Scarlett Van Dijk
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  • About Me
  • Blog
  • Sky Stone Series
    • Map of Branzia
  • Poetry
  • Other Writing
  • Contact Me
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Picturesque Words

26/1/2014

2 Comments

 
Picture
I have seen many authors on forums lately asking about ways to improve their writing. They are looking for writing exercises that they can do each day. There is one such exercise that I remember from my days at school which helped me with my descriptive writing and lead to my love of writing. It is easy to do and does not take much time.

To any authors that would like to work on their descriptive writing I suggest finding images online. Find any picture. Then, all you need to do is write about it. Describe what is happening and what people, objects and scenery appear in the picture. If you have a picture of the beach then write about how the waves roll, the colour of the sand, how it feels, the wind, the people sunbathing. They say that 'a picture is worth a thousand words' and it is true, I could write paragraph upon paragraph all based on one picture.

This is also a great exercise for any authors that are having difficulty coming up with a story idea. Find an image and then base a story on the characters within the picture or within the setting depicted. I have previously written a short story based on a painting of a young girl holding a dead goldfinch. It turned in to a story about an orphan during war whose only friend was a goldfinch who dies as it protects her from a soldier. It is quite easy for your inspiration to be spurred by a meaningful image.

What writing exercises do you use?

Scarlett Van Dijk

Image courtesy of ponsuwan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
2 Comments
Andy Back link
29/1/2014 12:35:57 pm

Hallo. I like the idea of creatively writing about what can be seen i photo, and letting your mind wander freely to consider relationships, history, dreams and connections between any characters who may appear in the photographs.
In addition to this exercise, I have been working on attempting to express myself using different constraints - for example, take a simple story and retell it using only monosyllables or in the style of AA Milne or as a recipe or in Franglais or using only words that start with A (25 other options available) or only words sourced from the Greek or as if a non-English-speaker were using a thesaurus incorrectly or only using letters of x-height or as a tweet or as a lipogram (no use of the letter e) or in the form of a sonnet or from different viewpoints...
It's mentally-stretching and can sometimes open up whole new avenues that I'd otherwise left unexplored.

Reply
Scarlett Van Dijk
29/1/2014 04:44:00 pm

Wow thank for those ideas Andy. Those exercises sound hard but also fun (like a puzzle). I could imagine this really stretching my vocabulary and allowing my to use words more freely in my writing.
Thanks again. Happy writing :)

Reply



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    Scarlett Van Dijk

    Writer of young adult, fantasy series, the Sky Stone series, poetry and short stories.
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