NEW Writing ASSIGNMENT: You are going to write about a favourite place using the 5 senses. As you describe the place, I want to you to use words that create visuals, sounds, tastes, and a sense of touch. The idea here is to write to create an atmosphere or feeling.
- You may need to build a fictional story around this place or simply begin describing it. In this assignment students are to focus on the elements of setting ( time, place, description) using the senses and the concept of show not tell. (10)
When describing a place in fiction, think about the sounds, smells and other sense details that distinguish it from others. Here is Dickens describing the industrial city of Coketown, for example, in Hard Times (1854):
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black … It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of buildings full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.
From Harry Potter:The first several chapters of the book take place at the Dursleys' prim house on Privet Drive. The Dursleys' home may look polite and regular, with its "tidy front garden" (2.1) and its inhabitants' emphasis on behaving just like everyone else, but that doesn't make it a nice or welcoming place to live. In a way, it has just as much darkness and unhappiness as you might expect from a magical landscape. Nephew Harry is forced to live in a "cupboard under the stairs" (2.13) while the son of the house, Dudley, enjoys two bedrooms to himself. The Dursleys' house might look cheerful from the outside, but inside Harry sees only bleakness. Let's not forget that Whinging, in British English, means whining. Even the town they live in is annoying.
