TGIF, readers and writers! I want to start the weekend off with a writing prompt. I haven’t given you one in a while, so I figured it’s about time I brought that series back. Today’s writing prompt involves learning to see clearly with your eyes closed.
Last May I wrote a post titled “Images in Literature and Plato’s The Cave”. Admittedly, it’s one of my favorite posts thus far. It combines my love of reading and writing with my philosophical inclinations, and it was rather fun for me to write. I want to focus on one particular part of this post for today’s writing prompt, the quote from Charles Simic. In case you haven’t read that post or have forgotten it, here’s the quote again:
There are images made with eyes open and images made with eyes closed. One is about clear sight and the other about similitude.
–Charles Simic
Now, I could reiterate the debate my Master’s classmates and I had about which images are about clear sight and which about similitude. If you want to learn more about the argument, you can visit my “Images in Literature and Plato’s The Cave” post. For this writing prompt, I want you to assume that you make “clear sight” images with your eyes closed and “similitude” images with your eyes closed.
I want you to focus on clear sight images. Writers have a knack for these sorts of images. Whether we’re poets or prose writers, our images rarely serve as strict similitude. That’s why it is important for us to master clear sight, the ability to create images which are beyond what the objects or people appear to be. That’s what this exercise is about.
What we see with our eyes closed is often more bizarre–and more interesting–than what we see with our eyes open.
Image retrieved from Science Line.
As usual, today’s exercise is fairly easy. Go somewhere where you can concentrate. Block out as much external distractions as you can. Once you do that, I want you to close your eyes. Don’t think about anything in particular; just close your eyes. Focus on the first image which appears when you close your eyes. Commit it to your memory, get a feel for it.
Once you have a good feel for the image, open your eyes. Now I want you to write a scene or poem in which you incorporate and describe the image you saw behind your eyes. I don’t want to just know what it looked like; I want you to convey how it made you feel, what it reminded you of, if it felt menacing or benign, etc. Capture the true image of what was behind your eyes, not just what you saw.
You might be able to create a story or full poem out of this exercise, or you might only get some good practice at writing imagery. The important thing is that you discover what it means to create a true image of something and not a similitude. Admittedly, this practice can be rather difficult. You also won’t need to use it for every image in a story. (Poetry, on the other hand, all but requires each image to be a true, clear sight image rather than a similitude.) Once you master the practice, the hard part will be deciding which image is needed when.
How did this exercise go for you? Did you find anything particularly hard about it? What sort of image popped into your head when you closed your eyes? Did you realize anything about how you typically describe images? If so, what? Leave your thoughts in the comments below. You can even leave what you wrote as a result of this exercise!
Do you know of any good writing prompts? Want to share them with your fellow writers? Leave the prompt in the comments or e-mail it to me at thewritersscrapbin@gmail.com and I might incorporate it into a future Friday Fun-day Writing Prompt post.
Designed by Stephanie Hoogstad circa 2011