During the last few months I’ve been on the lookout for writing exercises. While I’ve done a lot of writing over the years, I have never felt moved to try these sorts of things. I don’t believe I can give you an honest answer as to why, but it’s likely some combination of vanity, embarrassment and not understanding the point of them. Now? I try to find a new one every week and have even folded a few into my normal “routine.”
The first writing exercise I tried, I just sort of stumbled upon. For reasons that aren’t very interesting, I needed to write descriptions for five paintings that didn’t exist. Each of the paintings needed to have a sinister tone and contain a few common elements. I rolled this task around in my head for a while and decided that trying to start from scratch wasn’t the best way to proceed. Instead, I jumped onto Wikimedia Commons and began looking through the paintings I found there.
As I browsed their collection, a painting would catch my eye and I would study it for a few minutes. I tried to find the sinister element, a little twist of creepiness that I could cling to. As I worked the painting over in my mind, I basically re-created it to suit my purposes. Most of the paintings I did this with required very little in the way of changes, but that might just be because I’m used to finding sinister undertones in the innocent world around me. It may also be that paintings from the 1850s are just creepy to begin with. Who knows?
Anyway, I wrote between one hundred and two hundred words for each painting, doing my best to show the painting I had in my head. It took maybe three hours to do a rough draft for all five, then maybe another half hour to fine tune them. After it was done, I felt thrilled.
The exercise required me to adjust my perceptions, to look at something (probably) benign and find the horror inside. More than that, trying to put into words something purely visual forced me to think about the difference between writing that shows versus writing that tells. Since doing this the first time, I’ve repeated this “word painting” exercise every other week. I’ve seen similar writing exercises from time to time, so I’m not claiming this is an original idea, only that I found it very fun and enlightening.
Writing Exercise – Word Paintings
Step 1: Find a painting that interests you. This could mean a trip to a gallery to see the real thing or using an image found on the internet.
Step 2: Study the painting for a few minutes. How does it make you feel? If there are people present, what are they thinking or feeling? If the painting were a single frame taken from a movie, what might have been onscreen a minute ago?
Step 3: Find a way to make the painting your own. Try to alter the painting in your mind’s eye, bringing out those elements that seem more important, inserting new elements or removing elements that seem to detract from the scene. You might do what I did and find a way to make the painting more sinister, or you might do just the opposite. Do you change the painting subtly, or does it become something entirely different from what it originally was?
Step 4: Create your word painting. Describe the painting in your mind’s eye using one hundred to two hundred words. Try to use language that shows the painting and avoid dry description. If your painting happens to show a canon being fired, write something like “the canon erupts in a violent flash” and not “we see smoke and flame coming from the barrel of the canon.”
Here are three paintings from the 1800s that should help you get started. Give one or all of them a try. If you do, please share your word paintings in the comments. I’d love to read what you come up with!
Amalfi dai Cappucini by Carl Frederic Aagaard
La Butte by Santiago Rusiñol c. 1890s
Réunion de famille by Frédéric Bazille c. 1850
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