Practice Tast 2 : Layering
Instructions
1. Think of two contrasting environments which you know well, an urban and semi-urban or rural environment for example. Choose one of the environments.
2. Focus on the layers of details of this environment. In an urban environment for example: the street, the pavement, the flow of traffic, the flow of people, the buildings on either side at groundfloor level, then upper levels and finally what you can see at either end of the street, or how you can see the sky looking up.
3. Then focus on the senses, what you can hear: the constant buzz of conversation on a pedestrianised street, the clink of cups and glasses being collected on a café terrace, the roar of traffic on a main road, or the background hum of traffic on a neighbouring road, the sound of a pneumatic drill from a workman digging up the road etc. Think of how you hear them when you’re in that environment.
4. What you can smell: the fumes of the traffic, the occasional waft of coffee from a coffee shop as someone leaves or enters, the smell of freshly baked bread from a street stall, the smell of rotting vegetation in a country hedgerow, the chimes of the clock of a village church, the scent of freshly cut grass etc. Think of how you smell them when you’re in that environment.
5. Build up your description layer by layer much as in the example given (the field of wild flowers). In an urban context write your first sentence focusing on the road, your second describing the road and the flow of traffic on it, the third, the road, the flow of traffic and pedestrian activity etc. At the end you should have an accurate description of the environment you’ve chosen which allows the reader to see, hear and smell the place as if he were there.