Dipping the Quill Deeper: Creative Exercises for Writers

by Eva Marie Everson 

As far back as I can recall, I have looked at old paintings and photographs and tried to find the story within them. As a literary artist, the creation of them sparks the creativity within me. A few years ago, I found myself not looking so much at the obvious, but at the not-so-obvious. In other words, looking around the edges and into the distance, then pulling forward so as to see the work from a different perspective. 

Take this painting for example. The work is titled “Summer Evening” and is by American artist Daniel Ridgway Knight (1839-1924). Look at it carefully. What is the first thing you see? The river? The man and woman? The glimpse of what could be a thatched roof? What about the leaves? The bench? The way the woman’s hand rests on the railing while his arm dangles from the same? The sun and its shimmer of light along the surface of the water? Where do you imagine this scene takes place? 

Ask yourself: what can be seen? Heard? Smelled? Tasted? Touched? Now, pulling forward, study the man and woman more closely. Who are they? Husband and wife? Brother and sister? Mother and son? Friends? Notice the way the man’s head is cocked slightly as if he is trying to understand. The pensive expression along the woman’s features. 

Then, write the scene in less than 300 words, as if you are drawing a reader into the moment. Example:

Summer gasped its last breath that late August evening. I had arrived early, where he’d asked, at the bench where our story began. Waiting, I stood and looked out over the bend in the river where the evidence of a sinking sun quivered along the water’s surface. Below me, our little village grew quiet, the aromas of a hundred dinners rising to meet me. To taunt me. I’d not eaten yet. I’d been unable to. Because I knew. The news he would bring could not possibly be good. 

And then, as the cicadas began to hum, he sauntered up, greeting me with his usual kiss on the cheek. “Do you want to sit?” he asked. He smelled of woodsmoke and work.

“No,” I answered. “I’d rather stand.”

But he sat, rested his arm on the railing of the old fence built to keep children and distraught lovers from falling over the hilltop’s edge. With the hand of the other, he gripped the edge of the bench like a lifeline. “We won’t have many nights left like this,” he commented, and I imagined his eyes scanning the vista below. Not that I looked at him. I no longer had that kind of energy.

“No,” I said, keeping my voice barely above a whisper on the mundane. “The leaves are changing already.”

“They’ll be gold soon. They’ve lost the richness of green a little early this year.”

The richness of green. . .

“So what have you come to tell me?” I asked the man who had been my friend since childhood. Since the day he found me crying here at this bench. The day my father died, leaving me with a mother who neither wanted nor loved me.

“Diana doesn’t understand,” he said. “But what I need to know is—Marnie, listen to me—I need to know if you do.” He paused. Waiting. “Marnie,” he spoke my name again. “Please.”

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Ah! So who is Diana? And what doesn’t she understand? Just this little exercise opens a world of possibilities for me, the writer, in only a little more than 300 words. Where I take it from here could be anyone’s guess. 

What about you, writer? Want to try? Study the painting . . . and . . . imagine!

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Eva Marie Everson is the president of Word Weavers International, the director of Florida Christian Writers Conference, and a frequent speaker at writers retreats across the United States. Her 40th title, DUST, a novel, will release in early March 2021.