First Writing Class: Part 4

What were the results of the assignment to describe a room in my house? Generally speaking, I did just fine. With a caveat, but I’ll get to that later.

The assignment was very simple and making a mess of it would have been very difficult, but there were a few revealing factors that marked significant differences between the writers. Some of the writers couldn’t help themselves, and instead of ‘clinical’ descriptions, they leaned heavily towards literature. But the most important part for me was seeing how each writer tackled a description, from word choice to descriptive order (left right up down top bottom etc) and what they felt was most important to describe in a room.

In my case, the instructor commented on the fact that I leaned heavily towards materials, which was quite different from all the other students. Rereading my assignment, I did notice how I described types of steel, iron, bricks, stone, types of wood, etc. But another telling factor of my description compared to the others was my dependency on sight. The other writers used smells, sounds and feelings, which made their descriptions richer. The funny thing is that I know that when providing descriptions all five senses should be used (when possible/realistic), but I wrote three hundred words of description only using sight. Not good.

So, I think you can guess the second assignment. It’s a piece of flash fiction using hearing, smell, taste and touch. No sight! I’ll let you know!