Close your eyes and relax. Let the traces of light, the afterimage of sight, fade into blackness. With your eyes still closed look into the blackness, closely, calmly, as if you knew you could see through the blackness if you concentrated a little. Look through the blackness. There are figures up ahead of you and if you look carefully they will begin to take form. As they come into view more clearly you’re becoming aware of the place through which these people are moving. You recognize the place, the setting, the locale—it’s one you’re familiar with and you don’t catch up with the figures in front of you but instead begin to follow them without their knowing because you want to walk through this setting with them, taking in where you are and what they’re doing. What are they doing? Who are these people and what are they doing in this setting? Follow them and try to see what you can learn by following them, watching their actions, listening to their conversation, noticing the elements of the landscape, the place, the setting as they pass them. Follow them for a few minutes, your eyes closed but seeing what they do and where they are. Try to remember everything you’re noticing and how these people seem to be reacting to or interacting with this environment.

Now slowly open your eyes and begin writing what you’ve observed, describing not only the people in the scene but the setting they and you have passed through, in such detail that a reader reading your impromptu account of what you’ve seen will very likely see it for him or herself on his own inner projection screen, will very likely feel as if he or she has been there too.

Link to Impromptu 4

Link to Course Description Writer's Craft