Monday, October 2, 2017

Discover the Imagery


The creative is the place where no one else has ever been.You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk,and by not quite knowing whatyou are doing. What you will discover will be wonderful.What you discover will be yourself.
                                    - Alan Alda

When Alan Alda spoke at his daughter's college commencement, he advised her about life from a father's point of view. In the last paragraph, Alda weaves abstract words: creative, comfort, intuition,work, and risk with a travel metaphor to define his notion. He moves us from the city to the wilderness where no one else has gone. 

In six lines Alda develops an image of self-reliance and exploration. What if he removed the abstractions and used sensory imagery to take the reader from the city on a bus ride that stopped at the edge of the forest? What would the experience of entering the forest feel like on a sensory level?

Discover the imagery. Go into the forest with its sounds, scents, tastes, and textures. Show the reader what "wonderful" means without using the word. Or, develop a metaphor and discover your writing self through the details
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