight, however, they were filled with warm and hearty food—BBQ chicken, meaty short ribs, thick stew, pungent baked beans, and soft, buttery bread.

When the weather was agreeable, as it often was late in summer in northwest Wyoming, the adults ate outside where additional picnic tables lined the freshly mown ridge. The backdrop for this breathtaking dining room was the Grand Teton range, the Himalaya-like mountains that rose out of the plateau in the near horizon.

After everyone had their fill in this all-you-can-eat (and we did) chuck wagon smorgasbord, groans and sighs of fullness and contentment filled the station wagon. We wedged ourselves back in and continued on the road to our next destination.

Note: I haven’t thought of this place in decades, until I saw today’s prompt from Kate (below and here). When I searched for the teepee chuck wagon in Wyoming, I learned that they are still doing their thing in Moose, Wyoming.

 Tuesday Quick-Write:

Write for two minutes to describe a very specific place.  If you’re just free-writing, it can be a place that you love, or have visited, or a place that frightens you…

Anyplace is fine. If you want to relate this to your work-in-progress, choose a very specific setting within the piece and imagine yourself there.

When your two minutes are up, stop writing.

Now…if your place is real and you can go there, go there now.  I’ll wait….

If it’s far away, find a picture of it. If it’s not a real place, put yourself there in your mind. Now write for one minute about each of the following:

  • Everything you SEE – Pay attention to big things and tiny things. Search for concrete details.
  • Everything you HEAR – Be specific. Don’t just say “a scraping sound.” Say a “high-pitched, raspity-raspity-screeeeeaking noise.”  You can make up words if you want. If you aren’t in the place, try to find a video. Or guess what you might hear.
  • Everything you SMELL – Especially pay attention to the smells that surprise you. If you’re not in the place, pictures can help you smell. Look carefully…what would that dumpster smell like?
  • Everything you FEEL – Weather, wind, things that land on you or brush against you. Again – pictures help you imagine if you’re not there, and if it’s not a real place, try imagining images and then assigning sensations from a similar place that might be real (desert, tundra, etc.)

Now, go back and rewrite that descriptive paragraph. Include your best tiny, surprising details, and work on senses other than sight. Better?  More vivid?  This is a fun activity to do with kids, too. Have them write about the playground or gym or cafeteria; then go there and hunt for sensory details!