Descriptive practice prompts

Cinematic zoom works perfectly. Pick one stall-holder for the close-up.

Use taste and touch - salt, sand, wind - not just sight.

One specific, strange detail (a broken clock, a squeaky stair) beats a list of rooms.

Movement and sound. The narrator can be still; everyone else is hurrying.

Light quality is your best tool. Describe it as a colour.

Smell, steam, half-heard conversation. Hold the camera low.

Dust, silence, preserved objects. Treat it as a museum exhibit.

Start with the noise, cut to the silence after the bell.

Weather frame. Describe the light before the noise.

Fluorescent light, bored cashier, one strange customer. Use the extended metaphor of an aquarium.

Avoid sentimentality. Describe the objects (chairs, posters, vending machine) instead of the emotions.

Lights dimming, one ride still turning, a solitary worker. Echo the opening.

The reflection in the window and the reflection in the narrator both matter.

Sound contrast - the rain outside, the hush inside.

Silence as sound. One detail of colour (a red postbox, a yellow car) against the white.

The light sweeping across the rocks is your natural rhythm - let your sentences imitate it.

Then and now. Let memory do the structural work.

Interior (car) and exterior (landscape passing) can be two alternating layers.

Extended metaphor: funfair as abandoned theatre. Echo at the end.

You are describing a crowd, but zoom to one face, one hand, one object.

Wide shot throughout - the challenge is maintaining detail without going closer.

Unusual, enclosed space. Sound (pings, hums), pressure, metallic taste in the air.

Specific fear beats general dread. Pick one sense (usually sound) and sharpen it.

A time shift technique. The same room described twice - lit and unlit.

Layer sound above sight. Do not forget taste (humidity) and touch (insects, leaves).

Artificial light, exhausted travellers, the overhead announcement as the one voice.

Inverted cinematic zoom: close-up first (a dropped programme), then pulling back to empty seats.

Weather and silence. Resist the temptation to explain the feeling - describe it.

Translate the disorientation into unfamiliar sound combinations - you do not understand the announcements.

Machines as skeletons. Extended metaphor of a sleeping giant brought back and inverted at the end.