Two weathered pieces of wood, long and slender, a length of two and a half, possibly three feet upon which a painted red bin perches. The back is short, descending at an angle into the deepest portion all which sets evenly upon the two v’d wooden sticks. At the front, beneath the deepest part of the metal bin where the sticks join, one on either side, is a single red centered wheel no larger than a foot across. Behind the wheel towards the back – shallowest – of the bin, two wide v-shaped flat metal legs, flat on the bottom, add support and a resting stand. A sturdy metal bar adds support between the legs.
What is the object described?
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This is an exercise in description: describing an everyday object in part and portion as accurately as possible, as completely as possible, so that by the end of the description, the reader has drawn a mental picture close to the writer’s depiction. Playing with the description to alter the reader’s conclusion is another version of this writing exercise.
I’m totally focusing on the delicate spider web and the metal wheel (blade) in the middle.
I suppose I always look at them iddle first, then move outward. I’ve written a lot of scene description this way. First I center, then I count ripples. I might describe this setting thus:
When the mill was turning out the required quota, the blade ate tons of 2×2′s, 2×4′s, 4×8′s. It bit, it chewed, it spit out quality according to a preset design. The blade cared nothing for the color of the blocks fed into its maw; it cared only for the presision of edge. Days on end it rendered the wood offerings into perfection.
One day Blade went to sleep, and didn’t wake. The prospective meal hovered just beyond temptation. Eventually a wood spider was Blade’s only company. It spun a web to ensnare prospective mates. Blade sat silent and intimidating; the potential for destruction or beauty forever quieted by the lack of humming elictrical or biological intervention.
The spider wove its world, interrupting but not detracting from the symmetry of Blade’s domain. What use the eternal space between contact and edge when all power has ceased to exist.
Who knows what the correct description of any setting/object is beyond the writers imagination. I don’t expect a writer to completely impart THEIR vision to me. I do expect enough to get MY own vision of their world.
………dhole
I loved your response, Donna! Especially how the machine became a being. Likewise, I enjoyed reading your take on the creative process and how you best interpret it. Insightful. Thanks for stopping by and commenting on the blog post. I hope to see you again soon as I’m trying to preset posts to appear daily. Quite an undertaking, but at this point, as I’m preparing to take that big, deep plunge into all things published, felt it was long overdue.
~K~