Prompt: What nourishes you? Write for 15 minutes. Use sensory details: sight, smell & sound.
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Next: Picture the kitchen in the house you grew up in. See the table and chairs, the counter, the cupboards.
Open a cupboard . . . or walk into the pantry. Take a look around. Open the spice cabinet. Breathe deeply.
Prompt: What food reminds you of the kitchen in the house where you grew up in? Memories surrounding that food?
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Prompt: Take a few words from previous two freewrites and expand, or describe, using smell and sound. For example, from “The Martian Chronicles by” Ray Bradbury:
“There was a smell of Time in the air tonight . . . What did Time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. And if you wondered what Time sounded like, it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box lids, and rain. Time looked like snow dropping silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient theatre one hundred billion faces falling like those New Year balloons down and down into nothing. That was how Time smelled and looked and sounded.”
Use sensory detail: Smell
What does rain on asphalt smell like?
What does a crunchy red apple smell like?
Mentally walk through an apple or a pear orchard where the earth has recently been plowed. Describe that earthy smell.
What does a redwood forest smell like, deep in the grove where it’s quiet?
It might smell old or ancient and calm. What does old, ancient, and calm smell like?
old . . . smells like parchment paper
ancient . . . smells like musty book
calm . . . smells like summer rain candle
Use sensory detail: Sound
What does old, ancient, calm sound like?
old sounds like coughing and wheezing
ancient sounds like rattling breath
calm sounds like church . . . sitting in an old Catholic church in the middle of the afternoon with no else there. That’s calm.
The neurological impact of sensory detail
Imagery and sensory detail ala Adair Lara Prompt #277
33 Ideas You Can Use for Sensory Starts Prompt #278
