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Writing Challenge

Collecting Detail

We blog for a million different reasons, but in the end, we’re all storytellers. Creative Writing Challenges are here to…

We blog for a million different reasons, but in the end, we’re all storytellers. Creative Writing Challenges are here to help you push your writing boundaries and explore new ideas, subjects, and writing styles.

To participate, tag your post with DPchallenge and include a link to this post, to generate a pingback and help others find the challenges. Please make sure your post has been specifically written in response to this challenge. We might just highlight some of our favorites on Freshly Pressed on Friday, and in our monthly newsletter.

Being a writer isn’t something you can shuck off, like a hat or a coat — being a writer is a quality that lives inside you — a part of your brain you simply can’t shut off, doing the work of the writer regardless of whether you’re out and about during your day or you’re in front of your typewriter, your screen, or your notebook.

The writer’s brain constantly collects fodder, the tiny details that enliven your writing, that help you create vivid imagery, scenes, stories, novels, and poems. In short, a writer is a writer, 24/7/365, no matter whether you’re at the grocery store, walking down your street, or on a plane. Canadian author Lisa Moore recounts a recent trip to the second-hand shop. Even though she’s in shopping mode, she’s still observing, still collecting what she calls, “the glimmer of a beginning” of a story.

Late in the afternoon, yesterday, I was in a second-hand shop, standing in front of a mirror in a dimly lit hallway outside a row of dressing rooms. There was a woman in the shadows behind me, sitting bolt straight on a sagging leather ottoman. She was wearing a blue sequined minidress. It was the blue of a propane flame, bristling with porcupine needles of spark. A tiny white price tag was dangling from the neckline, tangled in her long, dark hair. She was speaking on a cellphone. She was telling a man named Charles that she was with him: I am with you Charles. I get you. Charles. I’m there. Charles. I’m right there with you. My God Charles, I’m listening. You listen to me for a sec. I’m there.

I was standing in front of the mirror in a red wool dress that was either too tight or not too tight. But I was lost in a sudden memory from earlier in the day. More a fragment or sensation than memory. A scrap flitting through. I had been jogging by the Bow River. It was overcast when I began but the sun came out and all the yellow leaves over the wet black pavement brightened as if someone had turned a dimmer switch to full blast. The river, which had been grey, became glacial green, and a man in fluorescent spandex power-walked past me. He was speaking into a white wire hanging from his ear. He said: No, it will be fun. We just wrap our heads around the reorg.

I imagined an entire managerial team fired in the spandex power-walker’s reorg. I imagined Charles flying over the handlebars of a racing bike, landing on his back in a swirl of yellow leaves or, better still, in the green river. I remembered the man beside me on the plane with his fat red pencil drawing a line through his Seek-A-Word puzzle. The word, whose letters ran diagonally through a square of jumbled letters, turned out to be two words: catalytic converter. I imagined there would be a way to bring it all together.

When I read this passage, my mind lit up, imagining the woman on the phone, the mysterious Charles on the other end of the line, the man in spandex, and how these seemingly disparate details could form a story.

Three glimmers and at least a paragraph

In today’s challenge, you’ll turn your observational superpowers on high alert. (You might want to carry a notebook or a slip of paper and a pen to be able to capture the details when they’re fresh in your mind.) Pick three original details from encounters during your day or your week. It could be the quality of the moonlight filtering through bare oak trees on to the snow in your back yard. It could be the red of a small child’s coat against drab buildings in the inner city, the adhesive sound of car tires on a wet street, the acrid smell of wheat stubble burning in a farmer’s field. Maybe it’s the whiteblack flash and peep of a chickadee passing overhead, or the sound of a toddler giggling.

Once you’ve collected your details, your “glimmers of a beginning,” write at least one paragraph containing your original details.

Challenge yourself to keep your observational superpowers on high at all times. Be on alert for snippets of dialogue, sights, sounds, and smells that you can use in your stories, and be sure to have fun with this challenge. Can’t wait to read your original details.

This week’s challenge

To recap, here’s what to do for the challenge. As always, feel free to adapt the challenge as you see fit. The object is to get you writing:

  1. Pick three original details from encounters during your day or your week that you’ve observed.
  2. Once you’ve collected your details, your “glimmers of a beginning,” write at least one paragraph containing your original details.

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    1. Here’s the challenge:

      Pick three original details from encounters during your day or your week….
      Once you’ve collected your details, your “glimmers of a beginning,” write at least one paragraph containing your original details.

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  10. Wow! – this is a little ripper! A true writing challenge, that’ll either pop us up to the surface or have us struggling down amid the seaweed … My compliments!

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  14. I enjoyed reading those three paragraphs, I wonder if it is me but even when I write details like that it never seems good enough, perhaps I am just highly critical of myself but reading it from others seems to just capture more than if it is my own work.

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  15. Thought i’d go for it anyway. Not sure on it really?

    leaving my home for work this morning I stepped out of the porch and it was raining lightly, the drops felt cold on my skin, small rivers flowing and it reminded me of the line in one of the Jurassic Parks when Jeff Goldblum is talking about Chaos Theory. I pulled my hat on more to protect from the rain than anything else and settled me headphones over my hat. I wondered at that point that I must look strange with a beanie hat on with headphones on top of that, I didnt care, nothing keeps me from my tunes.

    I walked across the road and into the train station, there was a guy in hoodie and cut down tracksuits bottoms, light grey and I wondered why he would be out that early, in the rain in cut down track suit bottoms. He was with a female and they were smoking next to a car, Audi A3, Silver, not new, but not old. I made my way into the station.

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      2. It’s always great to notice mistakes! That’s unfortunate that you couldn’t. Although just keep one thing in mind, mistakes or not, you’re a good writer, so keep it up!

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  23. Hello everyone, I am giving this challenge a shot and would appreciate any feedback at all, I think I will finish up my writing this Friday or Saturday only because I do not want to miss any good details. Please stay tuned for my writing! I will post a comment again when it is done.

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