► Exercise: Week Four

[echoinautumn]

As humans, our senses are pretty dulled when compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. Dogs have sharp senses of smell, birds have fantastic eyes, and innumerable animals can hear better than we do. Still, we rely on our senses to give us our perceptions of the world and how it works, to define our experiences. We like certain colors, dislike certain smells, remember how something feels when we touch it, and enjoy the world through our senses. We're pretty physically-driven beings, and of course we are: it's how we understand our world. It is our goal as writers to evoke the senses, to remind or suggest to our readers what sensory experiences are being described through our words, even if we can't reach out and directly stimulate those senses. It requires imagination on the part of the reader, but more so on the part of the writer. We rely on those descriptions to tell our stories, because it's how we relate to them and to the worlds we're creating.

The challenge this week is straight forward, but difficult. Don't use sensory descriptions at all. Tell your story without describing the physical world in which it takes place and without relying on metaphors and similes of the senses. Focus on interactions, dialogue, feelings, emotions and everything else but that physical world. Because this is such a tough challenge--and it's meant to be, even if you don't realize until you sit down and start writing it--I'm setting the minimum word count lower for this week.

Challenge: Tell a story without relying on any sensory experience. Minimum 150 words.